Transcripts
1. Introduction: A Step-by-Step Masterclass to Sharpen Your Pitch: Hello fellow presenters. My name is Esther and I've helped create professional Powerpoints for marketing trade shows, industry events, and motivational speaking engagements. I'm here to help you create a PowerPoint that will effectively communicate your message to your intended audience. PowerPoints are a great medium to introduce information to people who are visual learners. A well produced PowerPoint combines design with written text and graphics to create visual images that can stick with your listeners long after your speech is over. Creating PowerPoints is a wedge drawn both your auditory and visual learners so that you can get your message across. In this course, we'll have seven sections to help you fully develop your PowerPoint as well as your presentation. First, we'll dive into your purpose for creating your PowerPoint. We'll also explore how your presentation can reach your intended audience and add value to their lives. Then, we'll get technical. I'm going to introduce you to Google slides and go into a basic dive of how you can utilize the free software to reach your presentation goals. We'll go into detail on how you can create an appealing design and write killer content that helps you truly engage your audience. For those of you who want to make the most of Google slides, I'll also be introducing you to some more tools the software has to offer. At the end, I'll leave you with some tips on how to present your PowerPoint in a way that puts you and your audience at ease. At the end of the class, you're goal is to create a PowerPoint and practice presenting it. Let's begin with the purpose of your PowerPoint.
2. Module 1: Defining Your Brand & Purpose: The first thing you should do when starting up your PowerPoint is to begin with a single question. Why? Why are you creating this PowerPoint? What's your purpose? Are you a student who has to create a PowerPoint for a class? Are you in sales and have to present figures to your team? Do you have a business idea that you're pushing your boss to consider? Or are you a world changer who wants to bring awareness to a cause that's dear to you? Your purpose should be the first thing you set in stone. Because once you know your goal, you get inspired. An audience can tell the difference between a passionate speaker and someone who's just trying to get the ordeal over with. Trust me, you don't want to be the speaker who gets stuck speaking in monotone. Here's the thing. If you're going to be investing all this time into creating a PowerPoint, then you should get something out of it. Knowing your purpose gives you a clearer image of your desired result or reward. So what are some ways to find out what your purposes beyond just asking why? Ask yourself the following questions. Number one, what kind of speech do I want to create? Number two, what is it about this topic that excites me? If you find that you can't answer this question, there are two possible issues. One is that you don't personally connect with the topic. The second being that you don't have enough details about the topic to get a clear image of it. In that case, connect or research. Connect by assigning a face to the topic. Research and get the details so that you understand what it is you're trying to present. Then get excited. Number three, what do I hope to gain from my presentation? Are you trying to create awareness and understanding so that your audience can help spread the word? Are you trying to get a good grade in the class? Are you trying to get approval for a project? Or are you trying to get funding or to make a sale? If so, set a number, a number of followers that you want to reach, a number of tweets that you want to get spread, a number of sales that you want to make and a grade that you want to reach. Because of researching the topic didn't get you excited enough, then picturing your reward might just do it. Before we go on to the next class, I'm going to give you a challenge. Challenge number one, write a paragraph four to five sentences describing why you're creating this PowerPoint and what you hope to achieve. Be as detailed as possible and truly feel your purpose, and imagine reaching your goal, and get excited.
3. Module 2: Defining Your Audience's Needs: With your purpose and inspiration on toe, let's reflect upon your audience. If you think that you can walk in with a speech or a pitch and instantly impress your audience, think again. Nobody wants to sit still for a lecture or invest their time just so you can make your sale. Think about it. How many times have you tuned out a professor or right-clicked on skip ad? If you aren't inherently giving your audience something of value, then they aren't going to be interested. Almost as important as your purpose for giving your speech is the audiences purpose for receiving it. In order to know your audiences purpose, you have to know who your audience is. Are they students? Workers? Teachers? Are you trying to reach a specific gender or age group? What's their income? Their occupation? Their living situation? Many times, speakers mistakenly make the speech all about them. They talk about their credentials, their products, their five-year plan, and by the time they're getting on about your thread, their audience is just thinking about which restaurant they're going to pickup dinner from. The point isn't to impress your audience, although stating your credentials is important. More importantly, you have to connect with your audience. In order to connect with them, you have to understand where they're coming from? What problems do they struggle with? What are some gaps in their resources or knowledge, and most importantly, how can you help them? Playing on an audience's needs will not only keep them engaged through your speech, it will make them more willing to consider your call to action, and help you reach your goals when you explain how your presentation can add value to their lives. I've realized I [inaudible] by way more groceries when I go to shopping on an empty stomach. So figure out what your audience's hungry for. Then figure out how your presentation can indulge their needs. Your challenge before beginning the next class is to narrow down the demographic of your audience. Write a paragraph, 4-5 sentences defining who your audience is, what do they need? What kind of problems do they struggle with, and how can you or your product help them?
