Want to make sure your audience is engaged?

No, those 10-minute Q&As at the end of a presentation don’t count as adequate engagement. Let’s notch up our engagement!

In this blog post, you’ll learn about the “Choose Your Own Adventure” method for engaging our audiences during presentations.

In March 2021, I was speaking at the Nonprofit Technology Network’s conference, 21NTC, and I used this technique.

I started to write a blog post with screenshots, but I really want to show you how this works.

In this video, you’ll see:

1. A brief demo of the Choose Your Own Adventure method
2. A behind-the-scenes tour of my slides
3. A discussion of the caveats so you can decide when to use this method

Watch the Video

The Choose Your Own Adventure Method

As you saw in the video, the Choose Your Own Adventure technique puts our audience in the driver’s seat.

Here’s what the presentation looks and feels like for our audience members.

Step 1: Show the Table of Contents Slide

First, we show them a Table of Contents slide, which has an overview of all the topics we might cover.

I tell the audience that there’s tons to learn about this topic, but we’ll only have time to cover a few techniques during our short time together.

My 21NTC presentation was 60 minutes long, so we had time for 3 techniques.

Step 2: Ask Attendees to Vote for their Preferred Topics

Then, the audience members vote and help us prioritize which topic(s) we’ll cover.

For example, in my 21NTC presentation in March, I simply asked the attendees to type their votes into the chat window.

You’ll need to make some small talk while audience members are typing in their votes.

Sometimes, there might be a 15- to 30-second delay between us and the audience members. I’ve given virtual talks on a bunch of different conference platforms (Whova, etc.), and most of them have a slight delay. We’ll need to factor that in, too. More small talk.

In the video, you’ll see what I did for my 21NTC presentation. While the audience members were voting, I simply let them know that they could download an ebook to learn all 10 techniques.

Step 3: Click on their Preferred Topics on the Table of Contents Slide

Finally, the links propel us to the correct place in the presentation.

If attendees want to learn about Color Blindness, for instance, then I would click on the Color Blindness section of this slide. The links fast-forward us to that segment of slides.

For example, our Table of Contents slide might be on slide 5, and we can use the links to fast-forward to slide 50.

Step 4: Discuss that Topic & Show the Table of Contents Slide Again

At the end of the Color Blindness section, we see the Table of Contents slide again.

The presenter clicks on the second topic that the audience members wanted to talk about, and the links propel us to that segment of the presentation.

And on and on.

I often conclude with a case study. We’ll discuss the case studies and their links in a moment.

A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of My PowerPoint Slides

In the video, you’ll see exactly which buttons to click on to create a Choose Your Own Adventure presentation.

Links on the Table of Contents Slide

Here’s how you can add links to your PowerPoint slides:

1. Click on the icon or text box where you want to create a link.
2. Go to the Insert tab at the top of the screen.
3. Go to the Link button.
4. Click the down-arrow.
5. Insert a link.
6. In the pop-up window, choose Place in this Document.
7. You can scroll through your list of numbered slides and choose one.
8. Click ok.

That’s it!

When you click the icon or text box during your live presentation, the links will take you and your audience to the appropriate segment of your presentation.

Invisible Links to the Case Studies

Sometimes I end my presentations with case studies. These case studies give the attendees a chance to put their new knowledge into use.

For example, at the 21NTC conference, I prepared three case studies in advance. I had a beginner, intermediate, and advanced case study. I knew we’d only have time to cover one of the case studies.

As shown in the video, I simply added links to the case studies to the Table of Contents slide.

There are invisible rectangles on my Table of Contents slide. The top rectangle is a link to the beginner case study, the middle rectangle is a link to the intermediate case study, and the bottom rectangle is a link to the advanced case study.

Caveats

Wondering whether this technique is right for you?

Should you continue giving a “regular” linear presentation? Or should you try a “Choose Your Own Adventure” non-linear presentation??

Here are two factors to consider:

• This is an advanced technique. You need to be an expert in your topic area and have tons of presentation experience. You have to be nimble enough to speak about any of your topics in any order, and to adjust the time spent on each topic on the fly.
• This technique only works when the topics can be presented in any order. In my accessibility presentation, I could discuss topic 1, 2, and 3. Or, I could discuss 1, 3, and 2. The techniques aren’t sequential; they can truly be taught in any order. Make sure your topics can be delivered in any order, too.

Your Turn

After you try this, get in touch! Share tips of your own so we can learn from each other.

