From top left: Lawrence Lessig, Masayoshi Takahashi, Seth Godin, Mino Monta

Here, we’ll describe and evaluate some of the most famous – and popular – presentation methods.

1. The Takahashi Method
This extremely unique method calls for the use of very, very large text.  The goal is to use no more than a handful (preferably, less than three) of easy-to-understand words, or a single image or photo with no accompanying words, on each slide, to deliver a very clear, very high-impact message in a very short period of time.  Many believe that this approach forces the audience to listen to the speaker, since the slides alone do not demonstrate all the content to be delivered.

2. The Lessig Method
Based on the style of Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig, this method is quite similar to Takahashi’s approach in its simplicity.  Presenters who use this technique incorporate only a brief quote, a short sentence, or a photo with a caption onto their slides, and spend only a few seconds on each.  But, while Takahashi-style presentations are often rather short – usually ten slides or less – Lessig presentations are often quite long, sometimes hundreds of slides that are passed through very quickly.  The idea behind this method is that the rapid-fire pace of delivery prevents the audience from growing bored or getting distracted.

3.  The Godin Method
Although not yet formally recognized by presentation pundits, this method, made popular by best-selling author and marketing guru Seth Godin, focuses mostly on the element of presentation slide design – particularly, how to select accompanying visuals to enhance messages appropriately.  Godin promotes the use of bold fonts, contrasting colors, striking images, and other clear, compelling visuals to better convey thoughts and ideas.

4. The Monta Method
Like the Takahashi approach, this technique originated in Japan.  Introduced by a knowledge worker in the tech field, it emulates the personality and charisma of a popular game show host.  Presenters are encouraged to use questions and answers on all their visuals.  When the question is posed to the audience, the answer is kept covered or hidden, only to be revealed once attendees have tried to “guess”.  The advantage of this approach is that it is highly effective at keeping the audience interested and engaged, and thus, their attention is less likely to wander.

This is the continuation in a series of Incredible resources for presentations. If you have an idea for incredible resources or want to add one of your own just add a comment below this post or see the whole incredible presentations series.

In 140 characters or less: How Twitter gets you a larger, more engaged presentation audience

Twitter Tips To Engage Your Immediate Audience

• Invite people to Tweet to their followers
• Create a #hashtag
• Dish out 140 character sound bites
• Have a “friendly” monitor the Twitter back-channel
• Take breaks for Twitter feedback – or put a Twitter feed right in your presentation
• Invite people to Tweet their questions to you

The objective is to surprise your audience with innovative use of Twitter and juice engagement by enabling them to actually participate in and influence your presentation. In case you get any wisecracks or tomatoes, prepare yourself with a self-deprecating one-liner and a knockout comeback. Positive, negative or humorous, this interaction will only deepen audience engagement.

Put a Twitter feed directly in your slide presentation. Register for a SlideRocket Free Trial on the right to get started

How To Expand Your Audience With Twitter

We all know the effort involved in creating effective presentations, getting people to sign-up, and getting them to actually show up. And with 50% of people frequently tweeting about presentations (thanks to Hubspot’s Dan Zarrella for that stat) it behooves you to take advantage of this channel to get the greatest return on your marketing effort. Getting people to send the tweet is only the beginning. Put the right infrastructure in place ahead of your presentation and you’ll amplify the effectiveness of your Twitter efforts:

• Create a landing page
• Enable easy social media sharing
• Post your presentation beforehand
• Record a voice overlay

The landing page gives your Tweeters a place to point their followers, while enabling sharing for Twitter, Facebook, etc. on your landing page boosts the viral effect. Posting your presentation ahead of time to your blog or website ensures that you don’t have that inevitable delay between the presentation and making it available – Timeliness is critical! The voice overlay is essential to give your larger, non-attending audience a chance to hear the context behind your slides. This also frees you up to create clean slides with stunning imagery without having to fall back on bullets and dense text to get your message across – your voice will do it for you. Plus, it’s a great occasion to practice!

SXSW is the place for innovators to strut their stuff and set the course for emerging technology. As the official presentation provider for SXSW 2010, we saw a lot of impressive presentations during the Interactive conference and we’re looking forward to seeing more in 2011. Now is your chance to vote for the presentations you want to see at SXSW. your voting accounts for about 30% of the decision-making process for any given programming slot so take a moment to register, peruse and choose the ones you’d like to see.

