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Back to #SOTD!
Yesterday I wrote my analysis of the storytelling techniques used by Prof. Poast in his tweet thread on the Russia-Ukraine war.
Today, let's look at the next set of tweets from that thread.
Take this sentence: "Russia is already coming up short on material, manpower and money"
How would you present this message on a slide?
Perhaps like this:
That's your standard company slide - share ALL the information in one chunk so that the busy executive can absorb everything at once.
But it doesn't work that way. When we see a large block of text, our mind tells us: "Too much reading. Eyes get tired. Mind overload. Abort, ABORT!"
What would be much better is if you can release the information in smaller bite-sized chunks - making it easier for the audience to 'get' each chunk (and the overall message) faster.
For instance, this would be a better way to present that slide.
Which is what Prof. Poast essentially does in his tweet thread.
I call it the 'comic-strip-style' slide.
It breaks down a bunch of content into smaller 'panels' on the slide and then - this is important - has a clear message on the top of each panel, supported by a visual/other piece of evidence just below it. Think of it as mini slides within a slide.
There are three features of such a slide:
Here is a great real-life example of a 'comic-strip' style slide. This is from an Accenture presentation to the United States Postal Service. Note how the relatively long message on top is broken down into 3 panels with bite-sized chunks of information in each.
And here is example # 2 (this one I had created for a presentation many years back):
#SOTD 23
Story techniques used by Prof. Poast in the next three tweets from the thread.