In March 2021, I was speaking with GEDIs about dataviz tricks for presentations. (The GEDI program is the Graduate Education Diversity Internship within the American Evaluation Association.)

I was scrolling through my slides, and someone asked how I created these “sections” to organize my content.

Adding sections to PowerPoint has been a gamechanger for me personally. They help me stay organized behind the scenes, which helps my audience, too. An organized presenter = an organized presentation = a happy audience that can learn from us headache-free.

Watch the 7-Minute Tutorial on Sections

I started to write a blog post with screenshots about sections… but that felt impossible. I wanted to show you how sections work, so I recorded you a tutorial.

What’s inside:

1. A demo of what sections are
2. How to add them
3. How I use them to hide topics
4. How I use them to re-order topics

What Are PowerPoint Sections?

Sections help us organize our slides into meaningful groups, categories, chunks, buckets, or chapters of a presentation.

In the video, you’ll see what they look like.

Can you spot the words above some of the slides?

Our audience won’t see the sections. They’re for us, the presenters.

How to Add Sections

It’s easy to add new sections to a presentation.

Here’s how:

• I like to be in Slide Sorter view first. (The birds-eye-view of the presentation where you can view all the miniature slides.)
• Decide which slide is going to start the new section. Click on that slide to activate it.
• Right-click and Add Section.
• In the pop-up window, give your section a name. I use names like Introduction, Case Study, Conclusion, etc.

That’s it!!!

How to Use Sections to Hide Topics

I like to keep all my slides for a given workshop within a single file.

While prepping for upcoming talks, I go through the full file – all 900+ slides! – and choose which sections I’ll talk about.

I might cover Sections A, B, and C for one group.

I might cover Sections A, D, and E for another group.

I might add Sections F, G, and H as brand new topics for another group.

(For private trainings, I review the group’s materials ahead of time and hold some planning calls to figure out which sections are going to be the best use of our time together.)

As I’m deciding which sections to include, I simply hide and unhide the slides. In the video, you’ll learn how to hide and unhide slides.

(Yes, you can hide and unhide slides without having any sections. I personally like using sections so I can think about an entire category of slides that should be shown or hidden.)

How to Use Sections to Re-Order Topics

I definitely recommend outlining your presentation in a document or spreadsheet before making all your slides.

Our outlines don’t need to be 100% finished before we make our slides. I almost always make changes along the way.

One common change is re-ordering topics. I might envision covering topics A, B, and C, in that order. But later, as I’m designing the slides, I might decide to cover topics A, C, and B.

In the video, you’ll learn how to drag and drop entire sections to re-order them.

Your Turn

Let me know how you’ve used sections to keep your content organized!

The previous post focused on divider slides. This post focuses on body slides. In particular, I’ll provide a few examples of how you can transform a list of bullet points into visuals.

Bad

While I was creating content for the Facilitate an Interpretation Meeting section of a recent presentation, I wanted to include a few frequently asked questions.

Here’s what my first draft looked like. While drafting, I was just trying to get the main ideas down. Bullet points are fine for drafts but not for final products.

Better

At the very least, we can apply bold text to make key phrases stand out.

And even better, we can storyboard the slides so that one bullet points appears at a time as you click through your slides. Your goal is for your slides to match your speaking points.

You can achieve the storyboarding appearance with your slideshow’s built-in animation features. Just use the least distracting option, like Appear, rather than having bullet points fly in and do cartwheels across the screen.

Or, you can achieve the storyboarding appearance by creating separate slides for each bullet point. This is my personal preference. I give a lot of webinars, and some webinar platforms (like ReadyTalk, among others) will wipe out animations entirely when you upload your slides into the system.

The bare minimum is to apply bold text and make one bullet point appear at a time. But I’m not suggesting you keep the bullet points at all. There’s nothing worse than watching a presentation full of bullet points! Bullet points say I cared so little about you that I made these slides on the airplane last night.

Best

Your best bet is to break up the five bullet points altogether and give each bullet point its own slide(s).

The first bullet point was “Facilitate a conversation (don’t deliver a speech).” I devoted two slides to this concept, one of a microphone (representing a formal speech) and one of a casual meeting (representing the desired tone of the meetings that I was teaching my attendees about).

My speaking points would go something like this: “When you’re running these interpretation meetings, don’t deliver a speech. You’re not standing at a podium behind a fancy microphone. You’re not going to say, ‘Hey, welcome to the presentation. I already analyzed the data and want to share the key findings with you. I’ll take questions at the end.’ That’s too formal.”

Then, I would click to the next slide, and say, “Instead, you’re going to facilitate a conversation. You’re going to welcome everyone to the meeting and say, ‘I started analyzing the data, but I need your input. I need you to help me make sense of the numbers. Let’s talk about the data together.’ You’re going to ask open-ended questions and keep the meeting casual and conversational.”

I would spend approximately 20 seconds on each of these slides. The slideshow is informative yet fast-paced.

The second bullet point was “How many people? 5-10 attendees.” I devoted two more slides to this concept, one of a small two-person conversation and one of a larger room with lots of chairs.

My speaking points would go something like this: “How many people should attend the interpretation meeting? Two people is too few. You need more voices in the room.”

Then, I would click to the next slide, and say, “But on the other hand, this would be too many people. I suggest having 5 to 10 people at your meeting.”

I would spend approximately 10 seconds on each of these slides.

The third bullet point was “Who should attend? Staff at every level.” I selected a screenshot of an organizational chart, and added super-fancy text boxes and arrows to drive home the point that multiple voices and perspectives should be included.

The fourth bullet point was “How long? 1.5 – 3 hours.” Again, I got super fancy here, and selected a picture of a clock.

The final bullet point was “How often? After each data collection event.” Yet another super fancy approach: a picture of a calendar. Don’t think too hard. Even the simplest, most straightforward photographs will be more engaging and memorable than a bullet point.

I transformed a single slide into seven slides. My speaking points would be identical in both cases. My pace would be identical in both cases. I’m not talking any faster just because I have more slides. I don’t have to rush. Only the visuals would change. Adding more slides doesn’t make my presentation any longer. But adding more slides makes my presentation infinitely more engaging.

There are a million places to find good photos, but my favorite is Pexels.

Bonus: Download the Materials

Want to explore how I made the slides? Download my slides for free. I’m using custom colors and fonts, so when you open the file on your own computer, the colors and fonts will look a little different than mine.

Download the Slides ($0)

Later, someone asks what you learned from the presentation. You remember some details here and there, but the big-picture concepts may not have clicked. As the presenter, I want my audience to leave with details and big-picture concepts. I need to give them a clear structure to follow and then nest those details within the bigger structure.

In this post, I’m going to share tips for visually structuring your presentation around a few key points.

Select Your Main Points and Introduce Them Early

This was one of the first slides from a recent presentation about data placemats. Veena Pankaj and I wrote an article about this process a couple years ago, so if you want to nerd-out, you can read more here.

My speaking points went like this: “I’m going to teach you a three-step process. Here’s what the process looks like at a glance. First, you analyze the data and design placemats. Second, you facilitate an interpretation meeting with a few key stakeholders. And finally, you go back to your office and use stakeholder feedback to produce the final deliverable, like a report or slideshow.

Next, we’ll go through each of these steps in more detail.”

Regardless of the length of your presentation, I suggest choosing three to five key points. Choose three to five points for a one-hour webinar, three to five points for a half-day workshop, and three to five points for a full-day workshop. You can certainly elaborate within each of those key points.

Design One Divider Slide Per Topic

Next, make a divider slide for each of your key points. In this presentation, I made one divider slide for each of the three steps that I was teaching about: Analyze Data and Design Placemats, Facilitate an Interpretation Meeting, and Produce the Final Report or Slideshow.

Repeat the same wording, color, and icon from your earlier intro slide. Consistency is key. You’re trying to take a huge amount of information and chunk it into a few main topics. Consistency will help you get there.

I suggest using a solid background color so that the divider slides stand out. Every time your audience sees a solid color slide, they’ll know that a new topic is beginning.

In addition to this visual cue, your voice can and should also provide an auditory cue. You might say something like, “Now, let’s dive into this first step, which is to analyze data and design placemats.”

Design Body Slides

Make plenty of body slides within each chapter. You might need 5, 10, or 20 body slides depending on your presentation’s length, audience, purpose, etc. Don’t shy away from having a large number of slides! In a typical 60-minute webinar, I might have 60 slides. In a half-day or full-day workshop, I often have hundreds of slides. I break up the content into tiny slices and place one slice of information on each slide. Below, I advise you to have “a” single graph, photo, diagram, or quote per slide (not multiple graphs, photos, etc. per slide).