This year, we submitted a couple of sessions of our own. If you’d like to hear more about building game changing companies we’d love to share so vote below.

• Startup 2000 vs. Startup 2010: Cloud Power
• Startup Survival Guide: Beating the 800lb Gorillas

In the spirit of startups and innovation, head over to our SXSW Accelerator 2010 presentation gallery where you can watch game-changing ideas take flight as they were pitched to a panel of expert judges.

We can’t wait to see you at SXSW 2011!

There are a variety of Web sites and other resources devoted to the creation, sharing, distribution, and use of unique, visually appealing fonts.

Well, you’re in luck. There are a variety of Web sites and other resources devoted to the creation, sharing, distribution, and use of unique, visually appealing fonts that convey your personality and your presenting style.

Here are some of the best places to get new fonts for your presentation, or to learn how to make your own:

1. Dafont.com (http://www.dafont.com)
You’ll find it all here – gothic fonts, international-themed fonts, even fonts that celebrate popular holidays like Valentine’s Day, Easter, or Halloween. And, they’re all free. With more than 10 thousands fonts to choose from, plus over 2 thousand accents, there’s something for everyone, no matter what your need or preference.

2. 1001 Free Fonts (http://www.1001freefonts.com)
Since it launched in 1998, this site has served as a primary source of new fonts for more than 150,000 visitors. Its font search engine provides access to one of the Web’s largest font database, containing more than 30,000 commercial fonts.

3. Fee-Based Font Sites
While many of the font sites on the Web are free, there are several sites that offer higher-quality, professionally-designed fonts, for a price. These include

• Adobe Type Library, Providing stunning, elegant, and beautiful typography since 1985, Adobe Type offers more than 2,500 typefaces.
• Bitstream, and – what many consider to be the best font site out there today – MyFonts. If you want to stay in the know on the latest fonts then the MyFonts newsletters are a great resource.
• Ascender Corporation is a leading provider of advanced font products specializing in type design, font development and licensing. They also own the FontMarketplace which features the downloadable FontSelector a tool that makes it easy to pick fonts by Occasion, Personality and Type Style on Windows operating systems.

4. FontLab (http://www.fontlab.com)
If you don’t find what you need on the Web, and you’ve got some above-average design skills, FontLab makes a great font software package. Create fonts from scratch, convert fonts from various formats and enhance them to meet your requirements, add logos, signatures, or images, and more.

5. Font Tutorials
Looking to create new fonts, without purchasing or learning a new software application? Learn how, using tools you’re already familiar with. For example, Chank can help you learn to make fonts using Fontographer. Divide by Zero has tutorials on designing fonts with Photoshop and Typophile is also an excellent resource.

6. Installation Instructions
Found the perfect font for your presentation, but not sure how to download and install it? If you’re a Windows user, you can access Microsoft’s instructions. If you’re on a Mac, you can learn how to set up and use new fonts on Apple’s support site.

This is the continuation in a series of Incredible resources for presentations. If you have an idea for incredible resources or want to add one of your own just add a comment below this post or see the whole incredible presentation resource series.

Nathan’s perspective is that presentations shouldn’t be encumbered with a lot of text or used as documents. I argued that our definitions of what constitutes a presentation are too narrow and we should applaud Kashi for innovating the presentation medium and exploring new ways to engage their audience.

You can draw you own conclusions but a great parallel for technology adapting is the printed page. Look at how that has evolved, from the first printing press to today’s electronic magazines and e-books. Why would we expect anything less than evolution from presentation technology?

This discussion led me to look for other ways in which presentation technology has been used and resulted in the following – 7 Unusual Uses for Presentations. I hope you enjoy it and please add your own opinion in the comments below. My conclusion: As unusual as these presentations may be, their goal is common, finding the best, most engaging way to tell a story.

If you’ve observed or implemented a new way to use presentation technology please let me know and we’ll collaborate to add a slide to this deck. Let’s see how many unusual uses we can find.

To watch this presentation in full screen mode, Click the X icon in the bottom right of the toolbar.

Beautifully crafted music adds to the emotional impact of our images.

“Beautifully crafted music adds to the emotional impact of our images. One only has to see the reaction of clients to understand why we use music whenever we can,” says Massachusetts-based photographer Edward Zemba about using audio to enhance his presentations to potential customers.

