This week we’ve partnered with Mindjet to bring you a special post on mind mapping your presentations. For more great tips on mind mapping your presentations check out the Mindjet blog and then build your own presentation mind map with a Mindjet free 30 day trial.

Mind mapping is a cutting-edge visualization process, where thoughts and ideas are organized into a non-linear diagram.  At the heart of each mind map is a central theme, with supporting topics and sub-topics logically surrounding it.  Mind maps are commonly used for brainstorming, decision making, problem solving, and planning.

When designing and building a presentation, a mind map can be a highly valuable tool.  Presenters often find that their slides are more thorough, more complete, and more compelling when they begin the creation process with a mind map.

How can a mind map help you?

1. Improve Brainstorming
Imagine you’re sitting down to create your presentation, with just a few brief, high-level thoughts in mind.  The next step is to expand on those concepts, fleshing out your content so that it provides the level of detail the audience requires.  Mind mapping can facilitate this process, giving your imagination a boost and allowing you to evaluate or “test” different approaches or ideas before you commit them to writing.  This will help you rapidly turn a simple concept into a comprehensive outline for your slide deck.

2. Better Organize Content
With a mind map, you can more readily see how the items you plan to highlight during your presentation relate to each other.  This will help you better determine the best structure for your deck – making it easy for you to see how your slides should flow, and in what order key ideas should be discussed.

3. Beat “Writer’s Block”
Building a slide deck can be a challenging task, even for the most inspired presenters.  In addition to how your content should flow, you also need to consider how to most effectively convey key points visually (should you use text, graphs, images, etc.?) and orally (what are you going to say?).  Presenters often get so overwhelmed, they find themselves staring at a blank slide, with no idea where to start.  But, those who use mind mapping firmly believe that it can make you more productive and more creative.  As a result, the entire process will be much faster and easier.

4. Avoid Gaps
As thorough as you think your slides may be, there will likely be pieces of important data missing, leaving your audience with questions or seeking further details.  Because a mind map displays ideas visually (and many believe, more intuitively than traditional text outlines), it makes it easier to see where information gaps may exist, or where specific ideas may need to be expanded on.

5.  Keep the Objective in Mind
It’s easy to lose sight of your ultimate goal when you’re building your slide deck.  But, with a mind map that puts the core objective in the center, “keeping your eye on the prize” at all times – whether it’s to educate, to close a sale, or to prompt the audience to take specific action – will be easy.  So, you’ll be able to ensure that your entire presentation ties directly into your overall mission.

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

The “close” – those last few minutes during which you summarize your key points and wrap up your thoughts and ideas – may be the most critical portion of your entire presentation.  It is your chance to go out with a bang.  Handle it right, and you’ll leave a lasting impression on your audience.  But botch it, and your entire presentation will fall flat.

The close may be the most critical portion of your entire presentation.

Here is some helpful advice for developing a “killer” presentation close:

1. Keep It Brief
The primary objective of your close is to reiterate the most important points of your slide deck in the most efficient, yet unforgettable way possible.  Studies show that your audience is more likely to retain what you say in those last few minutes, than they are any other section of your presentation.  So, try to keep it to as brief as you can.  Stick to three or four points at the most, to make your summary easy to remember.  Any more than that will dilute the impact.

2. Tell a Story
Stories, jokes, and anecdotes not only lend credibility to your content, they also help make it more memorable.  Tell a story that’s interesting and exciting as well as relevant to your presentation.  Or share a quote from a famous person that ties directly into the topics you’ve spoken about.  When they remember the story, your audience members will instantly recall the key points that relate to it.  An added benefit?  They may even repeat the story to others, further spreading your message.

3.  Don’t Forget the Call to Action
In many cases, you want your audience to take some sort of action once you’re done presenting.  Perhaps you’re a sales rep looking to convince a prospect to make a purchase.  Or, maybe you’re a trainer teaching a basic course, hoping that attendees will sign up to take the more advanced class.  Whatever your goal may be, be sure to remind audience members what the next steps are during your conclusion.