4. Module 3: Google Slides Templates & Themes: Now, that you've narrowed down your purpose and your audiences needs, it's time to get technical. Let's start creating up our PowerPoint with Google Slides. Google Slides is a free web-based software offered by Google that allows you to create, edit, present, and share an almost unlimited number of PowerPoint presentations. These presentations are saved on Google's Cloud based database and are accessible anytime you log in with your account on a Mac, PC, tablet, or smartphone. However, in order to access Google Slides, you must log in with a Gmail or Google account and have a general knowledge of Google Drive. To start, slides.google.com. If you've already signed in, the first thing you'll see is a bar with the heading, start a new presentation. You can either hit the plus sign to create a blank presentation, but I'd actually recommend that you take a look at their template gallery. You can do that by clicking on template gallery here on the right, and browsing through the different types of templates. Google has these categorized under personal, work, and education. Keep in mind that after selecting the template, you'll definitely have the option to change the look of the slides, but selecting an overall template will help pull up a set of slides that can be most relevant to your purpose. Google Slides comes with an assortment of pre-designed layouts that will help your PowerPoint look fun or professional. Now, let's say I want to create a PowerPoint to explain to parents why they should encourage their children to explore their creativity by reading short stories and novellas. I'm going to go ahead and select pitch as the best suits my purpose, and look, Google's already created a set of slides that they think will be most helpful to my pitch. Don't underestimate the flexibility of this slide as slides can be easily added or deleted, and the design and content of each slide can be customized very easily. I don't really like this first design that Google's given me, but that's fine because I can pick my own. All I need to do is look over here to where I have an entire bar of themes and select the ones that I want. If none of these work for you, you can look online for other things created by other Google Slide users and import those into your presentation. You can also find free things that websites like slidescarnival.comments, and slidesgala.com. There is a monthly subscription service on elements.envato.com that provides professional great themes for a monthly fee. I'm looking at these options and I'm being drawn to this paperback design, so I'm going to select that one. With one click, you can see that all the slides in my set has started to change into my new theme. Now, of course, you must pick your template with your audience in mind. Consider what type of design they would like and what type of tone you're trying to invoke in your speech. If you're not sure what type of design you're audience would like, consider what products they would buy and what brands sell those products, then go to the websites of those brands and observe the design choices they use on their site. Although the design of your slide is not as important as the actual content of your slide, your audience is much more likely to pay attention if your presentation is pleasant for them to look at. To make the slide easier on the eyes, I recommend a darker background with a lighter text that is easy to see. Once you have an idea of what design would best connect with your audience, select it, and it's time to get started with designing your slide show. Let's go into the basics of how we can do that. You're challenged before beginning the next class is to pick your set and your theme on Google Slides.
5. Module 4: Writing Content that Connects: The content of your presentation is the most important part that should take up the majority of the time you spent on your PowerPoint. It's crucial that you write your content while you're still enthused and the topic is fresh on your mind. It's even more crucial that you go through and edit your content and have a second pair of eyes look through it as well to catch any errors you might have missed. How do you write content? Well, I usually start from the middle and work my way back. Consider what your major talking points are. What is it that you want your audience to understand? Using a bubble map or doing a free write can help you get the most of your thoughts on your paper. You have larger visual of how you can later restructure and trim those points down, spill out all the information on paper, and then narrow it down and re-structure it in the way that you feel is most effective. Create three to five speaking points to focus on in your speech and turn those into your headings. Then begin fitting in sub-points and details that can help your audience understand your main focus points. Then give it an essay or a debate in which you want to break down your position into clear points and provide enough support so that your argument appears valid. Once you've set your main points, determine your tone and consider your tools for engagement. Start trimming down your speech. Be concise and be relevant. Take all of the points that you've written down, pick the most important ones and put those in separate slides. Some speakers make the mistake of writing down their entire speech in the presentation, don't do that. People are lazy when it comes to reading. The more concise you can lay out your points, the more your audience will appreciate you. On top of being concise, make sure the information you're including is relevant to your point. Most people like to include phrases with bullet points, while other people use entire sentences. If you're creating a bulleted list, use phrases and stick to no more than four points in one slide. If you want to place focus on a quote, a slogan, or a sentence, have it as the only element on the slide. But feel free to mix up the fonts for the single elements. Having too much information on a single slide can quickly overwhelm your audience and cause them to lose attention. Nowadays, with the prevalence of YouTube and Netflix, our attention spans are decreasing and presenting the same slide over and over again might cause your audience to slip into a stupor. Make sure that you vary your content and consistently ask your audience questions that will draw them back into the speech. Once you've finished structuring your three to five main points and created sub-points and details within them. You're going to go back to the beginning and create an introduction slide. State your top three points, briefly define them and explain why knowing about these points will help your listener bring up an action that you'd like for your audience do or consider during your speech. Like a specific question to answer or a piece of information that you can creatively quiz them on later. If the environment allows. If you lay out your main points and give your audience a small assignment, they're much more likely to pay attention throughout your presentation. After finishing your introduction. Go to the end of your presentation and insert your conclusion. During this conclusion, you'll summarize your main points and call upon the audience to complete their assignment. If you're trying to make a sale or trying to get your audience to do a specific task then the ending is the time that you should include your call to action. Do you want your boss fund on your project? Do you want your listeners to spread the word about breast cancer? Ask, be direct and specific about the next step each audience members should take. After you've left the stage, all of the content you've written up to this point should lead to this moment of connection in which your audience understands why they should follow your call to action. Once you have your main talking points, consider the tone you want to set in your speech. When thinking about tone, consider how you naturally speak and determine whether or not your natural tone and patterns will work with your audience. If so, then be authentic and speak as you normally would. However, if you feel that you have to tweak your natural tone for the audience or for the environment. Consider what type of tone would be most appropriate when speaking and using tone, which ones would resonate the best with your audience? Would you use slaying, emotional language, formal business beak, practice using an engaging tone. However, I wouldn't recommend completely changing your speech patterns for your audience as a tone that doesn't sound like you. Well, it wouldn't be you and might sound unnatural. Next, let's think of a method you can use to engage your audience. Though there are many ways to catch and hold onto your audience, I'm mainly going to focus on two, story and humor. First, audiences respond to story because it teaches skills while taking pressure away from the audience. For example, from the example of the three pigs, we learned the value of quality and effort and how to build a house made of sticks. At the same time, it doesn't sound like a lecture because he attention is not on us. Rather it's on the character of the three pigs. In a similar way as a speaker, you can draw the listener and by relating experience in story form. Tell us about a character and show us what their situation is and they're setting and introduce the problem. Listeners will want to hear about how they resolve their problem. We'll give you their attention until you reveal the ending to your story, which you can withhold until the end of your PowerPoint. The key is to make sure that character is someone we can care about. Creating a cut and paste character, little Susan from kindergarten or overdramatized character, poor widow Monica with three starving children, will hurt your story. Instead, create a character that your audience can identify with. Someone who probably has similar issues or problems as they do, and someone who's well rounded, a one-dimensional character usually tends to lose your audience. Create someone who sounds like a real person. Similarly, using humor, when of course it's the right setting should do so can help you engage your audience because sometimes we only had a good laugh. Ending your sites with a punchline can keep your audience on their toes. Although it would be best not to overuse this technique if you're referring to sources in your PowerPoint or using any statistics, make sure you cite your sources in a final work cited page. This will take extra work and I recommend you visit the MLA website for more details. But citing your sources will make your information seem more reliable, which in turn makes you appear more professional, trustworthy. It can also help you avoid being cold out for incorrect information or plagiarism. Once you've finished writing your content, take a break and go for a walk. You heat a scoop of ice cream, you deserve it, then come back and start editing. Less is more. Being able to narrow down your speech and being concise with the content in your presentation is the key to getting your audience to stay up to follow along with you. Once you've edited your PowerPoint, practice with a friend, have them point out any issues they see in your PowerPoint in regards to grammar and punctuation, but also giving feedback on times when a slight looks to dull or too overwhelming. With that in mind, your challenge before beginning the next class is to write the middle content and then create an introduction and a conclusion that includes a call to action.
