Having Trouble Putting a Presentation Together? Try Storyboarding
Last week (July 23rd) I had the opportunity to guest blog on Dumb Little Man, a terrific personal productivity blog. I wrote an article called "5 Steps to Planning Effective Presentations" and one of the points I covered was the concept of "storyboarding."
What is Storyboarding?
Storyboarding is a simple method for planning the sequence of a presentation. After you determine what you're going to present and what your presentation goals are, use a flowchart to plan how you're going to present that information in order to accomplish your goals.
Here's an example of what a storyboard looks like:
The Benefits of Storyboarding
The benefits of storyboarding are straightforward:
- They help you guarantee that the information you present will eventually lead you to your goals.
- They help you order the information that you're going to present and they make it easier for you to determine what you're going to say and when you're going to say it.
- A storyboard also makes it easy to start planning slides - all of the boxes on the storyboard are going to need to go into the presentation and so all you have to do is figure out how to spread them throughout a PowerPoint presentation.
- They save you time by eliminating guesswork.
A quick FYI, I had to give a big marketing proposal a few weeks ago and I ended up with a three-page-long storyboard; the marketing plan I proposed was pretty large and I used a storyboard similar to the one in this example. I personally found it to be very helpful in planning out my PowerPoint presentation (40 slides or so) and I think that taking a few minutes to put together a storyboard will save most people a lot of time.
If I hadn't have made the storyboard I probably would have spent a lot of time editing slides, moving them around, constantly tweaking the presentation in order to make it flow better. Thankfully, my storyboard eliminated all of that guesswork.
How to Do It:
I'm going to use a presentation for unveiling a new marketing plan as an example.
1. Plan Your Presentation's Content Using a Mind Map
If you haven't read my earlier post, "How to Plan Presentations Using Mind Maps," then you should give it a read. It explains why it's a good idea to plan your presentation's content using a mind map.
Once you have your presentation's content and goals figured out then it's much easier to storyboard - you're going to need to know what you're presenting (mind map) before you can start planning how you're going to present it (flowchart.)
2. Lay Out the Primary Topics
Take you "big picture" items and string them out horizontally first - these are your primary topics and you're going to want to use these as the foundation for your storyboard. Here's an example:
3. Start Fleshing Out Individual Topics
Take your initial list of big picture topics and then start fleshing out each one of them individually. In this example I've fleshed out the first two topics.
4. Flesh it Out Until You're Done
Again, here's the image from the beginning of this entry. Just flesh out everything until you reach the end of the line.
Once you're finished with that you're going to want to start building your PowerPoint presentation. I typically give each item on the storyboard its own slides and sometimes multiple slides, but you don't have to do that if you can fit multiple items onto a single slide without "cramming" them in.
Want more information on storyboarding presentations with flowcharts?
Here's some additional information for your consideration:
