Luke Goetting, founder of Puffingston Presentations, presenting at ContentATX2 at Conde Nast, sponsored by Silicon Hills News.

Here are some of the biggest mistakes people make when creating and giving presentations, according to Luke Goetting, founder of Puffingston Presentations, in Austin.

“It comes down to respect for your audience,” Goetting said. “Would you want to sit through this presentation that you’re about to give?”

  1. Failure to Strategize the Big Picture – Presenters don’t take the time to strategize the big picture – they just start creating. And that results in a fragmented, disjointed experience for the audience.

  2. Competing with the Slides – Slides are a standalone resource. Creating slides that are complementary and help further the point vs. a substitute for hearing the presenter speak.

  3. Too Many Lists and too Much Text – When it comes to visuals, the biggest mistake is treating a presentation like a document. Lists, full sentences, full paragraphs – something the audience will never be able to sort out when they are seeing it on screen. Driving a visual emotional connection with your content is what should be done, and it’s so rarely done. I partially blame corporate templates because you are put in a box from the start.

  4. Bad Visuals – The difference between a photo that is a half a screen and a photo that is a full screen is immense. You get much more immersion in the content when it’s a full-screen photo. So not paying attention to the visual emotional part of it.

  5. Too Much Jargon – Corporate jargon, tagline, and branding. People are afraid to go outside the template set up by companies.

  6. Jamming too Much Into a Presentation – Less is more absolutely when it comes to in-person presentations.