6. Module 5: The Basics of Google Slides: Let's spice up your slideshow with Google slides. Before we go into functions, let's explore what's on your screen. Over here, we have the menu bar and later we're going to be going into the File and Insert sections of this menu bar. Down here, we have your toolbar. Later we'll be exploring the text toolbar and the image toolbar. Over here on the left, you have your slide navigation pane, which shows all of the different slides that are part of your PowerPoints. We're going to go over some important buttons for you to know and also the speaker notes down here. Going back to your menu bar, the most important part of your menu bar is over here where you have file, which allows you to share, create a new spot slideshow, open a slideshow, import slides and make copies of your slides. You can also rename your slideshow over here or by clicking up on the top. The other button that's important in your menu bar is the insert button. This drop-down menu will let you insert images, textbox, videos and shapes, as well as comments. Next, we have your toolbar on the bottom. The toolbar changes based on what you have selected in your slide. Right now, I haven't selected anything yet, so we have our default toolbar. Our default toolbar has undo and redo. It has the option of printing and it has the option of inserting different elements into your slide. Over here you can add a comment, change the background and apply a different layout, or theme, or pick a transition. This is the main bar that you'll be using over here, which is inserting new slides, and also picking a new layout for the slide that you want to insert. Now, if I select a text in my slide, you're going to see that the toolbar changes into a text tool bar. What that means is you're going to be able to edit your text from the toolbar here, which allows you to change the fill of your border as well as the width, and type of border you have. It will allow you to change the text of the font, the size of your font. Bold, italicize underline or change the color or highlight of your font. You can also insert a link or a comment as well as create bulleted or numbered lists. You can change the spacing and alignment of your font right here. There are also other format options for your font, which we will get into later. Now, if I select an image, now that I've selected an image, the toolbar has changed so that I can create a border around my image. I can include a link that might image links too and I can also format my image or replace the image with something else. In the next video, you can watch the process of how I turn a bubble map into a slide. In that video you'll be able to watch me include text and images into a slide. Now, let's talk about the slide navigation pane on the left. What this allows me to do is duplicate slides, delete slides and change the order of slides very easily. If I wanted to create a new slide, though similar to this one, I could write quickly and click duplicate slide. Very similarly, I can also control c and control v to copy and paste this slide and duplicate it. Let's say I don't want this slide and I want to delete it. I can right-click and click delete or similarly, I can hit the delete button on my keyboard and it will also delete the slide. If I wanted this slide to be before this one, all I need to do is click on this one and drag it up to change the order. If I wanted it down here similarly, I could click it and drag it down here. Now, let's talk about speaker notes. In this box on the bottom, you can include notes for the specific slide that only you can see during your presentation. You can either type your notes, or you can go up to tools and select voice type speaker notes. That way when you're editing your slide and you're coming up with different ideas for what you want to say, you can very simply say them out loud. What books and genres did they explore? Did they ever have ideas about stories when they were younger? What stories did their parents tell them? As you can see while I was talking, the words appeared in my speaker notes. Cool tool? Now, let's talk about the important buttons here on the right. What these buttons allow you to do are to view your comment history, which is the comments that you and collaborators are making on this slide. Remember, comments are different from speaker notes. There's also the present button which allows you, if you chose to do presenter view. Presenter view means that you can view your slide, your notes, a timer and the next slide in your presentation while your audience only sees the slides on an extended screen. This is very nifty if you don't want to bring flashcards with you, or if you want to make sure that you're reaching a time limit in your speech. This button allows you to share your PowerPoint with either specific e-mail addresses or to anyone who has the link to your PowerPoint. Once you've shared with collaborators, another neat tool is you can go to file and select e-mail collaborators in case you have any notes that you wanted to make sure that everyone who's collaborating on the PowerPoint were able to receive. Let's start deeper into how you can take ideas from your bubble map or your free write and turn it into a slide. If you can recall, I was creating a PowerPoint to explain to parents that benefits that writing short stories or novels can have upon their children. I have three main points that writing stories can help their children develop emotionally, mentally, and