If you’re a presenter you’ll be aware that presenting to an audience that Tweets is a tad disconcerting.  The sea of dropped heads looks as if they’re checking emails or texting on their mobiles rather than being engaged by what you’re presenting.  This is especially poignant if the presentation topic is Social Media or other backchannels.

Olivia Mitchell is a presentations and public speaking specialist and I’ve gleaned some amazing info from her Tweets and Blogs over the past year or so.  Her Twitter ID is @oliviamitchell. One particularly exciting nugget of information I gleaned recently was the fact that you (as a presenter) can Tweet whilst you are presenting with slides.  I can see you frowning at the screen… yes, it is possible.

Did you know that you can programme PowerPoint or Keynote to do it for you? Here’s an extract from Olivia’s eBook ‘How to Present with Twitter (and other backchannels)’ explaining how to do it:

‘…Add-ins have been developed by Timo Elliot of SAPWeb2.0 for PowerPoint and by Ideo Labs for Keynote.

All you do is write your tweet in the Notes pane of the slide.

Enclose it in these tags: [twitter] at the beginning and [/twitter] at the end.

When you click to that slide (in Slideshow mode) the Tweet will be automatically posted.’

You can download a free copy of the entire eBook from Olivia’s website here.

Be sure to download the Add-ins first and heed the warning about rehearsing with a copy of the PowerPoint/Keynote presentation WITHOUT the Tweet tags though…

Hope this helps!