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An effective presentation should have three major things: Substance, style and supporting materials.

Having these elements in place is the start to giving an effective presentation. The following guide will give you everything you need to know on how to conduct your next presentation.

1. Be Well Organized. Your presentation should flow in a logical sequence. Additionally, your major points should connect in an orderly manner.

2. Get to the Point. Your speech should be direct, clear and concise. Your audience should walk away remembering and understanding the key points.

3. Exude Confidence. You should express yourself with certainty and credibility. In order to do this you have to make sure you have done research on your topic.

4. Be Sincere. This goes along with being confident. You must be able to come across to your audience with care and concern.

5. Sound Positive. You should display your points in the best possible way. Make sure that what you say verbally matches your nonverbal communication.

6. Relate well to the audience. Understand your audience and convey your message in such a way that speaks to them. Your presentation should be useful and relevant.

7. Have enthusiasm. You can come across animated in your own style, whether low-keyed or full of energy. Sound as if you are interested in what you have to say.

8. Use visual aids to support your presentation. Visual aids enhance your presentation and can be used as talking points.

If you follow this guide, you will give an effective presentation.

I used to joke with my colleagues that I am a “Power Ranger”, one who is good at preparing PowerPoint slides. Presentation is a key staple in the corporate world. Be it an internal meeting where an idea has to be shared and approval sought or for marketing your product to the target customers in a seminar. Churning out beautiful PowerPoint slides with great pictures and beautiful transitions is good, but not great. A great presenter has to be a “Transformer”, transforming ideas into impactful messages.

As with all masterpieces, this requires hard work and effort. It is a form of respect to the audience to prepare your presentation to make sure you are not wasting their time.

1. Start with the end in mind: What are you trying to tell us?

Delivering a presentation is like making a movie. There must be a key theme behind the story. Do not pack too many things into one presentation. You can achieve more with less. If your audience will only remember one thing, what would that be?

In preparing the presentation, it is critical to start from the audience’s point of view. What do they want to get out of your presentation? Very often, we get carried away by what we want to say and not what the audience wants to know.

A presentation should not be a one-way street. It has to be a conversation. Imagine answering the questions in the audience’s mind. Simon Sinek shared that every great communication starts with “Why” before “What” and “How” (Ted Talk: “How great leaders inspire action”). Without answering the key question of “Why”, the audience will not be interested in the “What” and “How”.

2. Be engaging: Why should we pay attention to you?

We often observe the audience starting to check on their mobile devices barely five minutes into a presentation. In this social media age, we are constantly seeking to be entertained and engaged. The mind wanders off if you are not engaging.

Slides should be used only when needed to reinforce a message. Many presenters are using slides as their crutches to push along the delivery of a message. Recently, I attended a seminar of a world renowned expert in business franchising. The speaker was very clear in his delivery and the audience benefited greatly from his sharing. The problem lies in his PowerPoint slides. The background color is distracting for the eyes and clip art pictures that look outdated make me think that it was created probably 5 years back and reused since. It is such a waste to let a bad PowerPoint deck discount the effect of your presentation. The feeling is like having a conversation with a respectable figure who has vegetables from his lunch stuck between his teeth.

If you wanted a change from the usual slideware, try Prezi, a cloud-based presentation software (http://www.Prezi.com). It is a good tool to use in providing a clear flow of thought for the audience. Regardless of the tools used, remember that it remains as a tool. Your flow of delivery should take the center stage.

3. Be memorable: tell me stories

Researchers in Spain has found that different parts of our brain are activated when a story is being told. If we are listening to a PowerPoint presentation, our language processing parts in our brain (Broca and Wernicke’s area) get activated. If a story is being told, other parts of our brain that we use in experiencing events are activated as well. That explains why we can remember stories that were told during presentations, but not the long PowerPoint slides even with the best visual aids.

I remembered attending an internal communications session a few years back where there were many presentations lined up for each business leader to share their quarter’s results and focus. The head of consumer business walked up to the stage and asked the audience if we could understand the urgency and importance of improving the organization’s customer experience. While we were expecting the usual slides of statistics, he surprised us by playing a live recording of a call center agent handling a frustrated customer’s call. The 5 minutes of recorded conversation still ring in my ears as I recall the session. The frustration of the customer in being asked to repeat her problem and being passed from one department to another brought the problem alive. It was impactful.

Think of a story that your audience will be able to relate to and deliver it in the form that will be the most impactful. It can be a recording of real customers’ experiences. It can be your own personal experience or a story that illustrates the key message.

Tell a good story and your audience will never forget the message that you are putting across.

In choosing a gift for mom, try to find things that are useful to her either at her work or at her mommy job at home. If possible try to personalize the gift items even in a very simple way. You must have a little research on your own about your mom’s favorites and personal details.

Try to pick items that are in style and at the same time affordable. But if you are not that particular about the price, you can easily find great items for mom. There are shops in retail locations and online that specializes in creating great mothers day gift ideas at wide range of prices. You must understand that present for moms are carefully and specially made for mom which means you must order for it in advance. But the convenience of this is that you will not have to rush to the mall in finding a gift for mom and end up getting mom a very generic gift which cannot come up to the worth of your mom’s love for you.

Read through different mothers day gift ideas for mom. Remember, do not just let the gift say the message itself to your mom. Try to make creative presentations together with the gift so that mom will truly feel that you have prepared enough for her.

For new mothers, or mother who just gave birth, it is a good idea to give her newborn baby’s clothes. But do not just shop for it and hand it over to her. It is best if you look for baby’s clothes that are creatively made for moms. A perfect example of it is the Cupcake Body Suit where it is packed in a box of 2, 4, and 6. Make sure that the body suit included in this clothing set is made of 100% cotton to suit baby’s sensitive skin.

It is also nice to treasure memories of you and mom through picture frame sets. It has various designs and colors that you may choose from. The picture frame set is hung against the wall. It is sweet if you surprise mom by designing one side of your wall using all of the varieties of picture frame sets that you may find. You can also get the old pictures that you may see and have them recopied using the modern photo editing technologies. You may find these services in photo shops in retail locations. And you can get your edited photos in just an hour. Also, by recopying and editing the photos, you can save the old photos and still have mom see it frequently as you hang it against the wall.

Also for new moms, you can give them the stylish and functional baby slings. Choose those that have elegant and simple designs like embroideries. Get the baby sling that suits baby’s gender or you may go for neutral colors such as yellow and green. Baby slings are great gifts for moms with babies because it helps mom in carrying her baby and at the same time it keeps the baby safe and warm. Again, choose the material that is 100% cotton or eco-friendly.