This is the last post in a 10-post series on tips for effective presentations. For an explanation as to why I’m adding this series to a data-oriented blog, see the intro to the first post in the series. To view other tips in the series, click here.

Tip No. 10: Respect the Audience

This last tip is more of a perspective than a tip.

It’s last because it’s the tip that drives the reason for paying attention to all of the other tips.

It’s last because it’s a tip that is all too often flagrantly ignored.

It’s last because it can be a little scary.

The experience that prompted me to write this series was my participation in the inaugural #ACCELERATE conference in San Francisco last fall. As it turned out, I was the last presenter of the day — one of the 5-minute Super #ACCELERATE presentations.

Here’s one way I could have viewed my presentation:

It’s only 5 minutes, so I should try to do something pretty solid, but, if it falls flat, it’s only a small fraction of the overall conference.

Here’s how I actually viewed the presentation:

 It’s 5 minutes, but it’s 5 minutes in front of of 300 people, so that’s actually 1500 minutes, or 25 hours. If I swag that the fully loaded cost of the members of the audience is, on average, $50/hour, then I need to deliver a $1,250 presentation!

Okay, so it’s a little tough to really make this math work is a 5-minute presentation, but think about a 20-minute presentation ($5,000) or a 30-minute presentation ($7,500) or an hour-long presentation ($15,000). Change the hourly cost however you see fit, but do the mental exercise to consider the opportunity cost of the presentation — the total amount that is being invested by the audience members who could be doing something else rather than listening to you present. That is the amount of value you should fully commit to delivering with your presentation.

Each member of the audience is paying to watch your presentation, regardless of whether they had to pay a monetary fee to sit through it.

They’re paying with a finite and valuable commodity: their time.

Recognize that. Respect that. Do everything you can to make it a worthwhile investment on their part.

Photo by Eric T. Peterson

This is the ninth post in a 10-post series on tips for effective presentations. For an explanation as to why I’m adding this series to a data-oriented blog, see the intro to the first post in the series. To view other tips in the series, click here.

Tip No. 9: Make it Personal, Descriptive, and Tangible

Imagine someone you know giving a presentation about how to present effectively and saying the following:

“Studies have shown that the most effective presentations incorporate personal anecdotes and are descriptive and tangible. This increases the likelihood of the audience being engaged and, thus, actually paying attention to the content being presented. You should really try to come up with things that have happened to you or that you have done and relate those to the audience so that they are more interested in you, which means they are more likely to pay attention, which means they will be more likely to retain what you have presented. You should also avoid abstract examples — abstractions are harder for the brain to process, and it’s easy for the brain’s subconscious to simply give up and zone out.”

Now, imagine someone covering the same material, but doing it as follows:

“I once had to give a presentation to 300 co-workers at my company’s annual meeting. I had five minutes to talk about measurement and analytics, which I knew was a topic that wasn’t inherently of interest to the group. This was one of a series of five back-to-back presentations in a modified Pechu Kucha format — 15 slides, with the slides auto-advancing every 20 seconds. I came up with the idea to use my 5-month, 2,100-mile backpacking trip form Georgia to Maine on the Appalachian Trail as an underlying theme to stitch together the 2 points I was trying to drive home in my 5-minute talk. It turned out to be an incredibly effective presentation, which, almost 2 years later, people still remember and reference. You see, by incorporating a personal anecdote that I could relate to the topic I was covering, I actually made the content more engaging and, thus, more memorable.”

Which of the above presentations-about-presenting do you think would be more likely to “stick”?

In their book  Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip and Dan Heath work through an acronym — S.U.C.C.E.S. — as to what it takes to effectively convey ideas. While the book goes well beyond presentations, their mnemonic nails this tip pretty well:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

Really, this tip is about concrete, credible, emotional, and stories. It’s totally, totally, totally fine to start developing your presentation using abstractions. That’s probably what you’re going to have written down when you come up with your answer to the question: “What do I want the audience to take away from my presentation?” (Tip No. 7). The trick is to identify every generality and abstraction in the flow of your presentation and try to come up with a way to make each one more tangible, either by adding in specific examples or by introducing an analogy (personal or otherwise). Not only will this make your presentation more memorable, it’s fun (and it can really help when it comes to tracking down meaningful images — Tip No. 3!).

