Ultimate Guide: How to Structure your Presentation, With Examples
Giving a good presentation is extremely hard. A lot depends on how you give it, your pace of speech, confidence, the circumstances surrounding it, the atmosphere in the audience, etc.
However, all of it won't mean anything if you hadn't prepared beforehand and created a well-structured presentation. If you've properly thought out your slide deck, you'll feel much more poised during the presentations and deal with issues on the go more easily.
To help you with your presentation efforts, we've created this overview of structuring your slide deck. We'll also give you some ideas for phrases that you'll be able to introduce into the speech to make it more flowing.
Why Structure at All?
Have you ever listened to a great presentation and felt moved and inspired by some topics? Most commonly, it's not the speaker nor the flashy presentation visuals (although both of these aspects help to leave a great impression) – it's the presentation's structure.
If a presentation is properly structured, you won't have to think about how convoluted and bizarre the slide deck order is. No, you just concentrate on the contents, you understand them, they impact you on a personal level, and the topic moves you.
Many people understand the importance of structure but cannot come up with anything decent even at gunpoint. This is exactly why the presentation services, like custom presentation design are so popular. People just come to the platform, tell the topic of their presentation, give some notes, and come back for an awesome presentation.
Typical Structure
Let's examine the most typical type of presentations. It's probable the best structure for beginners to organize their slides. It takes the least effort and will result in a great presentation for you.
Greeting the Audience
Don't just jump into presenting the audience with facts, figures, visuals, and other ideas from the presentation's main body. Firstly, you have to establish even the smallest rapport with the audience.
Introduce yourself – who you are, what's your name, and what you do – is usually good enough. To lighten the audience's mood, you can start with a few yes or no questions to connect with the audience.
Intro
Doing an intro isn't easy whatsoever – you have to introduce a topic and quickly grasp the audience's attention. Doing an intro is very similar to trying to sell something to other people. Here are the steps in which it's recommended to do the intro:
- explicitly state the presentation's topic
- mention the topic's context, how it relates to the area it's in
- through questions, lead the audience to the issues or challenges with the topic in its area
- explain your intention for the presentation (spreading information, moving people, etc.)
- show the structure of the slide decks, mentioning the length of the presentation.
Main Body
The main body is all the slides that will be actively discussing and moving your deliberations on the topic forward. Of course, it has to match up with what you've said and shown in the intro. The information in the main body has to be logical to have the cause-and-effect links.
To achieve that, be sure to put the information into the slides the following way:
- dissect your points and don't jumble them together on the slide deck
- for each of points/ideas show obvious and explicit evidence with examples from Slidepeak
- all the main ideas have to have mini-conclusions when you repeat the essential points
- establish self-explanatory links between the slides with different ideas.
Wrapping Up
A lot of people fail at this part. Often, summaries aren't impactful because of a couple of mistakes:
- the main ideas weren't developed fully in the previous section
- new ideas are being introduced at the end
- the main arguments aren't reinforced.
So, the summary has to contain clarity and only hammer down the discussed topics. Here's how you can go about making an impactful conclusion slide deck:
- signify that the ending is coming with an obvious phrase
- mention the topic and motivation behind the presentation
- quickly run down the main arguments from the main body slides
- tell the audience what they can do with the new information / motivate them.
Saying Goodbye
The very last part of your presentation is saying goodbye to the audience. Thank them for their time and attention, ask if there are any questions, answer them, and that's it. After doing these things, you may leave the stage, knowing that you gave an amazing presentation.
Smooth Transition Examples
Let's talk about real examples for some of the parts of the presentations. In this section, we'll give some valuable phrases for you to use during your presentations.
From Intro to the Main Body
Awesome phrases to quickly get you from the introduction straight into the main body:
- Being done with the previews, let's start with…
- First and foremost, I'd like to mention….
- The first argument I have is….
- Let's actually begin the presentation with….
Talking About Different Points / Ideas
In the main body, you can utilize the following ideas to transition between points slide to slide:
- Similarly…
- Moreover…
- As well as…
- In addition to this…
Mini-Conclusion
After you've explained and talked about one of the big points in your presentation, be sure to clearly specify that the slide deck isn't yet done with the following phrases:
- Regarding this point, what should be highlighted is…
- At this point in the slides, we've gone over….
- So, the point relates to the topic in the following way…
Moving on the Stage
Besides talking, articulating, and pressing the button to switch between slides, it's highly recommended to move as you're showing your slide decks off. Don't stand on the stage rooted to one fixed point. With every occasional slide switch, move to a new place and introduce miniature breaks for the audience.
Structure Varies
Of course, the structure we've talked about isn't the only answer for every presentation on the planet. Your main goal for the presentation will heavily influence the structure. For example, if you're:
- showing off a product
- tackling a publicly perceived issue
- creating a narrative
- approaching a dangerous topic
You'll have to emphasize different parts of the slide deck or even use other approaches to present information for different structures.
Coming
Hopefully, you now see the importance of structure in presentations. If you are creating your presentations yourself, pay an extra amount of attention to how and in what order you present information on your slide decks.