give them decision-making skills. Those are my three main points. Each of those points had sub-points and one of those sub-points was that children can develop the emotional skill of confidence, on top of the list is how storytelling can boost confidence within children. This I want to turn into bullets. I'm going to go ahead and select them and create a bulleted list. Let's say you wanted to upload an image. On this side, I would click on this icon of a mountain, which provides me with a couple of different options of how I can import a photo. You can either upload it as a file from your computer or search the web. I'm going to search the web, and I can easily move it by clicking it and dragging it. I can also crop this photo by clicking the crop icon right here. Google sites makes it very easy to see where the main lines in your PowerPoint are. If you see a red line, that either means the midway point or the edge of the power. Once you from scrubbing your image, I'm going to go ahead and send it to the back so I cant see my text. Then start do that by selecting order and sent it back. Now, my text is not showing up very well in this photo. I'm going to go ahead and change the color by selecting the text color box, and I'm also going to select format options and add a drop shadow behind my texts so it stands out from the photo. You can mess around with these controls to make your drop shadow more pronounced or less pronounced. Because I want my emotional skills to stand up as well. I'm going to add a drop shadow to that as well. Now, you can tell that my text here is not very centered. If I wanted to center it, I can move my textbox very easily by clicking it and dragging it. If I felt that my text was too big and I wanted to change not only this text, but all of the text within my slide. I can click on a point above and draw square that selects all the elements that I want to change. Sometimes you got to select elements that you don't want to change. I don't like the size of this photo the way that it is. I'm going to de-select it by clicking control on my keyboard and holding it and clicking the photo. I've now de-selected the photo and have only the text selected. Now, I do want it smaller, so I'm going to shrink everything down a little bit and you see all the elements that I have selected, are now smaller than they were before. I'm feeling pretty good about the slide. I'm liking that it, everything looks pretty centered. There's a photo that shows the message I'm trying to convey in this slide and I don't have too many elements in my bulleted list. Remember, you want to keep your lists to maximum of four points. Because I am a bit quickier and I want to make sure my slide looks good. I'm actually going to make the font of this a little bit smaller so that my text both neatly within the line there. That looks much better. We've gone over the different options that are on your page. We've gone over how you can change aspects about your slide with the menu bar, change text or images with the toolbar. Change the order of your slides and the slides panel, and even add notes and share your PowerPoint with other people. Your challenge before we begin the next class is to take your bubble map for your free write and turn your ideas into slides. Then create an introductory slides that introduces your main focus points, as well as a conclusion slide that has a call to action and summarizes your focus points. I'll see you in the next class.
7. Module 6: Present with Confidence and Purpose: Go you, you've done it. You've decided your purpose, given a face to your audience, designed to kill our presentation, and written content that will help you connect to your listeners. You revised your presentation, and reviewed it with a friend. Before the big day, I like to leave you with some tips to solidify your confidence during your presentation. First of all, make sure you have multiple copies of your PowerPoint with you during your presentation. If your presentation location has Wi-Fi, you should be able to pull up the site show from any computer once you logged into Google. However as a precaution, download your PowerPoint as a Microsoft PowerPoint, as well as a PDF. Have at least two copies of this file with you in case of any technical issues. For your own reference, you can make flashcards to guide you along with your presentation. But make sure your flashcards have larger readable font, and keep the texts on each flash card short. Google Slides also has an amazing option that lets you present on an extended screen, while viewing your typed notes in timestamp for each slide on your own screen. Number two, consider your voice and tone. Practice enunciation and inflection. Put a hand on your belly, and make sure you're speaking from your diaphragm. Remember that enunciation doesn't mean that you're screaming, it simply means you're opening up your airways, and making the best use of your breath. One way to determine if you're projecting well enough, is to put your hands on your diaphragm, or your ribcage. If you're speaking quietly and you're only using air from your throat and you're not projecting, your not going to feel your ribcage move much. But, if you're actually using the air from your belly and enunciating, do you hear the difference? If you're enunciating, and using that breath from your belly, you'll feel your ribcage move up and down, and you'll feel the air entering and leaving your belly. Speaking clearly, and changing your