Three examples (yeah, I damn well better include tangible examples, right?) of this tip in practice from the three guys at Web Analytics Demystified:

• Eric Peterson presents on how he works with Best Buy to re-tool their analytics program: he co-presents with Best Buy (tangible example), and he uses a “house” analogy to illustrate, with pictures of ways houses can evolve (additions) as well as be rebuilt (when needing a new foundation or entirely new floor plan)
• John Lovett talks about his history as a licensed skipper (personal anecdote) and then uses naval navigation as an analogy for developing social media metrics programs
• Adam Greco uses a chess analogy to describe some of the key aspects of implementing a successful web analytics program…and relates that his younger son beat him at the game (both a personal anecdote…and one that he then ties back to web analytics)

As with all of the other tips in this series, the key to this one is that the goal isn’t simply “entertainment,” but, rather, relating examples and anecdotes that reinforce your key message.

Picture by Steve Snodgrass (modified by me to put the circle-slashon it, and, to be
clear, it’s making a point — I actually think the original piece is pretty cool)

This is the seventh post in a 10-post series on tips for effective presentations. For an explanation as to why I’m adding this series to a data-oriented blog, see the intro to the first post in the series. To view other tips in the series, click here.

Tip No. 7: Be Memorable By Identifying the Memory

This tip is really about simplicity and clarity. Accept at the outset that only a fraction of what you present is going to be retained by the audience, so it’s much better to have a small handful of key takeaways and then spend your time reinforcing those points.

The earlier in the development of your presentation that you clearly articulate for yourself what it is you want your audience to take away, the better off the presentation will be.

This is such an easy point to skip that, well, most presenters do!

The process that is required in order for information to get from a presenter’s mouth all the way to an audience member’s long-term memory requires multiple steps:

1. The material first gets captured/absorbed by iconic memory, which has a sub-second retention time
2. If the person is “paying attention,” the information will then be transferred into short-term memory, which lasts only a few seconds, but is where it can be consciously considered
3. If the material that is in short-term memory is sufficiently repeated and reinforced by the audience member’s own cognitive processing, it will actually make it into long-term memory so that it can be recalled the next day, next week, or next month

Bringing focus to the presentation and not being overly ambitious about how much information you want to convey enables you to build a presentation that repeats and reinforces the key points sufficiently that they are more likely to make it to the long-term memory banks of your audience.

Over the past few years, almost every formal presentation I have developed has started with me jotting down in my notebook the question, “What do I want the audience to take away from the presentation?” I then take multiple stabs at answering the question clearly and succinctly in writing (often revisiting my answer over several days in brief spurts). It can be surprisingly difficult, but it’s an exercise well worth the effort!

The answer to this question becomes a recurring litmus test for everything that goes into the presentation:

• Does content that is being considered speak directly to the desired takeaways?
• If not, is the content critical supporting information for the takeaways?

I can point to cases where a picture, diagram, or point that was one of the first things I put into a slide for a presentation — and was an idea or concept that actually sparked the whole idea for the presentation — ultimately got dropped when I considered it against these questions. This can be really tough, as it can means dropping content that is clever or insightful…but that is ancillary and nonessential. Dropping this content is the right thing to do — otherwise, you risk having your audience completely miss (or fail to retain) the fundamental purpose of the presentation.

For an hour-long presentation, aiming for 2-3 key takeaways is about right. That may sound like an unduly small number, but it’s reality. Think about the last presentation you sat through and jot down the main points. How long is your list?

The more focused your presentation is, and the more clear you are on the key points that you want your audience to retain, the better your presentation will be.