Have you ever had the feeling that your current presentations are a bit stale, or you realize that it’s been a hot minute since you created a new one? Keeping things fresh is the way to keep those bookings coming—and while you needn’t feel you have to come up with an entirely new presentation every year, we’d suggest looking at what you’re offering every couple of years to consider any necessary upgrades.
So, that being said, what if you’re staring at your computer screen and drawing a blank? What if you’re just not inspired to create something new. What then? We say: Get inspired! Here’s how we do it.
8 Ways to Find Inspiration for New Presentations
- Update an existing presentation. This is low-hanging fruit, gang. If you’ve been giving the same presentation about growing roses for the last five years, give it a makeover! Update your images, add in a few new tips, highlight new rose varieties, and have a special section on a rose garden you recently visited for inspiration.
- Solve a problem. Are you asked the same questions over and over on social media or in presentation Q&As? That’s a consistent problem your audience is having, so consider developing a new presentation on it.
- Refer to your blog posts. Do you blog? Take a look at your top five blog posts to see what is the most interesting to your readers, then choose one and create a presentation around it.
- Create a “Before and After” presentation. Let’s say you present mostly about pollinators (ways to protect them, ways to attract to your garden, IDing them, etc.). How about a presentation that helps your audience create their own pollinator garden by showing them a before and after project or a step-by-step project? You’ll need new images, of course, but you likely already have many on hand.
- Make your garden travel count. Like many garden communicators, you’ve likely visited dozens of public and private gardens over the years. Create a presentation that highlights your favorite ones, with tips and takeaways from each one.
- Take a point in an existing presentation and blow it up into its own new presentation. If you have a presentation on creating wellness in the garden, for instance, and one of your sections talks about doing yoga outside, how about building a new presentation on a “yoga garden”? Talk plant selection, flooring, accessories, maybe even a suggested yoga flow.
- Highlight any new passion you have. You might be known for your presentations on deer-resistant gardening, but if you have a budding passion for garden-to-table cooking, garden photography, or garden statuary, those are great presentation topics! Invite your new audience (or potential audience) to come along with you so they can also be inspired by your new garden passion.
- Take a topic that’s related to one you already present on. If you talk about growing cutting flowers, you could create another presentation about how to arrange them or how to use them in garden events. And many cutting flowers are also pollinators, so you could also then create a talk about pollinator gardens.
We’d love to know how you get inspired—tell us how you get your best ideas, how you were inspired to create one of your best presentations, and how you keep it all fresh!