Fortunately, there is a wealth of terrific audio resources available to speakers and presenters, such as:

1. Musicshake.com (www.MusicShake.com)
This intuitive application allows users to easily create their own music clips using more than 80,000 copyright-free samples. It offers a wide array of genres and instruments to choose from, and even provides a suite of voice recording and editing features. Once clips are created, they can be posted to the site and shared with others – providing a catalog of truly unique audio samples. Be sure to check out the Independence Day Remix application, for great 4th of July-themed music!

2. Royalty Free Audio

• RoyaltyFreeMusic.com (www.RoyaltyFreeMusic.com)
  As the world’s largest library of royalty-free music, this site offers clips for everything from music for callers waiting on hold, to backgrounds for advertisements. An intuitive search facility makes it easy to select from a wide array of styles, including jazz, children’s, acoustic, piano, R&B, and hip-hop music. There is also a compilation of clips for use specifically on the Web, or in presentations or Flash videos.
• Presentations Magazine (Presentations Magazine)
  Presentations is the leading publication in the public speaking and presentation market. In addition to advice and guidance, they also offer a variety of resources, including audio clips for use in slide decks. Some of the available sounds include a dial tone, a cappuccino machine, champagne being poured, a ringing cell phone, and a ship’s bell.
• Sounds of the Web (www.SoundsoftheWeb.net)
  Part of the Group Media Network, this resource has been around since 1999 and has been praised by Audio Media Magazine, Digit Magazine, and others as a pioneer in the industry. It offers thousands of music loops and sound effects to meet almost any presentation or digital media need.
• AudioMicro (www.AudioMicro.com)
  With a huge collection of micro stock audio, AudioMicro is a revolutionary collection of user-generated royalty-free stock music, sound effects, production music, production elements and music cues.
• Sound Ideas (www.sound-ideas.com/)
  Just $129 will buy you 5 CDs packed with audio clips that are the perfect enhancement to your slide deck. Over 1,400 files are included in each volume, with packages for business/office, pop culture, comedy, and other areas of interest. Files can be easily exported to the format of your choice. You can also create loops, edit, fade in/fade out, and more!

3. Make Your Own
If you’re feeling a bit adventurous, or you’re looking for something unique, there are countless audio editing software applications you can try. Check out Sony Sound Forge, Adobe Soundbooth, Dexster Audio Editor, FX Audio Editor, or Acoustica, which all run about $40 to $60 each. If you want real, recording-studio quality sound, try Adobe Audition or Sony Vegas Pro, which will cost you several hundred dollars. There are also a variety of free audio editors which you can download or use in your browser, such as Aviary’s Myna, Audacity or Wavosaur.

4. Advice and Guidance
Incorporating audio into your slide deck is more than just a matter of slapping in some background music and cute noises. There are right ways to do it, and wrong ways. Fortunately, there are many experts who have shared their best practices. From general tips and techniques, and advice on intellectual property and copyright law, to tutorials for recording presentation audio, advice can easily be found across the Web.

5. Voice Talent
If you have a script for your project but don’t want to record your own voice track there are now a good number of online services for finding just the right professional voice you need. These services generally keep a database of voice talent in a variety of languages and accents that allow you to browse and listen to each one. The more comprehensive services let you post your project to their site and help you manage it through the process sending you the finished product when it’s done. Some of the more popular voice talent databases include Voices.com, Voice123, VoiceTalent.com.

This is the first post in a series of Incredible resources for presentations. If you have an idea for incredible resources or want to add one of your own just add a comment below this post.

If your CEO remembers the top 3 things you said during the presentation, you've done a great job.

Making a presentation to top management is very different from making a presentation to the middle/junior management. Today we will try to understand what exactly this difference is and how to successfully present to top management.

Present the conclusion at the very start
In school you would have written a précis. A précis is a summary of the main points of the story. You need to do the same thing for your top management. First you make the presentation the way you normally do. Then add an empty slide at the very start (let’s call it the summary slide). Run through your presentation and put down the main points on this summary slide.
Top management is not here to listen to the complete story. You cannot afford to build the argument gradually and reveal the conclusion at the end. Instead put the conclusion at the start. Then go on and explain how you arrived at this conclusion. Your audience will ask for explanations and details wherever they need. You need not provide too much information. Remember, less is more with the top management.

