Last year, I created 44 unique presentations, delivered via a variety of mediums – webinars, keynotes, private presentations and conference panels. It’s certainly not a skill I’ve perfect, but it is something I’ve been asked about quite a bit, so I thought I’d share my methodology and some examples in the hopes that it can help those of you who’ve learned to love (or at least live with) Powerpoint

Step 1: Understanding the Presentation’s Goals & the Audience

Before I start a deck, I try to learn as much about the audience attending the event/presentation as possible. When it comes to our PRO member webinars, we have lots of survey data and direct feedback, but for outside events, it’s critical to connect with the organizers. Here are 5 questions I like to ask:

What roles/titles are represented in the audience? What do the attendees do for a living and to whom are they reporting?
What level of knowledge do they have about the topic? How many years of experience are likely under their belts?
How do these folks hope/intend to apply the knowledge? What do they want to accomplish
What segment(s) are being targeted by attendees? Are they B2B/B2C, small-medium business, enterprise, agency, consultant, etc.?
How long do I have to present and how much time should be left for Q+A?
If you forget #5, you can often run into lots of trouble – make sure to get that one

Step 2: Build an Outline in Email

It might seem like an odd way to craft a presentation outline, but I love to use my Google mail account. It autosaves, it can be accessed on my mobile if I want to add/edit/review and I don’t need to worry about which computer (home/work/laptop) it’s on.

A sample outline might look like:

Outline for Social Media Breakfast Presentation

The outline above comes from a presentation I gave in November to the Social Media Breakfast Club in Seattle (at the kind request of Kristy Bolsinger).

The outline accomplishes several key goals:

It can be easily shared in email with organizers or team members for a review prior to building out the Powerpoint
I can review it from a narrative perspective to see if the slides and concepts are going to create an intelligent “flow”
If there’s any additional research or digging around I need to do ahead of time, the outline can help indicate where those might exist
I can copy and paste any relevant URLs into the outline directly and use them as references later on
It’s easy to put alongside Powerpoint on a wide monitor so I have a perspective on the outline while I’m building the deck in an adjacent window

Step 3: Create a Presentation Shell

Next, I build an “empty shell” presentation in Powerpoint using a template. Most often, that’s the SEOmoz template, featuring lots of Roger and a consistent color scheme, but some events have their own requirements around templates and in those instances, I’ll build the shell from their example.

Empty Shell Presentation

The shell is especially easy to build because I can put it alongside the email with my outline and simply work from that spec, massaging slide titles, etc. One piece that’s key for me is the segmentation of themes/topics. Whenever I move from a topic/discussion point to a whole new area, I use transitional slides that signal to the audience we’re moving on. These slides in the SEOmoz template are blue and contain only a headline + Roger mozBot and his word bubble. I typically fill these with something relevant or fun.

Transitional Slide

In the transitional slide example above, the section covers inclusion in vertical/universal-style listings. Hence, Roger’s alluding to Google’s left-hand search menu.

Step 4: Add Pictures, Screenshots and Graphics

The next step is typically the most time-consuming and challenging.

My goal is to have as few words and bullet points in slides as possible (using them only where necessary). Thus, 90%+ of my slides are usually graphics, screenshots, diagrams, charts or drawings that represent the tactic or idea I’m attempting to convey. As you might imagine, this gets hard (which is why many presenters use the simpler bullet point/text format).

Below are a few examples of the types of slides I like to create:

I worry less about making beautiful, aesthetically-pleasing slides and more about graphics that help tell the story effectively. That said, I’m insanely jealous of those who manage to mix both phenomenal design/layout and powerful storytelling into their slide art. In the future, it’s possible I might hire help specifically to help create those stunning, well-designed types of slide decks (currently, I make all my own decks).

NOTE: SEOmoz uses Shutterstock’s stock photography, but I also will sometimes using Creative Commons licensed photos from Flickr (and/or anything my wife takes).

Step 5: Insert Highlights, Arrows & Effects

Once the graphics are in, I’m in polishing mode. Oftentimes, that means adding effects to the deck, though I try to be very minimalist with these. You can see a few examples below:

I almost never use visual effects like fade-in/out, motion, sound, video, etc. Not only are there occasional (and painful) compatability problems with these features, but I haven’t found them useful 90%+ of the time I see them or have tried to apply them.

Step 6: Run it By My Team / the Organizer(s)

Last, but not least, I send the slide deck out for feedback, either to SEOmoz’s marketing team and/or to the organizers of the event. In the example below, Jen Lopez’s feedback was invaluable. I added 4 additional slides covering the concepts she mentioned and it seriously improved the webinar we gave.