Andrew Hennigan's Blog

Most of the people I watch doing sample presentations in workshops and coaching do very well in the technical aspects of presenting. But one area where nearly everyone could improve is in the basic foundations that hold the presentation up; You can still take care to master techniques like how to point correctly, but you can make a much greater difference by mastering three key concepts that will define the direction of the presentation and its alignment with your goals. Learn to manage these basic concepts effectively and all the rest will either come by itself or be easy to add. Without them you risk making a superficially elegant show that doesn't have any impact. These key concepts are: Purpose , Focus and Structure 1. PURPOSE: EVERY PRESENTATION MUST HAVE ONE . Like any other communication, a presentation should start with a purpose. If you don't know what you want yourself how will your audience know? Even if you do have a clear idea it can be hard to communica

Over the years I have worked in media relations and later also in freelance journalism. Now I have realized that one of the best ways to understand how a journalist works is to try it for yourself, and doing freelance work I have discovered some tricks that will be useful for anyone in media relations who hasn't tried it yet. Many journalists today rely on social media and social networking sites to some degree, even if it just to find sources. By being present on these sites you have an advantage over those that don't. But apart from that there are some techniques you can use to make sure that your company is more likely to get coverage. Some are pretty obvious -- like following journalists that work in your field -- but some are not so obvious. Here are three of them. 1. SCAN TWITTER FOR KEYWORDS AND HASHTAGS . Like many others I often tweet when I am writing about a subject.  If you work in that field you might see this tweet, respond to it and soon you will be settin

One simple way to make your business presentations look more professional and polished is to throw away the pointer. There are good reasons for this. First of all just holding a big stick or one of those telescopic radio antennas makes you look like a Victorian-era schoolteacher. Using a laser pointer is perhaps slightly better but I would still not recommend it because the little spot always wobbles and this has the subtle effect of making people feel you are uncertain. Worse still is to use your hand, because in a typical meeting room this means walking into the beam of light from the projector. This is distracting because you will have light on your face and also cast a shadow on the screen, covering the content you are trying to highlight. Luckily there are many ways to eliminate the need for a pointer. Use these techniques effectively and you will only ever need to point in rare cases where there is some confusion. DESIGN FOR CLARITY .  By far the easiest way to avoid the n

How do you get passion into your speeches, lectures and presentations?  And is it something you need to be born with or is it learnable? These are questions I am asked often in workshops and coaching sessions for speaking and presenting.. Perhaps some people are born with more innate passion that others, and perhaps some show their passion more than others, but the answer is yes, it is something that you can learn to do better. To do it well enough to impress people takes practice and commitment, but you can make a difference just by following these three methods: CREATE CONTENT TO BE PROUD OF . One of the easiest ways to feel good about what you are saying is to have content that you are actually proud of. You will need to make an effort to develop, verify and structure your content so this can hardly be called a short cut, but it works. When you have very strong messages then you will automatically feel more confident and this will be obvious to your audience. This means t