Repeat the same color from your divider slide. For example, the Analyze Data and Design Placemats chapter was blue, so each of the body slides in this chapter will have blue headings and blue footers.

Continue Designing the Additional Divider Slides and Body Slides

Repeat the same wording, color, and icons. Your voice will tell the audience that a new topic is beginning. The new colors will also provide a visual cue that a new topic is beginning.

Sit Back and Admire Your Clear, Effective Slideshow

Icons can make our work more memorable. Colors can signal that a new topic is beginning. Put them together, and you’ve got a memorable, easy-to-follow presentation (that looks great, too).

Bonus: Download the Materials

Want to explore how I made the divider slides? Download my slides for free. I’m using custom colors and fonts, so when you open the file on your own computer, the colors and fonts will look a little different than mine.

Download the Slides ($0)

Friends! #VisualsAreMagic for effective research communication.

I’m not exaggerating. A great visual with a teeny tiny bit of text (as in, like, up to 5 words) will make your point better than a slide full of bullet points ever will.

There is nothing else that maximizes efficiency & effectiveness that well when it comes to getting your audience to pay attention, understand, remember, and use the information you share with them. Plus, it’s part of being an effective research communicator, which is good for your career.

My passion for the last 10 years has been about engaging, visual presentations. I’ve tested many different strategies, constantly tweaked my process, and read research articles/books (with lessons from the fields of cognitive science, graphic design, information design, psychology, and others).

Let me save you the trouble of spending all that time and energy, and share the basics of what you need to know.

#1. Using Good Visuals Saves You Time

I know you’ve heard it before: A picture speaks 1,000 words.

Most of the time people say it to remind us that pictures help other people understand something quickly, at-a-glance. And, that’s true (and is the basis of reasons 2-4)

But let’s flip that around and think about what that means for the presentation creator (i.e., us).

Which sounds more time intensive: Dragging/dropping a picture -OR- typing out 1,000 words? Even compared to typing out 50 or 100 words, it’s easy to see that adding a picture saves you time compared to writing out a bunch of text.

And I can speak from experience. Once I created a good workflow and my own visual database, I’ve been able to take all the text/bullets from my presentation and turn it into to stunning visuals in minutes.

Seriously. MINUTES.

If you’re feeling like you already spend a lot of time on your presentations and you don’t believe that it could take less time, then it might be worth seeing if you’re spending time on ineffective strategies.

#2. Visuals Help You Catch and Hold Your Audience’s Attention

It is soooo hard to get people’s attention these days. Just about everyone has a computer in their pocket or a tablet/laptop in their bag. With this escape at their fingertips, the second they’re bored, they’re going to do something else.

And the quickest way to make your audience bored? Throw a wall of text/bullet points up on the screen.

Hard truth time: While you may be tempted to give up and shout that you’re fighting a losing battle, that’s just the easy way out. It’s easy to blame others for why we feel we made less of an impact than we wanted (deficit model, anyone?)

It’s ultimately our responsibility to keep our audience engaged. Or, at least, do everything you can to keep them engaged. *Yes, ok, in the case of a required course you may have some students who really just don’t want to be there and nothing will work. But you can’t control that, and should still try to make your lectures as engaging as possible for other students.

What are things you can do to keep them engaged? Yup, visuals.

Our human brains prefer visuals over text, so use that to your advantage, and get a head start! Your audience will be more likely to look at your slide if you have a good visual on it than if you have text. And that’s step 1. If you struggle to get people to look at your slides, you’ll have a hard time getting them to understand and remember what you said.

#3. Visuals Help Your Audience Quickly Understand Your Material

If you ever find yourself saying, “I’m not going to read the slides to you…” then chances are you’ve just set your audience up for failure.

We already know that our brains process visuals much quicker than text. But, there is still a lot going on in our brains that can bog down our working memory. Our working memory is that space where we’re processing, thinking, and trying to fit that new bit of info into its new “home” in our brains.

It’s really easy for us to get overwhelmed in this space. Especially if there are distractions, we’re tired, or get confused. The quickest way to make your audience overwhelmed and confused? Speaking while you have a lot of text on your slides.

This is especially confusing when people say things that are different than what’s on the slide.  Think about what that means for your audience. I mean really think:

• There you are with a bunch of text on the slides…but
• You just told your audience that you aren’t going to read the text…so
• That means they now have to read the slides,
• AND try to pay attention to what you’re saying, which is different than what’s on the slides,
• AND try to take notes or process the material enough so it can transition into long-term memory.

