7 Tips to Create Powerful Keynote Slide Decks

Pow­er­ful Keynote slide decks that get your mes­sage across effec­tive­ly are more impor­tant than ever, with the rise of online pre­sen­ta­tions and remote events.

Our sto­ries are wired to teach, empow­er, and leave a lega­cy through our knowl­edge. When done right, Keynote pre­sen­ta­tions and brand sto­ries will leave a last­ing impression. 

How­ev­er, too much sto­ry can also over­whelm, bore, or con­fuse —so any­time we make pre­sen­ta­tions for our brand, we want to focus on expe­ri­ence rather than infor­ma­tion over­load. We often become so excit­ed about a par­tic­u­lar sub­ject, that we end up shar­ing too much infor­ma­tion in one slide. So how can we cre­ate a pow­er­ful Keynote?

7 Tips to create powerful keynote Slide Decks

1. Start with a Plan

Before you pur­chase a tem­plate online, hire a design­er, or design your own Keynote tem­plate,  define what you want to accom­plish with each pre­sen­ta­tion. The three things you want to define are:

• Your top­ic and main key points
• How to explain it in sim­ple terms
• A list of con­tent you will need to sup­port your nar­ra­tive (ie. videos, pho­tos, graph­ics, illus­tra­tions, info­graph­ics etc.) 

2. Write Your Copy

Your copy and the design of your Keynote pre­sen­ta­tions or tem­plates need to work hand in hand. Write your con­tent before you pur­chase a tem­plate online — you want to know what your copy will entail before you do, so you don’t end up wast­ing time fig­ur­ing out how to fit copy into the design. 

Keep in mind that the copy on your pre­sen­ta­tion is there to guide the ideas, not be the pre­sen­ta­tion. Oth­er­wise, peo­ple will spend their time writ­ing notes from your copy, instead of lis­ten­ing to your presentation. 

Too much copy makes a dif­fer­ence — you can see that in the dif­fer­ence between the slide above. The first one is crowd­ed with too much info, where­as the sec­ond is clean, and denotes key prompts for your talk­ing points. Chances are, your eyes pre­fer the sec­ond, and that is all you need to know about how it will affect your viewer!

3. Set a Template Structure 

Set­ting a tem­plate struc­ture will allow you to focus more on the con­tent deliv­ery than hav­ing to refor­mat your Keynote every time you cre­ate a new pre­sen­ta­tion. Plus, this helps you estab­lish brand con­ti­nu­ity. 

Start with mak­ing a sim­ple list of the slides you know you will need for any type of pre­sen­ta­tion you do. Think of this as your Keynote tem­plate blueprint!

4. Avoid Using Bullet Points

f you are using bul­let points today, you can say good­bye to them. They are dis­tract­ing — and that takes away from the val­ue in your infor­ma­tion. Instead, try some­thing like this:

Cog­ni­tive sci­en­tists say we can only focus on 3 key points at a time. Try to keep each slide to 3 points — max­i­mum 5.

5. Use Visuals to Support Your Narrative 

When it comes to visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the expe­ri­ence your view­ers have with your con­tent is cru­cial for them to remem­ber what you said. 

Our brains are wired to con­nect with visu­als first — espe­cial­ly though col­or. When you deter­mine what visu­al con­tent you need, not only will you save time (and headaches), but your Keynote design process will have far more clar­i­ty than when you start with a tem­plate first and make your con­tent work with that.

6. Establish Content Hierarchy 

Deliv­er­ing val­ue doesn’t mean show­ing an entire sto­ry in one slide. When you cre­ate con­tent hier­ar­chy, you improve a viewer’s expe­ri­ence.  If you aren’t sure about how you can estab­lish this, think of what we call the High­rise Effect for Hierarchy.

This means struc­tur­ing your con­tent through text and its font size to fit the lev­el of impor­tance: the high­er the “peo­ple” are in the high rise, the greater their impor­tance, reflect­ed by their larg­er font size. 

7. Design a Template to Fit Your Needs

Design­ing an Apple Keynote pre­sen­ta­tion that fits your needs allows you to con­vey your mes­sage effec­tive­ly while rais­ing brand aware­ness. Done right, it will save mon­ey and time. If you aren’t a design­er, it can feel over­whelm­ing — but it doesn’t have to be so! We’ve got you cov­ered with Nicte’s LinkedIn Learn­ing Course that gives you the tools you need to achieve your pre­sen­ta­tion goals. It’s called Cre­ate Pow­er­ful Pre­sen­ta­tions in Adobe Keynote.

Con­nect with us below and we’ll send you addi­tion­al resources to give you peace of mind as you cre­ate stand­out Keynote presentations!