How to create fascinating SlideShare presentations

Here at Fascinate headquarters, we do love a good SlideShare presentation. And yesterday, Inc. Magazine blog had a wonderful post about a few of the presentations we’ve created, including the very first one we ever released:

The SlideShare medium is a simple, zesty way to fascinate your audience. To help you create your own captivating presentations, here’s a quick peek at our SlideShare development process:

1. Start with a strong core concept. As with any presentation, it all starts with the idea. (Duh.) To translate into a great SlideShare, your concept must be robust enough to merit 15 or 20 pages of description, yet simple enough to be contained within a succinct, one-minute-ish presentation. Keep that baby high on quality of content, but short ‘n sweet in execution. In our example, “Meet Your 7 Fascination Triggers,” we started by setting up the concept itself with a straightforward question:

2. Spend extra time to find un-lame visuals. Reject the stock photography clichés. Refuse to give in to the hackneyed metaphors. (Yeah, this means no more stock photos of men holding briefcases running across a finish line). Find images that not only feel fresh and vibrant, but also strategically accentuate your point. For instance, I love finding simple icons that instantly convey a concept, so that the meaning shines through:

3. Don’t always use images that are “see-say.” Your images should literally re-state your point, but rather, add depth and meaning. For instance, when talking about a “fork in the road” …don’t actually show a photo of a fork in the road. To do this, can’t simply search on the stock site for a literal interpretation of your concept, or the site will be more than happy to serve up more lame puns like “fork in the road.” Rather than using search keywords “fork in the road,” get a little more conceptual, and search for words such as “decisions” or “choices” or “complexity.”

When communicating “Trust,” we wanted an image to convey how the Trust trigger makes us feel. So we found an image to represent the emotional comfort of loyalty and familiarity:

Don’t be afraid of irony, or of asking the viewer to do a little thinking. Images should help complete your point. For instance, when we wanted to communicate the concept of “Vice,” we created an image that playfully pointed out an everyday example:

4. Take a moment to craft your typography. You don’t have to go crazy with mad design skillz, but don’t just cut and paste your unformatted text from a Word doc. Take a moment to check line breaks and basic placement on the page. Since your SlideShare won’t have music or spoken words, your text bears greater responsibility of visually communicating the tone and emotion of your idea.

For instance, to further convey the concept of Power, designer Faith McCormick made the words feel powerful on the page:

5. Establish a pattern, then disrupt it. I like establish a consistent visual pattern in the first few pages of a SlideShare, then add energy and surprise by breaking the pattern. For instance, after several pages of white backgrounds and cleanly-silhouetted images, the next breaks the pattern:

6. Almost done! Now wrap it up with a call to action. At the end of your SlideShare, your viewer should want to learn more. (After all, you’ve just fascinated them!) Let them know what action you intend them to take, followed by a page of your contact info. I ended this SlideShare with a tempting, but not in-your-face, call to action:

Whether you realize it or not, you’re already using these seven triggers. The question is, are you using the right triggers, in the right way, to get your desired result? This book will show you.

Many thanks to blogger Curt Finch for highlighting our SlidesShares. He even includes his own nifty description of the 7 fascination triggers:

According to Hogshead, there are seven universal triggers: lust, mystique, alarm, prestige, power, vice, and trust.  As I come across day-to-day problems with technology or corporate culture, I keep thinking of the fascination triggers and how knowing a person’s triggers might aid in solving the problem.  To be familiar with a person’s fascination triggers seems to be the key to unlocking an incredible sense of satisfaction with that person.

Yep. Exactly. In fact, we couldn’t have said (or shown) it better ourselves.