Friends, that’s almost impossible to do.

Remember: It’s your job to help your audience process information, on the spot, easily and quickly. That’s why using visuals is probably the most helpful thing you can do for your audience, and for you. Using more visuals is a win-win, because it also sets YOU up for success as an effective communicator. The more you use (good) visuals, the less likely you’ll find yourself doing what I just described.

#4. Visuals Help Push New Information into Long-Term Memory

This one is closely tied to #3 (working memory), so I’m not really going to go into much detail.

Research shows that the combination of a great visual + a teeny tiny bit of text (around 5 words) increases the chances of information making it to long-term memory.

Text/bullet points are pretty bad at this task.

So, again, you increase the chance of your audience’s success by using great visuals and limited text.

#5. Visuals Are More Likely (than Bullet Points) to Resonate with and Inspire People to Act

I am most interested in research/evaluation/teaching that has a goal to increase social equity. I want my work to contribute to positive social change, and I like to work with people who share that same value.

For those of us who care about such things, we care deeply that our work has a positive impact and inspires people to act. Building on what we’ve already talked about, chances are you’re giving a presentation for a reason. Hopefully, that reason is you want your audience to use the information for some type of positive social change.

So, let me ask you this. How will your presentation inspire people to act if they:

• didn’t even pay attention?
• were confused by what you said?
• misunderstood what you said?
• forget the info a week later?
• didn’t enjoy the experience and were bored and uninspired?
• You already know the answer: It won’t.

But great visuals? Great visuals have the power not only to meet all the goals we’ve already talked about (getting people to pay attention, understand, and remember), but they have the power to move people.

Watch a few TED talks and you’ll see what I mean. Most TED talks are brief, superficial, and lack substance. BUT… the visuals and passion coming from the speakers will move and inspire in ways you probably didn’t expect. Hans Rosling has some great dataviz ones, so I’d recommend to watch his first.

#6. Using Good Visuals Makes You an Effective Communicator, Which is Good For Your Career

While right now the tenure system doesn’t specifically value effective research communication, there is a push to change that culture. If you’re paying attention, you’ll easily see the momentum forming in the natural, physical, and social sciences for researchers to do better at research communication.

Researchers, academics, scientists, and evaluators are on Twitter (including me: @echoechoR) and have blogs where they talk about their work. Our goal is to be better communicators and help make research more accessible to a broader audience.

That’s why I encourage everyone to jump on board and join this growing movement of effective science communicators (#scicomm).

But even before that cultural shift happens, if you communicate research effectively (which includes using good visuals), then any or all of these could happen:

• You will become a more effective speaker
• You will have more time to spend on your writing or research, while also increasing the quality of your presentations
• Your presentations will be more memorable
• Your students or audience will have a better understanding of your material
• You will spend less time answering basic questions, and more time having thoughtful discussions
• Your audience will have a positive experience with your presentation
• You will come across as more approachable/accessible to your audience

I’m not just guessing at these, either. I have personally experienced these benefits as a direct result of using high quality visuals in my presentations. That’s because using quality visuals does more for you than just “prettying up” your slides. But alas, that is perhaps a post for another day!

So… Should You Use Visuals?

The answer is Yes.

For more tips on how to create better presentations, check out my FREE starter kit. My starter kit comes with information design strategies, a workflow checklist, a ppt file to help you create your own slide design, and a storyboarding worksheet.

Learn More from Dr. Echo Rivera

Connect with Echo:

Twitter: @echoechoR
Website: echorivera.com
YouTube: Channel Link

To learn even more from Echo, check out her free starter kit:

Back in 2014, I tweeted this image of Johanna Morariu and I getting ready to give a webinar. I jokingly referred to our conference room’s careful setup as our Webinar Command Center.

Welcome to our webinar command center! Logic model training w/ @j_morariu & @GrantStation in T minus 2 minutes. pic.twitter.com/KDcMUZ78bN
— Ann K. Emery (@AnnKEmery) February 26, 2014

A bunch of people have asked how we set up our Webinar Command Center.

Here’s how to structure your physical space to ensure that your mind is free to give the best webinar possible.

Three Laptops

Yes. Three. Each laptop serves a unique purpose.

Laptop #1

Laptop #1 is for viewing your slides and speaking points through PowerPoint’s presentation mode. We make the images really small and make our speaking points really large.