inflection will help you keep your audience's attention. We all remember that monotonous teacher from Ferris Bueller, vary your tones so people would want to hear you speak. Of course, balance is important. When we get nervous, we tend to speak faster, and in a higher pitch. Practice speaking slower than you think you should, and be aware of your speed while practicing in front of others. Number three, engage with facial expressions. Just as your tone should be interesting, expression and eye contact are other ways to hook your listener. The visual learners in your audience will appreciate it if you smile intermittently, and use your eyes to vary your expression, as well as remind your audience members that you see them. Shifting your eye contact between audience members, makes it feel more like a connective dialogue, than a private monologue. If you're scared of looking people right in the eye, it could help to look at those in the back row, or to look at the wall at the spot right above your audience's heads. Of course, if you really want to be an effective speaker, it's important to keep practicing until you feel comfortable looking people in the eye. Number four, consider your posture. Relax your shoulders, keep your hands out of your pockets, and refrain from swaying back and forth. It's hard, trusts me, I get it. The old adage of picturing your audience naked, never really worked for me, and caused more nervous breakdowns than it did successful presentations. If you're feeling nervous and fidgety, here's a tip that my choir teacher always told me. He told us to move our toes. Just wiggle those little piggies as hard as you want during your presentation. Given that you're wearing close-toed shoes, nobody will be able to notice, and you can get all the fidgets out of your system by moving your toes. The most important thing, whether you're feeling nervous or not, is to breathe. Before you begin your speech, make sure you're hydrated so your voice is smooth. Yawn to lift your soft palate and open up your airways. Go ahead, try it now. Do you feel how your throat opens up? Your soft palate lifts, you get more enunciation and volume through that way. When you get on stage, find your spot in front of your audience, then take a deep breath, and then begin. It's important to give yourself that time to get oriented on stage, before diving into your speech. Number five, allow room for mistakes. Practice, but keep your expectations for yourself low once you get on stage. You're not presenting to show other people how perfect you are, you're presenting to offer your audience something useful. If you can remember this, then you'll know that you have a reason to be up there. Let your purpose drive your confidence. If you lose your footing, pretend that you're explaining a passion to a really good friend. After all, that isn't too far off from what you're actually doing. Practice your presentation several times to know where your problem areas are. But if you make a mistake during your presentation, just take a deep breath, and keep going. Your audience will be understanding if you make a mistake, but they'll also be keeping an eye out to see if you recover. Remember your purpose, and keep up your energy even if at times you make a mistake. If you're looking for inspiration, browse the assortment of speeches on TED Talks, or hit up the [inaudible] website to get more tips on how you can improve your presentation skills. Now go forth, and present. Remember you're your biggest fan, and you're also your biggest critic. As long as you know your purpose for your presentation, and act kindly to yourself, that energy will come across. Just remember, relax, breathe, and wiggle your toes. Thank you for going on this journey with me and best of luck on your speech.
8. Recap: If there's one thing that I want you to remember from this class, is this, the reason you're presenting is to help your audience. You're either trying to help them understand topic, present ideas they can utilize in their daily lives, or introduce them to a product or idea that can be a service to them. When you realize that you're actually offering ideas or service, it can help you discover your purpose, your main speaking points, and your grounding when you go up to present. On top of that, it helps the process of creating and practicing your PowerPoint become more than a task, but rather something that evolves to give you meaning. Design is important insights, because a pleasant visual keeps your audience engaged. More importantly, the actual content of your speech should present a story, one that your audience can connect with. Avoid putting too much information, more than four elements within a single slide, and be concise with your points. Your audience will appreciate you for that. Make sure you have all the materials you need when it comes time to present, and that you've practiced your speech enough times that you've realized and remember your purpose for it. When you get on stage, get settled, take a deep breath, and make sure you speak clearly and with inflection and emotion. Don't worry about making mistakes because they happens to everyone. If you feel the need to fidget, wiggle your toes. Thank you for spending the time with me and for allowing me to share my enthusiasm about PowerPoints with you. I can't wait to see your uploaded projects and to hear about your presentations. Just remember, breath, smile, and hey, we're all human. Cheers.
Esther Chen, Content Writing and Marketing
