Effective use of Media in your Presention – KISS

Keep Those Slides Simple, K.I.S.S.!

The K.I.S.S principle is your best formula in creating your slides if you have to use PowerPoint. K.I.S.S is the acronym for Keep It Simple Stupid. When you’re presenting — in spite of a popular belief we can multitask — your audience is either listening to you or reading your slide. They’re not doing both at the same time. One’s visual sense is much stronger than one’s auditory sense; hence we focus on what we see and not what we hear.

BAD SLIDE

This is not a K.I.S.S. slide

Avoid the Exit Ramps

Think of your presentation as the superhighway to a specific destination. You are leading a caravan of other cars (your audience) remembering that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. You need to avoid the exit ramps.

However, on occasion to emphasize a specific point, you need to briefly take an exit ramp. The key point here is where the on-ramp to the superhighway is and how to quickly get back on it. The simpler, more focused your presentation, the more your audience will remember.

Think of a slide an exit ramp. There’s an old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. Let me emphasize “a picture” is worth a thousand words. And that picture needs to be comprehensible in three seconds.

GOOD SLIDE

K.I.S.S. Slides should be simple

That picture could be diagram, a cartoon or of a piece of art. If that picture was a billboard on the superhighway and you can read it passing it at 60 miles an hour —that’s a good slide. Focus on presenting one clear fact a time per slide.

If you need text, use as few words as possible in very large type. In many cases a simple and easy to read diagram can replace the need for lots of text.

Here are more tips on how to effectively use media in your presentation from larryblumsack.com.

Blumsack Brown BackgroundAs a coach, trainer and consultant, Larry Blumsack partners with people and organizations on the move and those already there to accelerate their communication, presentation and speaking skills to be on par with their ambition. Through one-on-one coaching and group training Larry helps leaders and aspiring leaders elevate their presence and communication skills to influence more people, sell more products-services-ideas and inspire others more successfully than they ever imagined.

Larry is the bestselling author of Face-to-Face is The Ultimate Social Media and founder of Zoka Institute and Zoka Training®. Zoka Training® — Mind/Voice/Body/Mindfulness in sync — is the result of Larry’s 45 years as a coach, acting teacher, actor, voice-over artist, theater and TV director/producer, radio & TV commentator and show host, speaker, trainer, serial entrepreneur, and syndicated columnist. Larry was a founding member of the theater department at Northeastern University.

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