Laptop #2

Laptop #2 is the “live” webinar laptop, which is registered for the webinar in the Presenter role. This laptop gets a special treat, the blue ethernet cord, to ensure the fastest connection possible. In a two-presenter setting, we assign one person to advance the slides and another person to monitor the chat box. In a one-presenter setting, I advance the slides and stop at regular intervals (every 10 minutes or so) to monitor the chat box and address questions that are coming in.

Laptop #3

This is the secret sauce!

Laptop #3 is registered for the webinar in a Participant role. We “watch” the webinar from the participant’s point of view from the corner of our eyes. We’re constantly glancing at this screen to check for technological glitches (blank screens, frozen screens) and slow slide transitions (fluctuating internet connection speeds). Sometimes we notice lag times of 2-3 seconds between slides, so we stop and take a breath as we’re waiting for the new slide to load on Laptop #3.

If your organization is hosting its own webinar, it’s easy to register yourself as a participant with a fake name. If another organization is hosting the webinar (i.e., you’re a guest speaker on a webinar that someone else has set up), just ask the host to set up a fake participant registration for you. It’s easy for the organizer to set up, and guarantees a higher-quality webinar for everyone.

Notepad

Physical notepads are critical for two-presenter webinars.

Since you’ll often be on camera, you can’t just whisper to each other.

And you’ll have several laptops already, so it’s hard to type notes to each other without getting distracted by what’s on screen. And nobody wants to hear your click click click typing noise as they’re trying to deliver or listen to a webinar.

That’s where physical notepads come in and save the day!

Here’s the notepad that Johanna and I used during a recent webinar.

We troubleshoot about pacing, timing, technological glitches, and questions that come in through the chat box. As you can see, most of our notes are related to pacing: encouraging each other to speed up during boring sections or slow down when the slides are advancing slower than normal.

Notepads are also crucial when you’re presenting solo: to jot down participant questions that you need to remember to address later in the webinar (“during Q&A – elaborate on Maria’s question re: strategies for using data for org learning”) and to reflect on what you’ll need to adjust for future webinars (“this section moved too slow; need to cut down content”).

Pacing Schedule

Our pacing schedule, written on large paper, is the secret weapon in our webinar success. You can see it in the background of the image I tweeted.

I’ve given at least a hundred live webinars over the past few years, and I still create pacing schedules for every single one. Here’s how I create the schedule.

First, Make a Broad Outline of the Webinar’s Content

In the weeks or months leading up to the webinar, outline your content. I just use Google docs so that I can add ideas from work, from home, or from my cell phone as I’m riding the train into work (via the Google Drive app).

Think about the big buckets of content. What are the three, four, or five major sections that you’ll include in the webinar?

Second, Decide How Long Each Webinar Segment Should Last

A major step in outlining is to allocate time to each section.

I ask myself, “How much time does this particular story, example, or resource really deserve? 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes?”

I practice explaining the content aloud and time myself with my cell phone’s stopwatch feature. I need to know exactly how long each story takes so that I don’t overemphasize boring sections or under-emphasize the most useful sections. By the time I give a webinar, I’ve practiced each section 3-5 times (or, sometimes 10, if my initial time estimates were way off).

And of course you’ll want to allocate time for participant activities and questions, but that’s a different post.

Notice how the introduction only gets 5 minutes, max. The most boring part of your webinar is the background information about you and your organization.

Give people the meat of the presentation (the information they paid to learn) as soon as possible, or you’ll lose your audience (and get awful survey ratings). In our 2014 webinar, we knew we would purposefully begin the webinar 1-2 minutes late. Then, the hosting organization would welcome the participants and introduce their own organization. Once the webinar was handed off to us, we still needed to introduce our organization… and ourselves… and the agenda… and the learning objectives for the webinar. We spent those 90 seconds very carefully.

Third, Design Your Webinar Slides

When your outline and time allocations are 90 percent finished, then you can start working on your slides.

One of the biggest mistakes I see from presentation novices is that they design their slides too early in the process.

The most beautiful slides in the world won’t make up for poorly-planned content.

I’ve shared slides design tips in a few different blog posts. Here are a few of my favorite slide design tips.

Introduce Your Main Points Early

This was one of the first slides from a recent presentation about data placemats. Veena Pankaj and I wrote an article about this process a couple years ago, so if you want to nerd-out, you can read more here.

