I do my best to make this blog a resource for presenters - not pro-speakers, but real people who need to make presentations as part of their 'day job'. If there's something you really want to know about, just email me and I'll see what I can do (no promises except that I'll read your email - use simon@ and you can guess the rest of my address. :) )
Also, I have to be honest, this blog only gets updated every month or so. If you want a bit more, consider signing up for the (almost weekly) newsletter instead called "TalkTactics". You can also sign up for a bucketload of freebies too!
This month's most popular (and useful?) blog posts are:
Or scroll down if you're just browsing!
What’s BadVice? BadVice is the (usually well-meaning advice given by amateurs and WikiTrainers) when someone says they have a presentation coming up and want to know what to do. It’s the blind leading the blind. You’d not ask any old random stranger in the pub for legal advice about moving house, or about how to …
I’ve been grinning at the humour and inventiveness of some of the banners in the women’s protest marches recently. Personally I feel that a few of them go a bit too far and that the use of bad language gives people who don’t want to listen to their issues the excuse to not do so …
Who’s the Wonder Woman of presenting? Amy Cuddy. I’m bastardising her research a lot here, but the idea is that adopting certain “power poses” can greatly increase confidence and the most famous of these poses is the one typically adopted by the comic character Wonder Woman. You know the one – legs shoulder width apart, …
Read more “Is it the end for the Wonder Woman of Presenting?”
I spent very nearly two and a half decades as a university researcher. My post – in fact more or less my entire research unit, the largest social science research unit in the UK and the second most influential in the world – was funded by taking contracts to investigate specific questions. Many of these …
If I had a pound for everyone who came to me citing the VAK model, I’d be a rich man. In case you’ve managed to avoid hearing about it, the basic idea is that people have a preference for how they take in information – they’re either visual learners, auditory learners or kinaesthetic learners. If …
Look, you know it, I know it and your audience knows it… Boring presentations bore your audiences and as a result, no one takes in what you’re trying to communicate. No one acts on what you’ve said, because, frankly, no one listened. And if anyone did, they don’t care. (Admit it, you’ve probably been guilty …
Read more “How to have creative ideas for your presentations.”
What, you wanted a blog about making better presentations? Today? This close to Christmas? It would just have been full of corny jokes about presents-vs-presentations. I’ve got a better idea… Get offline. Find friends you’ve not told recently how much they matter to you, then tell them. Then find your other friends and tell …
One of my pet peeves when I’m training people in making awesome presentations is that when I ask the, they don’t know what they’re presentation is for. I get waffly answers relating to what it’s about, but that’s not the same thing at all. See this big, bad post. About a quarter of the way down …
Slides make bad handouts. We all know that (though a depressing number of presenters act as though they don’t, and still insist on giving slides as follow up material). And in any case, giving people handouts during your presentations sucks the energy out of the room in a big way, as the pieces of paper are …
Read more “Handouts and followups for your presentations. Enter Talkbook”
Leading a team or doing your own marketing? Awesome! But not having the impact on the world you think you should? Less Awesome.
StoryMaking is my new book that looks at how to tactically use stories in your presentations, your marketing and your sales. It's my usual light-weight style over heavy-weight research!
This will close in 30 seconds
The StoryMaking System is the result of reading (in mind-numbing detail) over 400 peer-reviewed research papers, dozens of books, thousands of ours of observational research and blood sweat and tears!
It's the framework for designing a presentation which gives you the fastest way to getting something is (almost) guaranteed to work. It gives your audience what they need - and only what they need - to be impacted.
The key elements are:
This will close in 20 seconds
