You’re preparing for a business meeting. What tools should you use to make the most of your time?

1 Choose a template

One of the first steps in preparing a presentation is to choose a template that suits your purpose, audience, and style. A template is a pre-designed layout that includes fonts, colors, images, and placeholders for your content. You can use a template to save time and ensure consistency throughout your slides. There are many online platforms that offer free or paid templates for different types of presentations, such as PowerPoint, Google Slides, Canva, and Prezi. You can also customize a template to match your brand identity and preferences.

2 Use visuals

Visuals are essential for making your presentation more attractive, memorable, and persuasive. Visuals can include photos, icons, charts, graphs, diagrams, videos, and animations. You can use visuals to illustrate your points, highlight key data, show comparisons, tell stories, and evoke emotions. However, you should avoid using too many or irrelevant visuals that can distract or confuse your audience. You can find and edit high-quality visuals from various online sources, such as Unsplash, Pexels, Piktochart, and Animoto.

3 Add interactivity

Interactivity is a way of engaging your audience and making your presentation more dynamic and interactive. Interactivity can involve asking questions, conducting polls, soliciting feedback, using quizzes, playing games, and using gestures. You can use interactivity to stimulate interest, spark discussion, check understanding, collect data, and reinforce learning. There are many tools that can help you add interactivity to your presentation, such as Mentimeter, Slido, Kahoot, and Poll Everywhere.

5 Get feedback

Feedback is the tool of getting constructive comments and suggestions from others on your presentation. Feedback can help you evaluate your effectiveness, identify areas for improvement, and learn from your mistakes. You can get feedback from different sources, such as your colleagues, friends, mentors, or online platforms. You can also ask for feedback from your audience after your presentation, either verbally or through surveys. You should be open-minded and appreciative of feedback, and use it to enhance your skills and results.

6 Track results

Track results is the tool of measuring and analyzing the outcomes of your presentation. Track results can help you assess your impact, determine your return on investment, and justify your actions. You can track results by using various metrics, such as attendance, engagement, satisfaction, retention, conversion, and revenue. You can also use tools, such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Mailchimp, to collect and visualize your data. You should track results to celebrate your achievements, learn from your failures, and plan your next steps.