Public Relations & Social Media Insight

Sparksheet is all about big ideas, but sometimes we need someone to tell us how the smaller things are done. Presentation guru Nancy Duarte offers some tips for engaging senior executives.

PowToon aims to enable you to create cartoon-style, animated presentation and video clips without professional illustration and motion graphics software. I test drove the beta version.

When you look at many cartoon-style videos you see that they are actually not that complicated from a graphics point of view. Usually they involve a number of scenes (slides), they use static characters, basic entrance, exit, and emphasize animations and sometimes a cute hand that puts items on the slide, all accompanied by some simple music....

[Cool tool worth a test drive - JD]

Snapseed is a powerful yet simple photo editing tool for all platforms including iPad, iPone, Mac and Windows. Very modest cost and you may never use photoshop for photo editing again.

- JD

Snapseed Home page and demo:  http://www.snapseed.com/home/

Everything about your physical presence should convey the sense that you feel comfortable being in control of the room.

Your posture contributes mightily to that impression.
Stand upright and avoid slouching. Square your shoulders with the audience – face them directly instead of tilting your body at a slight angle away from them (unless you’re soliciting audience feedback, in which case turning your body at a slight angle can help encourage audience participation)....

[Speaking tips you can use from Brad Phillips - JD]

Here are 21 questions you should ask yourself before every speech or presentation you ever deliver.

This post could easily have included 137 questions, but I’ve limited it to 21 questions you should ask before every speech or presentation....

Many presentation coaches say that PowerPoint makes most speakers look worse. But new research challenges that assertion. Who's right?

PowerPoint is an overused device used primarily by lazy speakers who are unable or unwilling to put together a more compelling speech.

Right? Well, although that line of thinking is increasingly pervading presentation best practices lists, not so fast.

Here’s a counterintuitive idea for you: using PowerPoint actually makes you more credible, not less....

In today's guest post, you'll learn six great ways to be funny in your next speech - without any of the negative consequences humor can bring.

Here’s the insider secret that comedians don’t want you to know—delivering a line isn’t that difficult. Al Gore, who no one would mistake for a stand-up comic, opens his ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ presentation with a fabulous joke: “My name is Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States of America.” To paraphrase Larry the Cable Guy: “I don’t care what your politics are; that’s funny!” I promise you, if Al Gore can do it, you can do it.

Al Gore’s joke is extremely (and, I suspect, painfully) self-deprecating which is my first tip: Do be self-deprecating. Then, not only will you be seen as somebody with their ego in check, it’s also extremely unlikely that someone will take offense. I open my speech with jokes about being bald: “I don’t need conditioner. I dream of split ends…the very thought of one hair becoming two!”...