Every good presentation is a result of following 3 S’s:

Steps

Simplicity

Story

Steps give your presentation a smooth flow – a result of proper planning, preparation and practice.

Find out about your target audience and customise your presentation for them. Decide what information to present, then prepare any visuals, handouts, materials, and equipment that you will be using.

Familiarise yourself with the content by practising your delivery and timing. Any instructions should be clear, concise and specific. Remember to allow time to carry out your instructions.

Simplicity ensures that your session is understandable but not ‘dumbed down’, challenging but not too difficult to grasp.

To do this, use:

1) Short sentences

2) Everyday words instead of jargon or technical terms

3) Personal pronouns, like ‘I’ and ‘you’

4) Active verbs instead of passive verbs

5) A little humour

Story helps make your presentation memorable. After all, we are all wired to pay attention to (good) stories.

A typical story flow goes:

1) Connect (with audience)

2) Create (scenes in audience’s minds)

3) Characters

4) Crack

5) Conflict

6) Climax

7) Clearing (of prior messes)

8) Conclusion

Apart from full-fledged stories, you can share anecdotes and human interest stories. Just make sure that they are relevant to the topic of your presentation.