Speaker 1: Hey guys, today I'm going to share with you how to boost your presentation skills. All of us need to deliver presentations at least at some point in our career. It could be a project presentation for your college or it could be a business presentation for your colleagues. So today I'm going to share with you 10 powerful techniques that will help you deliver killer presentations from next time. The first tip is to sketch the outline of your presentation. Even before you start preparing your slides, think about what is the topic of your presentation? How much time has been allotted to you and who is going to listen to your presentation? Based on these considerations, sketch a basic outline of your presentation. So how is it going to look like? What are some of the topics that you're going to cover? And finally, what is the key message that your audience should take home? When you draw this outline, you will know the number of slides you need. What are going to be the main headers in your presentation? How is the information going to flow from one slide to another? And then preparing your presentation will become very easy. The next tip is to use a color palette for your presentation. So once your outline is ready and you start preparing your slides, the first thing that you need to do is choose a template for your presentation. And one important aspect of that is the color palette. So what is a color palette? A color palette is basically a combination of colors that go very well with each other and also make your presentations look really beautiful. So if you're going for an inbuilt template of PowerPoint, then the color palette usually comes along with it. But if you're preparing your templates from scratch, something that I like to do, then you should go for a color palette. Now there are many websites that are available with beautiful color palettes. I have put the links to them in the description below for you. Another suggestion when choosing a color palette would be to go with the colors of the brand that you're presenting. So say for example, you have a college presentation. Then you can use colors that are present in the logo of your college. Or if you're going for a company presentation, then you can pick colors which represent the brand or which even represent the logo of your company. When you choose a color palette, it gives a theme to your presentation and brings the whole presentation together. The next tip is to use the right font for your presentations. When it comes to fonts, I have seen most of the people using Times New Roman. But the problem is that it is a serif font. Serif fonts have different thickness at different parts of the letter, because of which they are very difficult to read on digital media. So when you're going for digital display like presentations, it's always better to go for sans serif fonts. So sans serif fonts have uniform thickness all around the letter, which is why they are much more easier to read. My top recommendations for your presentations would be to go for Calibri or Arial or even Open Sans fonts. So now with the design of your slide ready with the color palette and the font, let's talk about the content of your presentation. And here my tip would be to use powerful headers for your presentation. Most of the time I see people using very boring slide titles like introduction, data, results. So instead of that, what you should try to do is use titles, which in very few words explain what your slide is all about. Let me take an example. Say you have a presentation on solar panels. So instead of using the title as introduction, you could probably write what are solar panels. Using these kind of headers captures the attention of your audience, makes them listen to your presentation and also remember them long after you finish presenting. So do try it out. The next tip is about controlling the amount of text on your slide. How many of you have seen a slide like this before or even made one yourself? I'm sure that if you came across a slide like this, you will never put any effort to read it. So how much text is enough text on a slide? Well, for that, you should follow the 7 by 7 principle. According to the 7 by 7 rule, you should not have more than seven words in a sentence and not more than seven sentences or seven lines in total on your presentation. In fact, my suggestion would be to not write information in paragraphs at all. Try and use bullet points on your slides. And even when writing information in bullet points, try and use only the phrases. You don't have to write full sentences. Only mentioning the key phrase that your audience can understand is important. Following all these simple steps of content writing will make your audience more engaged in your presentation and they will also find your slides much more attractive. The next tip is about using powerful graphics on your slides. More than the text, the audience usually focuses on the visuals in your presentation. So you should put in some time to make them eye catching. When it comes to data, my suggestion would be to use graphs like bar charts or pie charts instead of just putting up a boring table and fitting in all the information there. When it comes to pictures, avoid using clip arts or GIFs or pictures which are of poor quality or have watermark on them. Some of the websites where you can get good quality pictures for free would be Unsplash, Pixabay and many other websites. I have put the links to them in the description below for you. Also, if you are obtaining these pictures from published sources and they are not your pictures, always make sure you credit these pictures and mention the sources from where you have obtained them. This will improve the credibility of your work. Now with your slides ready, let's discuss some tips on how to deliver these presentations. I know a lot of you feel very nervous when it comes to getting up on stage and delivering these presentations. But hopefully these tips will help in improving your presentation skills and also taking away some of your nervousness. When coming to presentation delivery, try and adopt a delivery style which engages your audience. What I have noticed most people doing is that when they go on stage to speak, they will either turn their back towards the audience and then read everything from the presentation. Or what some people would do is that they would take a sheet of paper on the stage and then they will read everything from there. Please don't do that. Both these methods prevent you from making eye contact with your audience. And after some time, your audience will lose interest and stop listening to you. So instead, what you need to do is go for a delivery style which is more engaging. Only have key points on your presentation and then from there, elaborate upon those points while making eye contact with your audience. This kind of delivery mode will help in connecting better with the people who are listening to you and will keep them engaged throughout the presentation. This brings me to my next point, which is making eye contact during your presentation. Due to nervousness, a lot of people avoid making eye contact with their audience and they either look down or they look behind the audience at a wall or something. Please don't do that. To engage your audience in your presentation, it is very important that you maintain eye contact with them. So if you're feeling nervous, my suggestion would be that you start off with some familiar or some friendly faces in the audience. And then slowly you can look at other people in the crowd as well. So you could probably look at some people on your left, then in the middle and then probably on the right. And then you keep repeating this exercise. When you do that, you will realize that you are able to bind your entire audience together just by making eye contact. The next aspect of good presentation skills is body language. In fact, research says that 55% of the communication takes place not through what you're saying, but through your body language. So use your body language to your favor to increase the impact of your presentations. Keep a straight posture, maintain eye contact with your audience and use hand gestures to increase the impact of your delivery. If you're not comfortable using hand gestures too much, you could also probably keep them in steeple pose. Keeping your hands in this posture also shows confidence when you're talking. So use body language to your advantage when delivering your presentations. The 10th and the final tip to deliver killer presentations is to practice. All these tips are useless if you don't practice them. So whenever you're preparing your next presentation, make sure to use these tips. This will help you remember them and also apply them to your future presentations. And once these slides are ready, make sure to practice delivering these presentations. Stand in front of a mirror or record yourself on a camera. This is the best way to analyze your mistakes and improve upon them. So practice, practice and practice until you're happy, satisfied and feeling super confident. So guys, these are the 10 powerful techniques I wanted to share with you today about presentation skills. If you apply these tips, I'm sure you will see a clear difference in your presentation style and hopefully you will also kill that presentation. If you want to learn more about how to prepare formal presentations and also improve your communication skills, you can register for a free demo to one of my workshops. The link is given in the description. And now thank you so much for watching this video and I wish you all the very best for your future presentations. .