How to Plan Presentations Using Mind Maps
If any of you read Dumb Little Man, a popular productivity blog, you might have read my guest blog entry on Wednesday entitled "5 Steps to Planning an Effective Presentation." One of the points that I touched on in that article was how mind maps are a simple, yet effective tool for planning presentations.
I've written before about using mind maps to organize my thoughts, and using them to organize what you're going to say in a presentation is more of the same.
Why Spending 5 Minutes Outlining Your Presentation is Worth It
As I said in the DLM article, you can be the most charismatic presenter in the world with the world's most well-designed PowerPoint slides, but if you don't have
- a clear idea of what your objectives are,
- a clear idea of what you're going to say,
- and a plan to achieve those objectives using your content
then you're going to be just as ineffective as that guy who does nothing but plaster bulleted lists all over his slides.
Mind maps are easy and simple - it takes five minutes to draw one. If you're going to invest a lot of effort into giving a presentation, why not spend a few minutes planning your presentation with a mind map?
I had to give a big, scary marketing proposal last week here at SmartDraw - you know what I did? I started with a mind map; I used it to outline my goals and the content I wanted to cover. But where was my plan? I used a flowchart to storyboard my presentation, and I'll telling you about that experience next week on Working Smarter.
How to Do It
I'm going to use a mock-up marketing presentation as my example.
1. Start with the Goals and Main Pieces of Information
I start my mind map with five nodes, one of which is the goals and the other is the background. Every presentation has to have goals: that's non-negotiable. Presentations aren't supposed to be corporate performance art - they're meant to communicate a common message to an audience. Your goals define what you want your audience to get out of it. Do you want them to make a decision, to learn something, or what?
The next important part of the outline is the background; a presentation is just like any good story - you need to have some context.
The background for this marketing presentation might consist of what the company has tried before, what's worked, what hasn't, where the market is going, what our customers are saying, etc... The background basically takes old information and uses it as a basis for all of the new information that you're going to present later.
The other three bubbles (Targeting Strategy, Outreach Strategy, and Content Strategy) consist of the new information that I'm going to present.
2. Flesh Out Everything
The next thing consist of simply fleshing out everything: the goals, the background, the new information, and everything else. Pretty simple. I didn't go all-out on some of the details because I wanted you all to be able to read the text, but you get the idea.
3. Color Code Areas of Emphasis
Some aspects of the presentation are more important than the others, like the goals. I use color just to make the most crucial elements stand out - that way I can take those points into more consideration when I storyboard my presentation.
Ideally you want everyone to remember everything, but realistically you have to pick a few key areas of emphasis and really hit those points home. Here's what I did for my mock marketing presentation:
And that's pretty much it - I have everything I need to start storyboarding my presentation. I know what content I want to cover, I know what I want to accomplish, and I know what parts of my presentation are more important. The best part? It only takes a few minutes to draw the mind map.
Want even more information on using mind maps to plan presentations?
Here's some additional information for your consideration if you want to learn more about using mind maps to plan presentations:
