The Science of Presentations

The Science of Presentations
How to Give Contagious Talks

By Dan Zarrella

Contents
1. Introduction 1

2. The Survey Data 2

3. The Motivations 7

4. The Case Study Webinar 13

5. Age & Sex Differences 16

6. Influential Attendees 21

7. Expert Presenters 24

8. Key Findings 28

9. Presentation Design 32

10. Using SlideShare 34

1 The Science of Presentations

The reason most speakers get up in front of
groups of people is to share their message with The Case Study Webinar
a wider audience, and with the ubiquity of social After the survey was completed and initial analy-
media the potential reach contained in nearly ev- sis was performed, I hosted a large webinar about
ery audience has grown incredibly. Because I’ve Facebook marketing that attracted over 13,000
never been one to be content with guessing the registrants and around 5,000 attendees. The we-
best ways to get people to Tweet or blog about binar’s hashtag was, for some period of time, the
presentations, I decided to explore some hard eighth most discussed topic on Twitter and was
data about it. therefore labeled a “trending topic.”

I had a script running during the webinar that re-
Survey Data corded over 3,000 Tweets that included the we-
binar’s hashtag, #FBSci. The analysis of the case
The first source of data I used was a survey that
study webinar in this ebook was based on these
asked people about their behavior and motiva-
Tweets.
tions at the intersection of social media and pre-
sentations. The survey was promoted through
During the webinar I experimented with some of
email newsletters and in social media by myself
the tactics I learned from the survey research. I in-
and a variety of well-known industry figures. My
cluded a number of “Tweetable Takeaway” slides
intention was to get responses from as many pre-
that contained takeaway statements all under 140
sentation-attending social media users as pos-
characters and labeled with several implicit Twitter
sible.
calls-to-action and references. I also used a slide
on which I asked attendees to raise their hands as
I asked 11 questions including the age and gender
if they were participating in an in-person audience
of the survey taker, the type of content and fre-
poll.
quency with which she shared presentations on
social media, as well as an open ended question
asking what makes the respondent Tweet or blog
about a presentation. Learn More
If you want to learn more about the science of de-
livering contagious presentations, be sure to reg-
ister for my Science of Presentations Webinar on
August 19th.

http://www.HubSpot.com

The Survey Data

“The audience only pays attention as long as you know where you are going.”
- Philip Crosby


When asked about Tweeting about presentations, The distributions of frequency of Tweeting and
most survey respondents reported having Tweet- live-Tweeting were very similar, which seems to
ed about a presentation in the past, and nearly indicate that presentation-goers consider the two
75% explicitly said they had live-Tweeted during actions essentially identical.
a presentation.
In my case-study presentation, the vast majority
of Tweets were posted during the presentation.



Nearly 80% of respondents said they had never Frequency of post-blogging and live-blogging dif-
live-blogged a presentation, whereas 60% had fered significantly, indicating that these are very
blogged about a presentation after the fact. different actions, and most users only engage in
post-blogging.
Blogging about presentations is far less popular
than Tweeting, but it may be more worthwhile for Our case-study presentation once again support-
marketers in the long term. ed this scenario as all of the blog posts written
about the presentation were written after it con-
cluded.



When I asked survey-takers if they had ever seen Presenters at live events should keep this in mind,
a live Tweet about a presentation and joined that especially at events where there are multiple ses-
presentation because of it, 52% reported that sions occurring at one time. At the start of the
they had. This indicates that as a speaker or con- presentation, try reminding audience members
ference organizer, live Tweeting should be encour- which room they’re in and that the presentation
aged as a potential audience builder. may be of use to their followers who are also at
the conference.


The Motivations

“Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.“
- Dionysius the Elder


I asked survey-takers what made them want to Below are explanations of the themes I found. Af-
Tweet or blog about a presentation and allowed ter each explanation there are tactical takeaways
them to enter an open ended text-based response. in italics that will explain how a presenter can le-
I then identified the most common themes. verage knowledge of these motivations to encour-
age the sharing of presentation content.



Sharing Relevance
Nearly 40% of respondents cited some form of 22% of survey takers told me that they thought
“sharing” as what made them want to talk about about “relevance” when deciding whether or not
a presentation in social media. Many responded to Tweet or blog about a presentation. They said
with comments such as: “share with others,” things like: “applicability to my followers,” “some-
“...worth sharing,” “share the knowledge,” and thing.. that I think would interest other people,” “If
“share the opportunity.” I think it might benefit my crowd,” and “relevance
to my audience.”
These respondents often mentioned that they
wanted to “gift” valuable information to people In most of my research on this topic, I’ve found
who were listening to them. Many also men- relevancy is a common theme. Users are drawn to
tioned reciprocal relationships, where their friends sharing content that seems tailor-made for their
shared content they heard with them, so they did audience.
the same.
Be laser-focused on the topic your audience came
Remind users to “be kind and share.” to learn about.

Novelty News
27% of respondents identified “novelty” as one 12% of respondents said they shared content
of their motivations for sharing content from a from presentations when it was newsworthy. They
presentation. They listed things like: “insights you said things like: “breaking news or figures,” “im-
haven’t heard before,” “when the content is new portant announcements,” and “it’s very current
and fresh,” “anything that’s original... It’s annoy- news.”
ing when you get saturated with the same, un-
original, repeated information,” and “thought pro- Breaking news is one of the most popular types
voking quotes.” of content in almost all forms of social media and
presentations are no different. Users typically in-
Many of these respondents specifically indicat- dicated they were motivated by the real-time na-
ed they shared content and ideas they’d never ture of Twitter to be able to quickly share news
heard before, but many also observed that they they’d heard.
were likely to share new ways of looking at things.
These also typically included mentions of inter- Include breaking news and never-heard-before
esting-ness and uniqueness. things in your presentations.

Say something your audience hasn’t heard before.



The Presenter Reputation
10% of respondents called out their feelings 8.5% of respondents said they were motivated
about the presenter as a major motivation to to share presentation content because they felt it
share presentation content. They said things like: could increase their reputation. They said things
“speaker’s stature,” “the speaker is really compel- like: “I enjoy seeing my tweets being shown on
ling,” “how well known the person is,” “energetic the screens,” “provides credibility as an expert,”
speaker with passion,” and “ the speakers ability “be the first source to the news,” and “I want to
to convey the message.” impress my followers.”

Survey takers who mentioned this motivation Respondents in this bucket typically said they
were very interested in who the speaker was (es- wanted to be seen as a credible expert who was
pecially in terms of popularity) and how well and in-the-know and among the first to learn new
passionately they spoke. things.

Ingratiate yourself with your audience and let your Give your audience information to tweet about
passion and personality show. that will make them look cool.

People There People Not There
9% of survey respondents mentioned they were 8% of respondents specifically mentioned be-
motivated by other people attending the pre- ing motivated to share presentation content with
sentation. They said things like: “good questions other people who could not attend the presenta-
posed by fellow attendees,” “networking with new tion. They said things like: “adding value for those
crowd,” “how crowds react,” “ there’s already a not attending,” “I’m getting smarter while you are
community discussing the topic,” and “interac- not,” “knowledge sharing to the audience that’s
tion with the audience.” not in attendance,” and “to let people know where
I am.”
The people who mentioned being motivated by
the rest of the audience in attendance typically People who mentioned being motivated by peo-
referred to networking and becoming a part of the ple not in attendance were typically concerned
back-channel discussions about the presentation. with providing valuable content to their network
who either were not able to attend or who did not
Remind your audience that by attending your pre- know about the presentation.
sentation they’re part of a community.
Remind the audience that they probably have
friends who could not attend and would love to
hear what you’re saying.



Evangelism These respondents were motivated by how useful
the content was, not only to them but also to their
7% of respondents indicated they were interested audience.
in evangelizing the presentation. They said things
like: “to spread awareness,” “drawing attention to
the live event,” “extend reach for presenter,” and
Teach your audience how to do something.
“helping publicize and promote the presentation.”

These respondents used the word “spread” often,
saying they wanted to spread the word about the
Note Taking
5% of respondents said that tweeting or blogging
topic, event or presenter. A few mentioned they
content from presentations was a way for them
were motivated when the topic was something
to take notes for themselves and their audiences.
they felt passionate about already or when the
They said things like: “note-taking for myself,”
presentation made them care about the topic.
“something I want to make sure I document / re-
member,” and “my list of topics to research after-
Use Us-vs-Them and Victim-is-Wronging-the-
wards.”
Victim techniques (I’ll talk about them in the Key
Findings section).
These people were interested in remembering
specific points for presentations and many indi-
Pithiness cated they wanted to be able to do further re-
search on them later.
6.5% of respondents mentioned they were mo-
tivated to share succinct information. They said
things like “when the content is tweetable,”
Point your audience to resources for further re-
“something quick, easy and understandable,”
search.
“nuggets of advice,” “really great sound bites,”
“clever axioms,” “tidbits” and “great quotes.”
Negativity
4% of respondents said they’d tweet or blog when
they disagreed with the presenter or thought the
Pithiness typically included not only short content
information was badly presented. They said things
that could fit into a 140 character tweet, but also
like: “bad content or bad presentation style,” “ if
short content that could be understood out of the
it’s just gawd awful,” “simple people saying stupid
context of the presentation.
things,” and “if it’s something I disagree with.”
Craft tweetable sound bites for every slide. Survey takers that mentioned negativity as a pos-
sible motivation often said they wanted to voice

Utility their disagreements and that boring presentations
sometimes provided more opportunities to tweet
5% of survey-takers said they shared content that without missing important information.
was useful. They said things like: “practical tips,”
“if I find the information to be useful,” and “usable Invite people who disagree with you to discuss it.
information.”



Trying to Focus Humor
2% of respondents mentioned that trying to focus 2% of survey-takers mentioned they tweeted fun-
on the presentation played a role in whether or ny things. They said things like: “anytime a pre-
not they tweeted or blogged about it. They said senter says something amusing I tend to tweet it,”
things like: “have a pause or break... I want to be “funny quotes,” and “relevant humor.”
fully present and attentive to the presentation and
other attendees,” “if I’m attending a presentation When marketers try to think of things that “go
that is any good, then my attention is on the pre- viral,” humor is often one of the first things that
senter,” “time is a factor,” “prefer to pay attention comes to mind, but in nearly every survey I’ve
to the speaker,” and “I think live tweeting presen- done about social media, it tends to rank far be-
tations is rude to the presenter and the audience. low other types of content, especially news.
It’s like passing notes in class. It takes your atten-
tion off the presenter and creates cliques within Use humor, but don’t rely on it.
your audience.”

Many respondents who mentioned “trying to fo-
cus” said they didn’t live tweet or blog about pre-
sentations at all while others said they did when
there was a pause or break that allowed them to
shift their focus.

Give the audience a moment to tweet your pithy
sound bites.


The Case Study Webinar

“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them
feel.” - Carl W. Buechner


I plotted the volume of live-Tweeting that was oc- Determining the exact time when “trending” be-
curring during my case-study webinar alongside gan and ended is a bit fuzzy, but the red area on
the rate of incoming webinar attendees. The sec- the graph above represents my best estimation.
ond peak in logins was due to technical issues we
had with the webinar software. Note that in the graph above there does not seem
to be any correlation between either live-Tweeting
The hashtag I used during the case-study webinar or “trending” and logins. This casts some doubt
was highlighted by Twitter as a globally trending on how powerful live-Tweeting really is when try-
topic, meaning that at the time it was the eighth ing to build an audience for a presentation in real-
most-discussed subject on Twitter. time.


During the case-study webinar, I included slides Anecdotally, other presenters and myself have no-
labeled “Tweetable Takeaways.” These slides were ticed that these type of highly direct Tweet calls-
introduced in the beginning of the webinar with a to-action were effective, but this data seems to
request to share them with attendees’ followers challenge the notion that they are the best way to
and included a hashtag, Twitter bird logo and my stimulate sharing.
@ username on every takeaway slide.

While I devoted 22% of my overall slides to these
takeaways, only 8.6% of the total Tweets posted
about the presentation contained some verbatim
part of the text that appeared on a takeaway slide.



In contrast to the mere 8% of Tweets that used presenter during the presentation, or by post-
takeaway slide text, I noticed a great deal of pre- presentation Tweeting.
sentation Tweets were ReTweets of other Twitter
users using either the “RT” or “via” syntaxes. If scheduled Tweets are being used, the present-
er should tell the audience to follow his or her
The “RT” syntax was more popular, with 27% of account because the content of the takeaway
all presentation Tweets containing it, while a full slides will be tweeted as it is presented. This may
5% (only 3.6% less than the takeaway tweets) also help to address the concern mentioned by
used the via syntax. some survey-takers that they are often too busy
trying to pay attention to the presentation to type
As a presenter it may be more effective to focus out full Tweets.
on ReTweets as a way to stimulate tweets, per-
haps by scheduled Tweets of takeaways by the

Age & Sex Differences

“A good orator is pointed and impassioned.”
- Marcus T. Cicero


In the survey, I asked respondents if they consider Men are nearly twice as likely to blog or tweet a
Tweeting negative reactions to a presentation and negative opinion about a presentation. Only 22%
found that overall, 31% of users would. When I of women report doing so, as opposed to 40% of
broke down the results by gender (as provided by men.
the survey takers), I found the most striking gen-
der difference in all of my social media and pre- A risky tactic for a presenter who notices a male-
sentations research. skewed audience may be to intentionally disagree
with attendees in an attempt to stimulate them to
tweet their disagreement.



Another significant area of gender difference was A female audience may respond better to remind-
in survey-takers’ responses to questions about ers that there are people who couldn’t attend,
motivation. For sharing presentation content, men whereas a male audience may respond better to
indicated that they’re more motivated by people reminders that all the attendees are part of a tem-
in attendance at a presentation than those who porally and geographically limited community.
are not there, while women indicated the reverse
preference.

If presenters notice an audience that is skewed
toward either gender they may want to modify
their approach by asking the audience to share
presentation content they find interesting.


During the case study webinar, I simulated an in- in those users who indicated they had raised their
person audience poll and asked attendees to raise hands. While the overall webinar audience con-
their hands to answer a question. I then asked tained more women than men (61% women to
them to Tweet at me if they had actually raised 39% men), hand raisers were skewed male (only
their hands. 38% women and 62% men). This may indicate
that male attendees are more likely to comply with
I identified individuals’ genders by matching their presenter requests, but the data set here is small
first names against common male and female and further research is required.
names and I found a surprising gender difference



In the survey, I asked takers to provide their age. I vs “people not there” motivations. Older users
found the median age in my data set was 36 so I were more motivated by people not in attendance
divided respondents into two groups: those over while younger members were motivated by peo-
36 and those under 36. ple in the same audience.

I only identified one area where age seemed to If a presenter notices a younger or older crowd
be significant: much like the gender differences they may want to adjust their strategy in the same
above, age seemed to impact the “people there” way they would if they noticed a gender skew.


Influential Attendees

“Oratory is the power to talk people out of their sober and natural opinions.”
- Joseph Chatfield


I asked survey takers for their Twitter usernames “people not there,” and “evangelism,” indicating
so I was able to retrieve the number of followers they are more aware of their sizable audience.
they had. There was a median of 336 followers in
the survey set, so I broke out users above and Presenters trying to influence high-follower at-
below this average. tendees to share their presentation content
should focus on tactics that address social moti-
Respondents with more than 336 followers tend- vations, including reminding people they are part
ed to highlight social and audience based moti- of a community, and should share content they
vation themes more than those with fewer. These find interesting with their friends who could not
included “sharing,” “relevance,” “people there,” attend.


I identified three subsets of the users who Tweet- the overall average of 266 followers, the fact that
ed about the case study presentation who had these segments all had more followers indicates
more followers than the average: those who com- that the most engaged attendees were the most
plied with my request to raise their hand, those followed.
who tweeted snippets of text from my “Tweetable
Takeaways” slides and those who ReTweeted. Presenters should give their audiences opportuni-
ties to ReTweet presentation content. One way to
The hand raisers had an average of 303 followers, do this would be by Tweeting your own takeaways
the takeaway tweeters had an average of 310, and at the end of the presentation or during it using
ReTweeters had an average of 420. Compared to Tweet-scheduling software.


Expert Presenters

“Be sincere; be brief; be seated.”
- Franklin D. Roosevelt


While conducting research, I emailed several of
my favorite presenters and presentation experts Jason Falls
and asked them the best way to get audience There are lots of ways -
members to Tweet or blog about their presenta- starting the presentation
tions. off with a custom hashtag
encourages Twitter con-
I used their answers to guide some of the di- versations, and having a
rections my research took and found that they custom shortened URL
echoed a number of themes I discovered in the and asking them to link/
data. tweet/post it for their
friends who couldn’t be
These are their responses. there and such. But the
best way I’ve found to get
Lee Odden people to talk about my
For me, there are presentations is to say something meaningful in
3 pieces to getting them.
audiences talking
about your presen- An example is all the social media gurus, experts,
tation on the social prophets and such for years saying, “Join the
web. conversation.” In my talk on moving the needle
in social media I say, “Conversations don’t ring
1. Promote the the cash register.” You might get called a lot of
presentation with names, but people sure do talk about it.
a blog post be-
fore the event on And things that the audience actually came for:
the social channels if your presentation is on how to mine data from
where you’re active, Twitter, then dammit, you’d better give them ways
whether it’s Linke- to mine data on Twitter. Don’t just sit there and
dIn, Facebook, Twitter, Forum or Blog. do Twitter searches for different words and play
2. Include compelling and provocative quotes hashtag bingo.
(Tweet friendly) in your presentation.
3. Show your Twitter handle and a hashtag clear-
ly on the slides in your presentation. Seth Godin
I think the best way is to give them
Bonus! Aggregate some of the better responses something worth repeating, no?
to your presentation in a blog post and mention Most people who present intention-
those people. Many will see this and mention ally avoid saying anything worth re-
your presentation again. peating. Just stop avoiding it.



Nancy Duarte Brett Tabke
It’s funny you’d ask this ‘cause I think that the One thing I have al-
BEST presentations actually are so engrossing ways wanted was a
that people forget to Twitter while the presentation way to influence the
is happening. Almost ironic. I think if the presenta- tweeting while I pres-
tion is really great, people will Twitter about it (or if
ent. I have found a
it’s really bad). piece of software to
do that! AutoTweet:
We coach our clients any text between
to plant sound bites the tags [twitter] and
into their presenta- [/twitter] in your Pow-
tions that are 140 erPoint (PPT) notes
characters or fewer will automatically be
and to even project tweeted as your give
the single phrases your presentation.
on the slides. You
wouldn’t call atten- Now – getting people to tweet during your PPT:
tion to it as a twitter- • Ask them to do so. “If you see something you
able moment. Hope- like, feel free tweet about it. I’d love the feed-
fully it’s profound back and discussion.”
enough that they’ll pick up on it themselves. You • Try to put a “tweetable” quote on as many
can also twitter your own sound bite when the slides as possible. I have seen people actually
presentation is done. For @ev’s keynote, we had mark their “tweetable” with a little twitter logo
him twitter the 3 take-aways right when he got off bird next to it (instead of a bullet point).
the stage. They got retweeted a TON. • Stop for a second and look at twitter during
your PPT. Tell people – “What are people saying
Blogging during presentations happen a ton too. on twitter? Do I need to shift gears? Give me a
It’s as if the blogger is the journalist and photo sec”. It is a pause to give the audience time to
journalist. They take pics and capture sound bites check twitter as well and tweet about it.
so you have to have interesting content that spikes
and then dips so that the blogger has time to post
before you pick up on your next big nugget. Pace Guy Kawasaki
the nuggets so they have time to send it out be- The best way is to focus your
fore you state the next big nugget. presentation on social media
because social media addicts
As for after the presentation, we are encouraging cannot resist discussing so-
our clients to create after-market versions of their cial media.
presentations as video or slides+audio that can
be embedded into blogs and picked up in various
media formats. Arm the blogosphere with good
media.



Chris Brogan Your resources*:
• Your slide deck should be on slideshare.net
Make this worth it for the audi- before you start so people can pass it along
ence. They talk when they see with their tweet.
that the results of such conversa- • If you’re being live streamed, share the link they
tion will benefit them as a group. can find you at. Again, this may get passed
along for context when they quote you.
• Since I talk about Twitter tools (and want to
promote my startup when I speak) I build a
Laura Fitton toolkit (see http://oneforty.com/pistachio/) so
it’s easy for them to check stuff out while I am
Some ideas... talking or get back to it later.
• Make it really good
-- funny, memorable,
and in particular:
quotable. Sound bites
and snappy quotes
Jan Schultink
I have no right answer for that. I guess it is not so
tend to get tweeted. much “talking about your presentation” but more
• Frame everything you “talking about your idea.”
say and show in terms of your audience’s point Good ideas will catch on
of view and needs. and spread. The community
• Make them look smart with the information that gets excited about a
they can pass on by tweeting. well-designed presentation
• Tell them what hashtag to use and lead by ex- just because of its design is
ample. Before your talk, tweet links to your re- relatively small.
sources* beforehand and use the hashtag that
you’re going to tell them.
• You can even pre-schedule tweets with your
main points to go up during your talk, or tweet
your main points right before you speak.


