…Use e-tools to improve a presentation

By Bill Pfleging

The standard slide presentation is a necessity in business -- but so 20th century. Here's how to caffeinate your presentations and keep your audience awake.

1. Upload it onto Slideshare Slideshare is the YouTube for PowerPoint presentations, and it allows you to access them through the Internet. You can offer your slides as a download for the audience to reference or to print out later after the talk. “Takeaways are always useful, both for the audience's benefit as well as making you more memorable,” said Belinda Fuchs, owner and founder of Boston-based OwnYourMoney, which offers financial seminars and courses. “I keep my PowerPoint really light and make it a point to keep all my presentations interactive and very engaging.”

2. Instantly poll with PollEveryone This service brings immediate real-time polling into play during your presentation. Using the PollEveryone web site, you create a question or a survey beforehand and give the SMS code out at the beginning of the talk. Then, when you open the poll at the appropriate point in the talk, each audience member can text a response on his/her cell phone. The results can be displayed within minutes on a PowerPoint slide, using bars, pie charts or many other formats.

3. Use the micro-blog Twitter Give out your Twitter name at the beginning of a presentation and invite your audience to send questions or comments during your talk. “During the presentation, people can Tweet me a question, and the talk stays fresh and interesting,” said Maurice Ramirez, president and founder of High Alert LLC, a disaster-preparedness consultancy in Florida.

View the Tweets on a phone or hand-held as you're talking. Using a Twitter app called Twitter Presenter, you can quickly select Tweets appropriate to the talk. Twitter Presenter will then display each one in large text like a slide, as a part of the talk. This makes for an interactive session rather than just a one-way talk and allows the audience members to feel far more connected and involved in your discussion. “I love the banter of an interactive presentation,” said Ramirez.