Welcome to the better presentations blog!
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. :) )
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This month's most popular (and useful?) blog posts are:
Or scroll down if you're just browsing!
We’re often told by experts (for which read “well-meaning friends who’ve read it somewhere online”) that we should start our presentations with a big bang to grab the audience’s attention. A powerful story is often cited as one of the best ways of doing this. Alternatives are a challenging, shocking fact or a provocative question. …
Read more “Story-telling myth-busting: the big start”
I’m constantly asked how to “make my presentations interactive” because people “need to be more engaging”. Let’s set aside the fact that you don’t need to be interactive to be engaging for a moment, and look at how to be interactive – specifically being interactive by using questions – either digitally or physically. Something to think about …
Read more “Questions and interactivity in presentations”
I recently spoke at the course creators engergize conference, hosted by Zenler giving tips on how to make your videos and presentations better for online courses. Why? Let’s face it, most of them are rubbish! 😉 In my presentation I made the observation that to make your videos really pop you should embed yourself as …
Read more “Recording yourself in a PowerPoint slide”
What should you put on your first slide? You know the one, the one that’s up there before your presentation. It might be there while your audience come in or just for a few minutes at the start of your turn, if there’s a speaker before you. Your mileage will vary of course because of …
Read more “The first slide of your presentation”
Better presentations can change your world. And props can make a presentation better! Or screw it up badly. Here’s 6 thoughts on how to use props properly in your next presentation.
Content and structure are the Cinderellas of presentations. Everyone fusses about Delivery but that’s not where the bread-and-butter of presenting happens. The real magic lies in knowing what to say and what order to say it in. So here’s a simple-but-powerful tool that’s going to make your presentation structure… well… better. It’s about a five minute …
Read more “Presentation design by using phone calls”
This is a simple blog with simple ambitions! It exists purely as a place for you, gentle reader, to get hold of all the free material I’ve created so far for the. The Reluctant Storyteller itself isn’t free, but these are the free bits. (Most of them are one-take live recordings shot during the Corona-Virus …
Read more “Reluctant storyteller resources”
It’s all about the story, we’re told. Tosh. Stories are great – fantastic even – and they’re an amazingly powerful tool in your presentation tool kit but they’re not the answer to everything. They might be the closes thing there is, but they’re not everything 😉 One of the reasons is that the people who …
Read more “reconnecting with your audience”
Credibility as a presenter comes from how much your audience like you (Warmth) and how much they trust you (Competence). You need both.