My speaking points went like this: “I’m going to teach you a three-step process. Here’s what the process looks like at a glance. First, you analyze the data and design placemats. Second, you facilitate an interpretation meeting with a few key stakeholders. And finally, you go back to your office and use stakeholder feedback to produce the final deliverable, like a report or slideshow.”

Make a Divider Slide for Each Section

Next, make one divider slide per main topic. In this presentation, I made one divider slide for each of the three steps that I was teaching about: Analyze Data and Design Placemats, Facilitate an Interpretation Meeting, and Produce the Final Report or Slideshow.

Design Your Body Slides

You might need 5, 10, or 20 body slides depending on your presentation’s length, audience, purpose, etc. Don’t shy away from having a large number of slides! In a typical 60-minute webinar, I might have 60 slides. In a half-day or full-day workshop, I often have hundreds of slides. I break up the content into tiny slices and place one slice of information on each slide. Below, I advise you to have “a” graph, photo, diagram, or quote per slide (not multiple graphs, photos, etc. per slide).

Alternate Your Colors by Section

This is a great way to help your webinar attendees follow along with your key points. You simply introduce the ~three topics early… and then choose a different color for each of those topics (blue, green, and fuschia)… and then make the headers and footers of each slide in a different color.

Stop Using Bullet Points Altogether

And when it comes to designing the individual body slides…

That advice about “only using three bullet points per slide” is outdated. I suggest using zero bullet points! See how I transform bullet points into visuals in this blog post.

You can replace your bullet points with graphs or with photographs. See how I selected photographs to match my speaking points in this blog post.

Fourth, Write Your Detailed Webinar Schedule on Large Paper

Okay, back to tips about the webinar’s physical set-up.

On the day of the webinar, write your final pacing schedule on large paper.

We star the sections that are most important (in this example, the logic model components and the awesome FAQs, which went into advanced-level logic model details). This is where we pause frequently to address questions coming in through the chat box, elaborate on our stories and examples, and go off-script to make the tone more conversational and interesting to listen to. These starred sections contain valuable takeaway lessons and can’t be rushed. In contrast, we also remind ourselves when to rush through less-crucial information with notes on our pacing schedule like “hurry here!” During these sections, we rarely stop to address chat box questions in the moment, although we certainly answer these questions at the end when we have extra time.

Then, tape the pacing schedule somewhere extremely visible.

We often tape the schedule onto the window that’s directly across from our chairs so that we can glance up every few minutes and make sure we’re on track. Why large paper? 8.5 x 11 papers will get lost in the clutter on your table, no matter how clean your desk is.

Additional Tools

Here are some additional objects that I have handy during webinars.

Landline Phone

Notice how the phone is located between the two presenters’ chairs so that it picks up both voices equally.

Smart Phone

As a backup for the occasional landline fail.

Water

Filled only halfway. Otherwise I get nervous and gulp it down.

Everyone who’s co-presented conference presentations or webinars with me knows that I get ridiculously thirsty after speaking for 60 or 90 minutes straight. Give yourself just enough water to soothe your dry throat, but not so much that you mindlessly drink more than you need. (You can’t run to the bathroom in the middle of your own webinar.)

Avoid coffee! The best way to sabotage yourself is to throw unnecessary caffeine on your adrenaline rush and nerves.

Chapstick

For the dry lips. My throat and lips get so dry after talking nonstop for the duration of a webinar.

Printed Slides

In case Laptop #1 explodes.

What’s Not in the Room

Garr Reynolds discusses how we need to be fully present when speaking with our audience.

Remove all the clutter from your desk–your purse, wallet, extra notepads, project work, etc.

Better yet, lead your webinar from an empty conference room.

A simple, well-designed physical space will give you the mental space to focus all your energy and attention on your audience.

Additional Webinar Workspaces Submitted by Readers Like You

Karen Matthes from the University of Minnesota Extension writes, “Ann, I love the photo of your webinar setup! It is much cleaner than mine but here is a photo of my command center that I’ve shared in my ‘Intro to WebEx’ training workshops. I use this slide to stress the importance of being prepared during a webinar. Having a second monitor is really helpful. I use our conference room computer as my second monitor.”

Do you notice some of the same objects? Karen also uses two screens, a laptop plus a second monitor that’s mounted on the wall. She’s got her laptop connected to the magical blue ethernet cord. She’s got her beverages of choice ready to go. And her cell phone for back-up audio. And her notepad. And her printed presentation materials. And you’ve gotta love IT Goldy, presumably there for moral support. Everything on her desk serves a purpose. Great work, Karen!