Endless slides during an online presentation are agony. Suffocating. Mind-numbing. Torture.

"Death by PowerPoint" is real. As a speaker, if your online presentations consist of slide after slide full of text and endless bulletpoints, you are killing your audience.

Death by PowerPoint, people.

Slides were created to enhance your presentation. They were not created to be the presentation.

Keep the focus on you... the speaker. Keep your presentation personal and human. Audiences need that human touch, especially right now.

The goal of your online presentation should be to connect with your audience. You won't accomplish that if you're hiding behind slides.

Do your audience a favor, and lighten up on the slides. Use them sparingly and properly by following the guidelines below.

Guidelines for proper utilization of slides in an online presentation:

1. Don't use slides as your notes. If you're relying on the slides for your presentation, you're using the slides wrong. Your tech could fail, leaving you with no notes, but reading notes off a slide is also boring. Your audience deserves better.

2. Keep slides simple and visually appealing. That means go light on text and go heavy on images. It's impossible for your audience to read and listen at the same time. Don't force them to read slides when they should be listening to you. If you do use text, make it huge and use an easy-to-read font. Overall, images are better (if necessary).

3. Charts and graphs, when large and simplistic, display nicely on slides. That's an appropriate use of slides because it's a visual illustration your audience will appreciate (as long as you don't cram too much information or text in).

4. Information you're tempted to put on a slide would make a better worksheet or handout. Read that again.

5. Every moment does not need a slide. Seriously. Your online audience wants to see you and interact with you. When deciding whether to use a slide, ask yourself this question: Does this slide say it better than I can? If so, use the slide. If not, don't. A handful of carefully crafted slides during a presentation beats a thousand wordy slides any day. Ask yourself why you're really using so many slides.

Examples of slides:

See the difference? The second example is preferable. And even the second example is NOT necessary unless the image is necessary. Don't include slides just to have slides. Each slide must have a distinct purpose. Each one must be vital to your talk. Otherwise, just don't.

With online presentations on the rise, and Zoom fatigue also on the rise, we need to do our best as speakers. Inspire your audience with your words, interact with audience members, and allow your message to be enough. Utilize slides only when necessary, following the guidelines above, and your online presentations will be successful.

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When I work with a public speaking client, the first thing we talk about is their intended audience. We need to know who exactly they're talking to before we plan what to say.

The next thing we do is get to the point. This means we determine what their takeaway is. Yes, we know their topic, but a takeaway goes further. A takeaway answers this question:

Five years from now, what is the one thing you want this audience to remember from your speech?

The answer to that question is the point of the speech. It's the takeaway. It's the one thing we build their presentation around.

Most speeches are 40-60 minutes. As a speaker, you can only share a certain amount of information in that timeframe effectively. You cannot tell the audience every single thing you know about your topic. You wouldn't be able to cram your lifetime of knowledge into that 40-60 minutes, and the audience wouldn't want you to.

Instead, determine your takeaway based on your overall topic. Ask yourself what one thing from your speech you want your audience to remember five years from now, and that's your takeaway. That's the whole point of your speech.

Your overall topic may be "Instagram," but your takeaway may be "Instagram Stories are easily utilized to build the know-like-trust factor with your customers."

See the difference?

Once you know your takeaway, write it down as a statement. Print it at the top of your paper when you begin brainstorming ideas for the content of your speech. For each point you think should be included in the speech, ask yourself if it supports your overall takeaway. It it does, keep it. If it doesn't it, save it for a future speech or dump it altogether.

Less is more in public speaking. Keep your speech simple by making a point-- one point-- and delivering content that supports it.

We talk about this and other public speaking topics in our Speaking Society. Click here to join our community that accelerates your communication, connection, and confidence!

You don't need to be in-person to host a workshop. You also don't need to be a professional speaker or presenter. 

All you need is a skill that others want to learn about.

That thing people are always asking you for advice about is the thing you can teach in an online workshop.

Maybe it's baking beautiful bread. Maybe it's knitting a special scarf. Maybe it's designing a website's landing page. Maybe it's tying fly-fishing knots. Maybe it's planning out a year of social media marketing.

Whatever skill you have can be successfully turned into an online workshop, and there's no better time. You don't have to leave home. Heck, you don't even have to put on pants.

