How do you present important points?

Hamilton is one of only three top liberal arts colleges with an independent Oral Communication Center. In fact, students requested such a center. Recently, the faculty adopted a “speaking intensive” designation for courses that help students develop their oral presentation skills.

A few weeks ago, I ran a reader survey. One of the top concerns I heard from my readers were fears about getting your ideas across clearly and powerfully. Many of you said you struggle with speaking up and communicating well.

You said things like…

• “Clear, straightforward communication of ideas and information is a challenge for me.”
• “I’m growing into a leadership role and need to level up in my communication.”
• “I run on my own business which involves a lot of presentations. But I have fear around that.”

If this sounds like you, then you’re not alone.

In this post, you’re going to learn proven psychology techniques to connect with your audience, drive conversations forward, and influence people to come around to your way of thinking.

But first, you’re probably reading this post because you’ve tried to improve your communication skills in the past and not been successful. Maybe you lacked the know-how or perhaps you faced many concerns that held you back from making meaningful progress.

Whatever it is–you’re probably wondering why you should be focusing on learning to communicate better if you’ve already tried and failed?

The truth is, no matter who you, powerful communication matters. If you have great ideas, you have to know how to articulate and share them in order to get ahead. That goes for whether you’re selling a product or service or trying to get your boss and colleagues to buy into a new idea. Communication is an indispensable skill that can make you more money in the form of sales or getting a promotion at work. It’s also one of the best ways to broaden your influence and make a bigger impact in the workplace.

But perhaps most importantly, it improves your self esteem. Learning to master the skills were going to talk about today can help you feel more confident in your capabilities and help you truly believe in yourself more. Conquering your fears and speaking up for your ideas is massively self-empowering.

In this post, I’m going to share with you three key components for presenting your ideas powerfully and inspiring your audience to action.

You’re going to discover:

1. How to communicate your ideas effectively, including how to organize your information and make your ideas memorable.
2. Next, we’ll talk how to present for results and get people to take action, whether you’re presenting to one person or 100.
3. And last, we’ll discuss strategies for getting buy-in for your ideas. Meaning, how to influence and persuade your audience to say yes to your ideas or bounce back, even if you hear “no”.

By the end of this article, you will:

• Know how to leverage the power of psychology to improve your communication.
• Feel more confident presenting your ideas to influential decision makers like your boss, clients and customers, investors or executive teams.
• Be armed with actionable strategies you can implement today that will help you engage, motivate, and inspire your audience to take action more quickly and with better results.

Melody Wilding x Beautiful: Communicate Beautifully

View this article as a presentation

This presentation was built using Beautiful.ai. Start building professional presentations for free at melodywilding.com/beautiful

1. Careful with design!

The content of your presentation is key, but how you present it is too. Try to apply the following tips:

• Use neutral color backgrounds and easy to read fonts.
• Use the same style of pictures for the whole presentation. For example, if using landscape catalogue images, avoid any other type that changes the aesthetic and has nothing to do with your presentation.
• Align items in all the slides.
• Use one color palette with no more than 3 main colors, and take advantage of white, black and grey tones.

In summary, your presentation should have visual consistency from start to finish.

2. One idea per slide

Think of one key concept for each slide and convey it with the most efficient resource. It can be text, an image, a video, or a combination of items. Provide enough space for each key concept. If you need two or three slides to explain your ideas clearly, your audience will appreciate it!

3. Simplify, streamline and facilitate

Take note: what isn’t information isn’t useful. Make the effort of summarizing the information as much as possible, and not fill your slides with too much content. If you can say it in a phrase instead of a full paragraph, do it! And, if you can replace the phrase for an image that conveys the same message, do that as well. This way, you will avoid too much text and unnecessary items in your presentation. Remember: Less information will be more easily retained by your audience.

A common error that we usually make in presentations is using too many graphs. Graphs are great to present statistics. But, if our objective is that the audience only retain one key concept of the graph… Why not process the information for them? For example, as in the following screen.

Tip:  Keep reminding yourself to check what you can take out of your presentation that won’t take away its meaning. If you identify additional items that won’t take away from comprehension, take them out! You’ll see that when you do, key content will stand out and be easier to understand.

4. Highlight important concepts

Highlight the most important concepts on each screen so your audience can easily identify them. You can do this by:

• Highlighting key concepts in a different color
• Using a larger font
• Placing them in a text box
• Adding contrast

Placing them in the best position within the screen.  

5. Use powerful images

Images can be your best ally when conveying complicated or difficult concepts to explain in words. They can also help break the rhythm following a complicated lesson. We recommend that you choose them carefully and place them in key positions within your presentation. If you want to know how to choose the best pictures for your presentations, read our Images used to support learning article.

6. Take advantage of space

Take advantage of the space on each screen. This doesn’t mean that you should fill every millimeter available, (remember points 2 and 3 on the list!), but taking advantage of space intelligently. Look at the following example: Which do you think is more effective?

7. Make good use of storytelling

Storytelling, or the art of telling stories, can help you immensely for presentations. Not only does it provide a common theme, it also allows you to emotionally connect with your audience. For example, if you are working on a presentation about malaria, it will be much more noteworthy if you tell the story of Akanni, the child who suffered from malaria and completed successful treatment, than merely listing symptoms and treatments.

Did you know that you can use isEazy Author for presentations, besides e-learning?

Yes, you can! One of the least known assets of our tool is that it is fantastic for presentations and helps you put all our advice into practice in an easier way. This is excellent news!

The result is noteworthy presentations with impact visual style and full of interactivity, that besides, you can share with a simple link. The best of all: For the same result, you will work half the time that you would for a regular presentation. If you want to learn more about interaction in isEazy Author, read the following article and be amazed!

Design your presentation in isEazy Author and take advantage of all the tools we have for you. Following, in the distribution tab, choose the share content option by direct link.

Once there, publish the latest version of your presentation and in a few seconds you will be provided with a link where you can see the content. You can share this link with your audience as many times as needed so they can see your presentation