Go Green with Virtual Handouts

Did you ever stop to think about how much paper is used in presentation handouts?

Over and over I have seen speakers labor under the false assumption that they must put some sort of paper in their audience’s hands. Half the time, they simply print out the material on their slides. Since they want to make sure they don’t run out, they print extra, unused copies–and then the copies people do receive get trashed or lost almost immediately.

Not only is this an atrocious waste of paper and simply inefficient, but it is quite costly. When using a print shop, a one-sided black and white page may cost about 15 cents per page. A color page may cost 50 cents to $1. A ten-page color handout is already $5… per person. Then think about how quickly that adds up when you prepare 20 copies… 50 copies… or 100 copies. Even if you print it yourself and just pay for toner and paper, it is still expensive.

Printing double-sided saves a little paper. Printing in black and white saves a substantial amount. What’s even more effective is asking yourself “of all the material I could print, what would really benefit the audience to hold physically in their hand, instead of just distracting them from my presentation?” Often the real value is in your presentation, what you say and do, or in your slideshow–meaning that the handout may simply be a distraction.

That isn’t to say you shouldn’t have a handout. But instead of distracting people during the presentation, using paper and paying for printing, what if you had resources for after the presentation? Just give your audience a link to an electronic resource. That electronic resource can then have, or be:

• your homepage
• links to other sites with additional information
• an online store with your product
• a PDF with additional information you didn’t have time to cover
• a video
• a slick-looking  zooming Prezi presentation
• a screencast, such as one using Screenr, so you can show a recording of demonstrating something on your computer with your voice over it
• audio recordings – perhaps ones they can load onto their MP3 player and listen to at leisure
• a forum they can post messages to, interacting with you or the rest of your audience
• a call to action: to sign up for an email list, make a change in their lives, etc.

You can provide more information in more interesting ways electronically than on paper. If nothing else, just make a quick Google Doc to type information into, or just provide links to your other resources. If desired, you can even allow other people to edit it and add their own suggestions and comments.

If you want to provide a short, memorable link, bit.ly is recommended. Create a free account, sign in and shorten a link. It will give you a short link with random letters and numbers, which is great for Twitter (being very terse) but not easy for humans to remember. Click the “customize” link and then you can change it to any name available, so pick something short and memorable, like “bit.ly/buyfromme” or “bit.ly/hummusrecipes”.

Tip: I do recommend using all lowercase URLs when you intend to say the URL to people. They are case sensitive, so “bit.ly/hummusrecipes” is not the same as “bit.ly/HummusRecipes”. If you do use capitalization, make sure people know they have to type it in with the exact same capitalization.