Writing Powerful Presentations

A powerful presentation is not merely about conveying the right information and having great visuals. It also means giving a good presentation speech that engages the audience. Your presentation speech will be used to convey all the information that you need to while the visuals you present will make sure that the audience remembers the information long after the presentation is over. Giving a good presentation speech is thus very important for your entire presentation to be effective and have the desired impact.

Let us take a look at some basic guidelines for writing powerful presentations and speeches.

• The most important part of a presentation speech is the composition. This includes all the information that you would like to convey. You have to ensure that your ideas and information flow in a logical manner. One good idea is to put the different points and the supporting details on separate index cards. You can now arrange and rearrange these index cards till you feel you have got the flow of speech right. This will save you from hours of re-writing the actual speech. Once you feel you have the order right, you can sit down to writing the speech, paying special attention to the points where you make a transition. When the focus switches between two points, the audience make get a little confused and you may have to put in more effort in making them understand how and why the transition is being made.
• When you are writing, make sure you have a key message that you will keep re-emphasizing as you along. A key message is the main course of action or a change in behavior that you want your listeners to take as a result of listening to your presentation. In this key message, you will refer to the audience, making them an integral part of the presentation and letting them know that you value their opinions. You will also give an example of how they will benefit from listening to your presentation. For example, you may say at the start of the presentation ‘As online marketers, I am sure by the end of this presentation, you will all be convinced that our search engine optimization software will save you not only time and effort but also allow you to track the performance of your websites more effectively and that you will be determined to put this software to immediate use’.
• Once you have informed the audience of what your key message is, you need to let them know why they should be thinking of your product or service and how it will actually deliver. You should include examples and figures that show the kind of challenges that they may be facing and how your product can provide an easy solution. Next, you may need to show how exactly the product is to be deployed to be of use.
• Follow up all this information with enough statistics, real life examples, client testimonials and case studies. Try to convey as many individual, real-life examples through stories as you can.