Online workshops are the perfect choice because they:

• don’t take much planning

• are easy to do

• showcase your expertise

• build relationships

• teach something

• can grow your audience (email list or social media following)

• can generate income

Convinced? Awesome.

Now you need to plan your online workshop. Here's how:

1. Decide what your goals are. Are you trying to reach more people with a free online workshop? Are you trying to make money with an online workshop you charge for? Are you just doing it for fun? What do you want your participants to learn from you? Take time to determine your overall goals.

2. Decide on a topic. The easiest way to choose a topic is to think about this question: What do people ask your advice about most often? The questions you answer for people most often make excellent workshop topics.

3. Create an outline. Include your intro, bulletpoints, a conclusion, and a call to action. An outline will keep you on track during your online workshop. 

4. Plan whether you'll include screen shares, demonstrations, or just you talking. There are so many options, so figure out which ones will work best for what you're teaching.

5. Create handouts and worksheets, if applicable. These can be made available before the workshop for participants to work through with you, or after the workshop for additional assistance. Checklists and templates are valuable for online workshops.

6. Create an up-sell offer, if applicable. If you are using an online workshop as an opt-in or introductory offer, you may wish to design a relevant offer to sell to your participants. Think this through before your workshop so you are ready to sell it during the workshop.

7. Create and schedule follow-up emails. Provide a way for your participants to learn more and continue to connect with you. 

8. Practice on Zoom or whichever software platform you choose to use. Familiarize yourself with how it works and all the options. If you've never used it before, enlist a friend or family member to do a practice run-through with you.

Now that you see how easy it is to create an online workshop, get to work on yours. You can take anything you know and teach it in an online workshop either for free or to make money. This is the perfect time to host online workshops, so don't wait another minute... start planning yours now!

We created an online workshops checklist to walk you through the entire process, start to finish, so you don't miss an important step. It's available as an exclusive resource for our Speaking Society members. You're invited to become a member and get your own copy of that checklist here.

Slides during a speech are a huge pet peeve of mine. They are almost always misused, unneeded, and/or distracting. Slides should be used to enhance the message of the speech, but they are usually just a crutch for the speaker.

Before using a slide, ask yourself this question:

Does this slide tell my message better than I can?

If it does, use the slide. If it doesn't, get rid of the slide. It's as simple as that. Every single slide should make the speech better in some way. If it doesn't, it should be eliminated.

Slides should not be used as notes for the speaker. That's a crutch, and those slides don't add anything useful to the speech. Tech glitches occasionally occur, and if you're relying on those slides to get you through your speech you will be up a creek without a paddle.

Slides should not be full of text, especially in tiny font. That's annoying and unnecessary. Your audience should not spend all their time reading while you're talking. When slides become overwhelming, and when there are far too many, that's called Death By PowerPoint. Don't do that.

The focus, as a speaker, should be you and your message.

The focus should not be the slides.

If you must use slides, be sure to ask yourself the question above. If you determine you need slides, follow these guidelines:

1. Less is more. Keep slides to a minimum. Every moment of your speech does not need its own slide. Allow your audience to determine what's important from your speech and take their own notes without the distraction of endless slides.

2. Consider hand-outs as an alternative. If you have a lot of worksheet-style content that you're tempted to put on slides, hand-outs may be a better option. You can give them out after your talk, which allows your audience to simply listen and learn while you're talking. Audience members can review your information later.

3. Bigger is better. If you must use text, make it super huge. Everyone in the room needs to see it. Use few words in large font. Don't clog up your slides with book-length paragraphs in tiny font.

4. Tell a story. Use your slides to help illustrate your message. Images are preferable to text. Use meaningful images rather than stock photos. If an image doesn't have special meaning, don't use it.

5. Stay on target. Only use slides that don't distract from you and your message. If your audience is looking up at the screen behind you more than they're looking at you, that's a problem. 

The best slides I've ever seen showed important statistics in a huge graph for effect, screenshots that illustrate how to implement what's being taught, or personal photos of the speaker's topic. They told the message better than the speakers could, so they made sense and actually enhanced the speeches. Use your slides in similar ways, and your speeches will be powerful and make an impact as well.

Need to improve your speech or stage presence? Click here to schedule a call with Carrie to learn more about how she can help you achieve your goals!