Time is money
Be short and sweet. Do not be slow and do not repeat your points. Your CEO is always busy and cannot manage to sit through hour long presentations. Neither does he have the time nor the attention span. You need to share everything you have to say in crystal clear terms and then leave the questioning to the CEO. Whenever he seeks explanation, you can go in-depth.
The success of your presentation can be measured by a simple question. “If your CEO remembers the top 3 things you said during the presentation and why you said those things; you have done a great job.”

Use Back up Slides
When you present to the top management use what is called a ‘Back up Slide’. Suppose you are presenting on cost cutting. You have done a lot of study and your presentation talks about your 5 findings; the areas your organization is losing money and how to cut costs in these areas.
You have made detailed calculations to arrive at these findings. Your presentation has these findings and then you go on to recommend cost cutting measures. You are not going to present these detailed calculations (which led you to the findings) else the presentation will stretch for hours.  In such a case, keep these calculations ready on a slide (place it after the last slide). You might be asked to prove your findings, in which case you can open these back up slides. These slides support your findings. They are to be presented when your findings are being questioned and investigated in details.

Do not try to show you have worked hard
There is a strong urge in managers to show to the CEO that they have worked hard. Because they get to spend less time with the CEO they make their best efforts to impress him. This behavior leads them to fill their presentation with minute details. The number of bullet points is treated as directly proportional to work done. The more the bullets, the harder you have worked.
This needs to stop. What will impress the CEO is a simple presentation which shares the crux in a few slides and is backed up by solid reasoning. If your presentation gets your point across clearly, the rest will take care of itself.

Give a Handout
Your CEO will be busy with his/her Black Berry most of the time. He will check his mail and get urgent calls. Understand that there are more important things for him to do. It would be great if you carry a print out of the main points of the presentation. Make it no longer than one page. If you HAVE TO share some data/charts to back up your main points, then use Annexure. In the annexure, share the chart/graph; give a suitable heading and a one sentence summary of the chart.

To read more presentation tips visit Vivek’s blog All About Presentations or read other tips in this SlideRocket blog series.

Many people prefer on-demand web seminars since they can watch at their own convenience

In fact, many people prefer the on-demand approach, since they can watch at their own convenience, or pause the presentation if something urgent arises, without missing any important points. But once your on-demand presentation has been made available, how do you let people know it’s there?   And even more importantly, how to you encourage them to download or view it?

Here are some of the best ways to market your on-demand presentation:

1. Go Back to the Base
Just because only a fraction of those you invited actually attended, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the others weren’t interested in what you had to say.  They may have wanted to participate, but prior commitments prevented them from doing so.  So, once you post your on-demand presentation to your Web site, be sure to go back and inform those who were previously invited.  You’ll be surprised at how many of them take the bait.

2. Make it a Call to Action
Many experts believe that the reason most marketing campaigns fail is because they lack a compelling call to action.  Unless you give recipients a solid reason to respond – for example, by offering them something of perceived value – they simply won’t reply.  Using the download of your on-demand presentation as a response mechanism is a great way to drive traffic to your Web site, and boost campaign response rates.

3. Leverage Industry Resources
No matter what market you work in, there are likely Web sites that serve as resource portals for potential buyers.  These are great places for vendors to post not only pre-recorded presentations, but white papers and other promotional materials as well.  The site administrators may even help you promote your session, to help drive additional downloads.

4.  Alert the Media
Try issuing a media alert or a press release when your session has been posted.  Perhaps you don’t think an on-demand presentation is “newsworthy”, but many publications will, indeed, make mention of these types of resources.  Editors and writers may even view the presentation themselves, to educate themselves on your product or service, or your company.

You can also form relationships with bloggers and other online journalists, who can make mention of your on-demand Webcast when they publish posts and articles on related topics.

5.  Use Social Networks
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media outlets provide an open venue for you to share information with people who are interested in similar topics or ideas.  By setting up profiles on each of these sites, you can find people who are seeking certain types of information. And, those you connect with are probably those that are most likely to download your on-demand presentation.

Want more valuable tips on effective presentation creation and delivery? Review our archive of presentation tips and check back every week for new posts.

We’re (all 5 million of us) impressed with how Old Spice rolled out this engaging, original and authentic commercial series. Clearly, they did their homework to define their target audience, build their brand and plan their communication. But of equal importance, they weren’t afraid to take the creative risk to stand above the fray of consumer advertising.

Congratulations to Old Spice!