4. Stay on Schedule
Be respectful of audience time, especially if you’re presenting to business professionals with busy schedules.  If you run late, you’ll wear out your welcome and aggravate your attendees.  Even worse, it may completely ruin your last few slides, since people will be checking their watches, wondering if they’ll make it to their next appointment on time, etc. – instead of listening to what you’re saying.

5.  Lead Up to Your Ending Gradually
Audience members expect your presentation to include a summary.  So they tend to be more attentive when they think it is about to end, so they catch any key points they may have missed earlier on in the session.  Don’t end abruptly.  Drop subtle hints to let attendees know that you are nearing the conclusion, so you’ll have their undivided attention when you wrap-up.

Find more great tips and resources at the Presentation Skills Launch Pad.

A couple weeks ago, the Fifth Annual Small Business Summit took place in New York. The event is for small business owners and entrepreneurs looking to meet the challenges of the new economy head-on. The theme of the “Summit was Business & Technology: Strategies for the New Economy.” We were thrilled to be awarded as one of seven HOT TECH DEMO winners, honoring the ‘Hottest Technologies for Your Business’. It’s an honor to be recognized among innovative companies challenging the status quo and transforming the way business people work.

We also had the opportunity to speak with Ramon Ray, the well-known small business evangelist, editor of SmallBizTechnology.com and founder of the Small Business Summit. Ramon has a deep understanding of how technology is enabling small businesses to operate more efficiently and accelerate the growth of their business. Ramon has been making technology recommendations to business leaders over the past decade and I was very encouraged to hear his enthusiasm for SlideRocket and support that our web based presentation technology with analytics and management can be the killer sales and marketing tool.

The majority of the 40 million presentations that are delivered daily are from small business leaders.  Turning their presentations from lifeless ‘digital brochures’ (PowerPoint) to dynamic web content that can be centrally managed and measured can make a material impact on the effectiveness of their sales and marketing efforts. It’s great to have Ramon’s support in our quest to reinvent presentations.

Videos, audio clips, images, and other multimedia elements are a great way to improve the visual appeal of your presentation.  There have been many studies that have shown that the use of multimedia in presentations can have a significant positive impact on audience attentiveness and information retention.  However, when used inappropriately, multimedia can have the opposite effect, serving as more of a distraction than an enhancement.

Use of multimedia in presentations can have a significant positive impact on information retention.

However, when used strategically, multimedia can take your presentation to a whole new level, helping you to more effectively reach your goal – whether it’s to educate and inform, close a sale, or prompt your audience to take specific action.  Here are some of the best ways to use multimedia:

1. Make Sure It’s Relevant
Sure, it’s important that the multimedia elements you use be exciting and entertaining.  But, choose very wisely.  Entertainment value alone is not enough, be sure that the photos, videos, or sounds you include are directly related in some way to the content you are presenting.

2. Keep It Professional
Avoid home videos recorded on your Webcam or other types of amateurish content, as it will likely hinder your credibility and prevent your audience from seeing you as a seasoned professional. There are a variety of resources available that offer high-quality multimedia elements for licensed use.  So, unless you’re an expert on the creation of multimedia content, it’s best to leave it to the pros.

3. Variety is Key
Video clips, no matter how entertaining, will get dull when used over and over again.  It’s best to incorporate several different multi-media elements into your presentation – using each just once or twice – to keep things fresh and interesting throughout.

4. Think Beyond “Live” Presentations
Yes, multimedia adds tremendous punch to speaker-led sessions.  However, it also extends the value to those presentations that are not live, where it is much harder to engage the audience and keep their attention for an extended period of time.  For example, self-running presentations at kiosks, or those that are available on-demand via the Web would be far more compelling if they incorporated multimedia aids, than if they relied strictly on bulleted slides with pre-recorded voice over running simultaneously.

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