By Jon, on November 28th, 2011,   I was recently browsing twitter and saw a tweet from my friend Kyle Lacy (Founder/CEO of BrandSwag) about a presentation he and his firm had created and placed on SlideShare called “Building Your Personal Brand.” I wanted to share this presentation with you for a number of reasons that I’ll outline below, but particularly because I truly believe that one of the most valuable yet underutilized uses for PowerPoint is developing your personal brand.
Building Your Personal Brand
What the internet, particularly social media, has done over the last 15 years is to level the playing field for those who want to share their passions with others. 15 years ago if you wanted to write, you did it in a journal that probably never strayed further Continue reading…
By Jon, on November 14th, 2011,  Most presentations born in a corporate setting, especially in sales, have a very similar structure. I’ve spoken before about starting your presentation off strong, and even how you can put a new spin on the traditional agenda slide. But recently I noticed a problem that seems to arise in all presentations and I’m not sure presenters realize it is a problem or exactly why. However, the consequences of this error can derail your presentation the moment it starts.
The mistake: Talking about yourself.
Let me spare you the suspense – While your audience, presumably a prospective client, is there to listen to you, they’re not acting as your audience because they want to hear about you. No, they don’t really care about you. All they care about is themselves and how they’re going to solve their problems, reach their goals, or whatever they Continue reading…
By Jon, on October 25th, 2011,  If you’ve been involved in implementing social media initiatives at your organization, particularly if that organization has been fairly rigid in adopting post-advertising techniques, then the conversation depicted below is going to be very familiar to you. In the grand scheme of an organization’s expenses, it’s quite strange that social media is held to a higher standard than everything else. That’s no to say that every organization should blindly invest real dollars and sweat equity into social media, but if you’re going to the ROI of social media, make sure to question the ROI of everything else – those twice-weekly company happy hours, the polo shirts with your brand name on them, your email provider, and of course, the branded golf balls (watch the video and you’ll get that joke).
So Scott Stratten, Continue reading…
By Jon, on October 19th, 2011,  I recently wrote a post about my feelings towards “approaches” and advice about effective presentation design that include an acceptable amount of bullet points greater than zero. It was an more of an editorial than a how-to post, reason being that I have over 200 posts on this blog that offer advice on alternatives to simply listing your information in bullet point form.
The post was reposted (with my permission) on Ragan.com, however since the post didn’t offer any actionable alternatives, I took some heat in the comments. So if you read that post and felt that I was ranting instead of helping, then I’m sorry. Below is my response to the first (of many) commenters who asked for concrete examples of effective presentations that don’t use bullet-points. I hope this helps!!
—-
I don’t think it’s enough to provide examples without explaining why bullet points are Continue reading…
By Jon, on October 12th, 2011, 
Maybe it’s fueled by the recent “99%” protests happening around the U.S. (of which I can’t say I totally understand), but I’m reviving my neglected-as-of-late blog to take a stand. As a general approach to effective PowerPoint presentation design – bullet points are not okay.
Let me give you a bit more back story. I’ve answered a handful of questions on Quora, a crowdsourced Q&A site. Some have been about social media and marketing, but most address presentation questions. Someone recently answered a question that I had once answered, so I get the notification in my email. The question was, “What makes a good PowerPoint presentation?” (Yes, pretty open ended and generic). As I read the latest answer, my fuse finally ran out. Boom.
“Six bullet points per slide. Each bullet point with no more than 6 words.”
Now, let’s get some perspective on this. In Continue reading…
By Jon, on September 22nd, 2011,  This past Monday I had the privilege of speaking at the Presentation Summit in gorgeous Austin, TX (note the view from my window in my Instagram picture on the right). It was one of the most unique experiences of my speaking career, and I’m really impressed with the embrace by such a large crowd of the pursuit of effective presentation design and delivery. But what I was most surprised (and I shouldn’t have been) was how much I learned and how far I need to go to consider myself truly an effective presenter (not just presentation designer). I just wish I could have stayed for all three days instead of just one.
The morning opened with a brief intro by conference host Rick Altman (of Better Presenting). He urged the audience, with the help of Denzel Washington’s commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania, to fail Continue reading…
|
|