If you agree to speak at a conference, you're not a speaker. You're a server.

There's a huge difference. 

If you're speaking in an attempt to get your name in lights, demand authority, or gain popularity, your heart is in the wrong place. And your audience will see right through you.

Your audience can sense your motives. They'll know if you're there for them, or if you're there for you.

Arrive early, and stay late when you can. Mingle and get to know people. Invest your time and talents. Help people feel welcome and comfortable. Ask them questions, and get to know them. Go above and beyond.

For real. Not just to sell them something.

Speaking is a privilege and should be treated as such. It shouldn't matter whether you get keynote designation, or if you're leading a small breakout. Either way, your job is to make a difference. Your job is to teach something. Your job is to inspire others to implement what you've taught.

Your audience should leave the room better than they were when they arrived.

Take the focus off of you and put it on your audience. Get to know them. Find out their fears, dreams, and goals. Find out what holds them back. Research and prepare weeks in advance. Give them your absolute best.

It's not about you. It's about them.

Every single time.

A spotlight is not the goal. Improving the lives of your audience is.

Serve your audience.

Are you working on a speech? Need some help? Click here to talk about all the ways I can help!

So, you have to give a speech or presentation. Most people will have to give one at some point.

Just the thought of that can bring on serious bouts of anxiety for most people. 

What will I say?

Do I need Power Point slides?

Will I stay within my time limit?

How do I even begin?

Those are all great questions. We'll deal with the others in later articles, but in this article we'll stick with how to start. Starting properly will reduce the amount of anxiety involved and get the speech headed in the right direction right off the bat.

When I need to write a speech, I start with a topic sentence. The first thing I do is write out one sentence that very clearly states my topic. It might include what I want the audience to learn through my speech. For example, a topic sentence I wrote for a recent speech was, "You can trust God with your children." Obviously, my talk was written for a church setting. Your audience may be different, but the point is to write your topic sentence first. Once it is written you will be able to weed out ideas later if they do not support your topic.

Next comes the brainstorming process. I call it a "brain dump." For this brain dump, I write out my topic sentence in big letters across the top of a sheet of paper. Then I set a timer for 20 minutes and write down all the ideas, stories, and facts I can think of that will support my topic sentence. I write down everything that pops into my mind for the full 20 minutes. The ideas don't necessarily need to be clear or worded properly at this point. The goal is simply to write down every idea or fact that I might possibly want to include in my speech. This brain dump may need to be repeated 3-5 times over the course of a few days in order to get all the ideas onto paper.

Then I look over all the ideas from my brain dumps. Any idea, story, or fact that does not relate to my topic sentence gets the ax at this point. Those unnecessary items might be saved for a future or separate talk, but they are taken out of the current one. This is the time to weed out anything that will not support my topic sentence.

The remaining items then need to be organized into a workable order. This might mean that they need to be listed in chronological order or some other meaningful order. Usually I simply go back through the list and number them. Keep in mind that any of this can be changed later.

Once I have a rough idea where I am going with all of these ideas, I write my opening statement. This might be a paragraph or two. The opening should be strong and should let the audience know the topic or where the speech is going. I'm not saying that I state my topic sentence verbatim (that would probably be boring), but l do make sure the audience is told where we are headed.

After my opening statement is finished, I like to write my closing remarks. Again, this might be a paragraph or two. The closing should be strong and have a definitive end. No audience wants to listen to a speaker drone on and on or go off on tangents, so I keep my closing concise. I like to end with one memorable statement.

Once the opening and closing are written, it is time to outline all the ideas from my brain dumps. This outline becomes the "map" for my speech. It doesn't need to be too detailed at this point. Also, keep in mind that anything can be changed later on as the process progresses. I inevitably reword my opening and closing statements and also my outline as I work on my talk and practice it.

Visually, this is the outline I create to start working on a speech:

• Opening Statement
• Brain Dump detail #1
• Brain Dump detail #2
• Brain Dump detail #3
• **Continue with as many Brain Dump details as are appropriate for the speech and time limit**
• Closing Remarks and Statement

This brain dump and outlining process can work for a variety of speech or presentation types. Brain dumps and outlining are not the only part of the speech-creating process, but they are a great way to start.