A story template helps you organize and outline your thoughts for a talk before working with PowerPoint.

I recently created a talk on the value of Twitter to businesses, and worked through the sequence of Act I: the Setting, Role, Point A, Point B and Call to Action slides in PowerPoint.

Act I sets up your story in PowerPoint with key elements to identify the setting, main character and conflict. Sound familiar? We all learned this in grade school English. The easiest one: main character. That would be your audience.

Setting
Setting doesn’t point to the location of the presentation. Instead, it answers the audience’s questions of “Where am I, and when is it?” Where can be a profession, industry or topic of discussion.

I asked myself, “If a business is thinking about using Twitter, what would bring it to this point?” Several answers came up:

Many businesses are using Twitter.
Business needs to grow market with online marketing.
Traditional marketing tools don’t work well anymore.
Business wants to connect with prospects and customers.

I picked, “You’re currently losing touch with your market and customers.” That’s a big pain point that social media can solve because of its ability to bring people together. “Currently” identifies the when and “market” is the where. The rest indicates a problem that everyone will agree on.

Role
This one answers, “Who am I speaking to here?” Since the audience is losing touch with customers using traditional means of marketing, it now wants to know how to reconnect with its customers, prospects and market. Thus, the role is “You want know how to reconnect with the market and customers.” “Know how” is where Twitter comes in. If I leave it off, it leaves the door open too wide.

Point A
This one answers, “What challenge do they face?” Using the Setting and Role as helpers, Point A for my PowerPoint presentation is, “Your business will slow down if you don’t connect with the market.”

Point B
Next is “Point B” (not the “Call to Action”). You determine what the main character wants to be once its problem is solved before you figure out what the audience can do about it. So where does the audience want to be in this story?
“Reconnect with clients, market, industry and prospects by joining and tracking conversations.”

Call to Action

So how do I help the audience go from the current problem of the business slowing down due to lack of a connection with the market to the solution of reconnecting with the market through conversations? What’s the gap between Point A and Point B? This is the time to build up drama and tension.

The way to solve the lack of connection problem is to add Twitter to the business. The official Call to Action is, “Follow the three parts of the presentation to add Twitter to your business.”

That closes Act I to set up the story and answer the old question, “What’s in it for me?” Now the PowerPoint presentation has five headlines. When you arrive at this point, you might ask others to review and improve the headlines.

So here’s your chance — how can these five PowerPoint headlines improve?

Setting: You’re currently losing touch with your market and customers.
Role: You want know how to reconnect with the market and customers.
Point A: Your business will slow down if you don’t connect with the market.
Point B: Reconnect with clients, market, industry and prospects by joining and tracking conversations.
Call to Action: Follow the three parts of the presentation to add Twitter to your business.