Speaking in public is a great way to promote a service business. It gives your audience the chance to experience you and a get a taste of what you could do to help them. It boosts your reputation and helps you reach a wider audience.

Unfortunately, I see too many people give presentations who have had little or no training in how to do it effectively. You do need to know what you’re doing, or you will come across as un-professional and possibly even do damage to the reputation you’ve spent time and effort building up.

So when a tool comes along that can really help people to give better, more effective talks, I’m going to share it. A couple of years ago I wrote about a brilliant technique that I learnt – you can read that blog again here. I’ve been using this technique effectively since I learned it and still think it’s great. However, I’ve recently been introduced to another great tool – Magic Notes.

Michael Trigg has written a book called ‘Blow Your Own Horn’ and one of the many gems I picked up from his book is creating Magic Notes. I gave a talk a couple of months ago at rather short notice, so just wrote some notes onto some A4 sheets, I rehearsed the talk so thought I wouldn’t need the notes, but when I did lose my place, it was really difficult to find my way back.

As I was due to give the same talk last week, I took my written notes and turned them into Magic Notes. As you can see from the picture, you group ideas onto one single sheet, making them much easier to see. In my introduction I tell the audience about the three topics we’re going to cover and each one has a colour, I used that colour to highlight each section and the key points I needed to cover within it. Within each section I drew symbols to remind me what to talk about, as well as writing key words.

Between each section there are signposts. This helps me to pause, to remind the audience what we’ve covered and to tell them what’s coming next. It gives them time to take in what you’re saying too.

And the result? I gave the talk last week and it went much better than the first time around. I could easily glance at my notes to see what came next. The images prompted me when I needed them; I kept to time and even managed to finish off the talk in good style!

So the next time you’re preparing to give a talk, think about using Magic Notes. Michael goes into much more detail in his book and it is well worth a read!

How do you use presentations to promote your business?