Key Findings

“Grasp the subject, the words will follow.”
- Cato The Elder


Takeaways the most from this tactic, I would recommend
telling attendees that you’re planning to do this
Lee Odden and Nancy Duarte both mentioned us- ahead of time, and if they follow you it may be
ing soundbites during your presentation that have easier (and quicker) for them to just ReTweet you
been specifically crafted to be Tweetable. Sur- rather than typing out your Takeaways by hand.
vey respondents indicated that not only do these This should also address the “trying to focus”
soundbites need to be under 140 characters (and concerns voiced by some survey respondents
they should be even shorter to allow ReTweets) and Nancy.
but they also need to function outside of the con-
text of your presentation. These takeaway lines
should be self-contained and should not rely on Expectations
the reader being present at the presentation to Lee Odden pointed out a very interesting tactic of
make sense. writing wrap-up blog posts that include the best
Tweets and blog posts about your presentation, in
In the case study webinar I included lots of slides hopes that your attendees will see it and be mo-
with exactly these kinds of lines on them, I intro- tivated by the exposure to Tweet and blog about
duced them at the beginning of the presentation your future presentations. A significant percent-
as Tweetable (along with an exhortation to share age of survey respondents indicated they were
them with friends who could not attend), and on motivated to share presentation content by the
each takeaway slide I included a Twitter logo, a potential benefit to their personal reputation.
hashtag and my Twitter username. I was very clear
that I wanted attendees to Tweet them. I found that Over the past few decades, psychological re-
the number of Tweets generated by these slides searchers have been successfully experiment-
was significantly lower than the number of slides I ing with a behavior modification technique called
dedicated to them. expectancy manipulation. In some experiments,
subjects were given false experiences that con-
Nancy cautioned against making it too obvious vinced them they were more susceptible to hyp-
that they’re meant to be Tweeted and perhaps nosis than they really were, and subsequently,
that’s why they didn’t perform as well as I’d hoped. they scored higher on suggestibility tests than
In future research I’ll pull back on the overtness of they did before the experiences. Similar experi-
the calls-to-action. ments have been conducted with chemotherapy
and blood pressure patients.
The other interesting possibility that emerged from
this element of the research is that many more Without tricking your audience, if you can estab-
Tweets than I expected were in fact ReTweets, lish in their minds the expectation that sharing
and users who were ReTweeting had more follow- your content will benefit them somehow, you may
ers on average than the rest of the group. be able to increase the amount of sharing that oc-
curs. This is a longer term strategy than the others
It may be useful to use an automatic PowerPoint- investigated in this ebook, but potentially more
to-Twitter application like the SAP PowerPoint powerful.
Twitter Tools that will post messages to a Twitter
account when specific slides are loaded. To get



As an example alongside Lee’s suggestion, I no- Irving Kirsh, a researcher at University of Con-
ticed during the case study webinar that several necticut, recently completed research showing
attendees Tweeted they gained upwards of 30 that non-hypnotic imaginative suggestions work
or 40 new followers as a result of participating in just as well as suggestions given to subjects un-
the conversation. In future webinars, I’ll do well to der hypnosis. An imaginative suggestion is a re-
mention this fact. quest that a subject imagine a hypothetical sce-
nario is true. These suggestions can then affect
the subjective behavior.
Novelty A useful tactic for a presenter may be to frame re-
One of the most popularly cited motivations for
sharing presentation content, both by survey requests in an imaginative structure, or ask attend-
spondents and the experts I asked, was novelty. ees to imagine that Tweeting about a presentation
People tend to share things they’ve never heard got them more followers. More research needs to
before, and they tire quickly of things they’ve be done here to identify more subtle and appro-
heard a million times before. priate ways to leverage this.

A key element of novelty in this context is that
it is subjective novelty. You don’t need to be the Ingratiation
first human in all of history to say something, you Many survey respondents specifically indicated
merely have to be the first person your audience they were more likely to Tweet or blog about a
has heard say it. Therefore consider your audi- presentation if they liked the person giving it. They
ence’s experiences and context. also stated that the excitement and passion of the
speaker had an effect on their sharing behaviors.
An easy tactic to use when trying to “novel up”
your content is to apply a “new-old” lens to it. That Ingratiating yourself is a strategy to persuade a
is, take old content and put it in a new structure person based on their positive feelings towards
(the newest Romeo and Juliet movie is an exam- you. In the 2008 edition of Introduction to Social
ple of this) or take new content and put it in a new Psychology the authors highlighted two types of
structure (any time a song is rewritten with new ingratiation that may be useful to presenters: flat-
lyrics, this is occurring). Research published in tery and self-presentation.
the Management Science journal in 2002 showed
that advertisements that contain both new and By flattering your audience you may be able to
familiar elements are best at capturing attention positively influence their feelings about you and
and memory retention. encourage them to share your content. An espe-
cially useful form of this tactic may be to tell at-
tendees that you know they are smart. Thus the
Compliance points of your presentation they like enough to
In my case study webinar, I asked people to raise Tweet or blog about will be the points you know
their hands, which was a very simple act without are good.
much positive or negative impact for the individu-
al. I found that 5.6% of people Tweeting about the
webinar said they had raised their hands, dem-
onstrating that some percentage of attendees are
open to requests made by a presenter.


Self-presentation is the process of presenting the Taking the us-vs.-them idea a step further, we have
audience the version of yourself they most want a viral idea structure in the form of the villain-is-
to see. In a 1966 book on ingratiation, Edward wronging-the-victim. To create your own version,
Jones observed that for persons of perceived you merely have to replace the villain, wronging,
high stature (such as those on stage giving a pre- and victim.
sentation), modesty and humility work best.
An example is “Pollution is killing the dolphins.”
The required elements are a victim your audience
Evangelism will identify with or believe is worth saving and a
7% of survey takers said they were motivated to villain that is bigger and more powerful than any
share presentation content to help spread the individual listener. If someone wants to help save
word about a cause or idea they believed in and the victim, they’re not powerful enough alone to
cared about. In my research about other types of defeat the villain, so they need to recruit others to
social media, I’ve found two related tactics that I their cause, thereby spreading your message for
believe can be helpful here: us-vs.-them, and the- you.
villain-is-wronging-the-victim.

Us-vs-them is one of the oldest marketing tricks
in history, and one of the most powerful. Apple Pauses
is the quintessential modern example. They’ve When survey takers told me they didn’t Tweet or
always defined their brand and their products as blog about a presentation, the reason they gave
the enemy of some large, heartless corporation. was that they were too busy trying to pay atten-
In the 80s it was IBM, and more recently, it has tion. Both Nancy Duarte and Brett Tabke men-
been Microsoft. By picking a common enemy or tioned this issue as well.
threat (it doesn’t have to be a person or company,
it can simply be an idea), you can unify the audi- When you’re giving a presentation and deliver-
ence. ing a Tweetable soundbite, be aware of this and
give the audience a few moments to process what
they’ve heard and Tweet it. It can also be helpful
to let your listeners know that you’ll be doing this.


Presentation Design

“Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual.”
- Edward Tufte


The central prescription for presentation design
from my data is simplicity, and from that I can Noise Elimination
recommend 5 specific guidelines: 1 thought per If you’ve followed all of the above rules you’ll prob-
slide, no bullets, the 30pt rule, noise elimination ably find yourself with slides containing minimal
and strong imagery. text. Many great presentations like this include
striking imagery to accompany the ideas. Ensure
that your slide isn’t noise, glance at it for a quick
1 Thought Per Slide moment and ask yourself if you could figure out
The most logical extension of simplicity in presen- what it’s about in a few seconds.
tation design is the idea that each slide should
only have on thought or takeaway point. You don’t Without excess noise, your slides will allow your
have to spell that thought out in words on the soundbites to stand out. Don’t make your audi-
slide, you can represent your idea with an image. ence spend time trying to decode your presenta-
tion to find the Tweetable bits.
This guideline allows your audience to fully di-
gest each point of your presentation, decide if
they want to Tweet it and gives them time to do it. Strong Imagery
Lumping lots of ideas into a single slide doesn’t Presentations that follow these rules are typically
do any of them justice, let your ideas breathe. made up of short text overlayed on top of large
images. The images should reflect and not up-
stage the point you’re making when the slide is
No Bullets displayed. Charts and graphs work well, so add
Many a painful presentation consists of slide after them where ever you can (especially given that
slide of bullet points. As described by Duarte, this many survey-takers said they often shared bits of
is a document, not a presentation. If you’re look- data).
ing for a file you can email to your colleagues, go
ahead and use bullets, otherwise avoid them. Photography for your presentations can be found
from a variety of sources, my two favorite are
Bullet points make it far too easy to shoot your Flickr and iStockPhoto. Click “advanced search”
presentation in the foot. Your audience can read on the Flickr homepage and scroll to the bottom
your slides faster than you can say them, and they of the page. Select the checkboxes to search only
won’t have enough time to Tweet about each point. Creative Commons photos. These will be photos
you’re allowed to use with attribution (I recom-
mend the photo’s Flickr username in small letters
The 30 Point Rule at the bottom of the slides). You have to pay for
Guy Kawasaki tells us of a 10-20-30 rule for giv- photos on iStockPhoto.com, but they’re of very
ing presentations to VCs. The last part is that you high quality and don’t require attribution.
shouldn’t use any font size lower that 30 points
and it is this one that I find useful for presentations
beyond VC situations.

By enforcing a big text guideline on yourself, you
can force yourself to make simple slides, without
a ton of text. In fact, it’s pretty hard to write over
140 characters on a single slide in 30 point text. http://www.HubSpot.com

Using SlideShare

“Say not always what you know, but always know what you say.”
- Claudius


SlideShare.net is the YouTube of presentations, description, and include as many tags as are ap-
speakers can upload their slides to the site, which propriate. Don’t forget to use whatever keywords
then allows users to view them and embed them your target audience may be using to search for
on their own sites. Viewers can also post links to your content.
the presentations to Facebook or Twitter, turning
the slides themselves into potentially viral content.
Permissions
SlideShare asks if you want to allow viewers to
Upload BeforeYou Speak embed or download your slides. Unless there is
Many expert speakers recommend uploading some extraordinary reason to do otherwise, you
your slides to SlideShare before the presentation should allow this. Let your viewers spread your
and then including the link in your slides when you content for you.
give your talk. Especially if you present dense in-
formation that makes your audience want to fol-
low up later (remember the “note taking” motiva-
tion), people will often ask if you can send them
your slides. Giving them a SlideShare URL makes
it easy for them to share your presentation right
after hearing it, when they are most excited about Social Networks
it. There are LinkedIn and Facebook applications
that allow you to include your presentations on
your pages on those social networks. Take advan-
Titles and Tags tage of these. The people you’re already connect-
When uploading your slides, you should take the ed with on LinkedIn and Facebook are likely to be
time to fill out the descriptive fields SlideShare al- your biggest evangelists, so arm them with every
lows. Clearly title your presentation to effectively one of your presentations.
explain what it is about and why it may be relevant
to someone seeing only its title. Write a detailed



Using the SlideShare API, I was able to gather in- generally have many more slides than presenta-
formation about over 5,000 presentations tagged tions full of text and bullets, and the SlideShare
with marketing or social media. Analyzing these data seems to support this type of design.
slide shows, I found one major pattern: there is a
correlation between number of slides and number We should also remember that each of our points
of views. Longer presentations tend to be viewed needs to be understandable when taken out of
more. context. Attendees don’t Tweet soundbites that
won’t make sense to their followers who aren’t in
If we use the above mentioned presentation de- the audience, and slides on SlideShare are stand-
sign tips, we’ll have slides with one Tweetable and ing on their own, without you explaining them.
pithy thought on each. Presentations of this type


About HubSpot About the Author
HubSpot is an inbound marketing software pack- Dan Zarrella is an award-winning
age that: social, search, and viral market-
• helps you get found online by more qualified ing scientist at HubSpot, an in-
visitors, ternet marketing software com-
• shows you how to convert more visitors into pany based in Cambridge, MA,
leads, and author of the O’Reilly Media
• gives you tools to close those leads efficiently, book “The Social Media Market-
• and provides analytics to help make smart ing Book.“
marketing investments.
Dan has a background in web development and
Based in Cambridge, MA, HubSpot can be found combines his programming capabilities with a
at http://www.HubSpot.com passion for social marketing to study social media
behavior from a data-backed position and teach
To start a free trial of HubSpot software today, go marketers scientifically grounded best practices.
to: http://www.hubspot.com/free-trial/


The Science of Presentations

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