Create Engaging PowerPoint Presentation With These Powerful Tips
PowerPoint presentations are dull and boring. Mostly because people think of their slides as notes and not visual messages that can empower others.
But when you just treat your presentation as a note, you can’t have a lasting impact during the presentation. People are simply going to ignore the message and yawn during the meeting.
What is the alternative to these dull and boring presentation slides that no one bats an eye on.
We scoured the web for the best presentation tips to help you make your slides attractive and comprehendible. Here are some of the best tips for PowerPoint presentation success.
1. Start With The Outline
Presentations don’t need words but visuals. Many people make the mistake of adding too many words to a presentation which eventually kills its meaning. That’s not how you should proceed with things.
Instead, start with an outline that you can use as a start for explaining your topic.
2. Use Visuals Instead Of Text
Anything that can be explained with text, should be explained with text. If you are not adding too many visuals to your presentation, it won’t stand out among the crowd.
Think about it! People have too many diversions. Their smartphones, the conversations happening around the room, other random noises, and even their own minds that are thinking on their own. All these are your presentation killers. The only thing that can help you make your message move across is the use of powerful images or visuals.
3. Keep Focus On Your Presentation, Not On The Slide
Many people have stage fear. While that is okay, it is not going to help you win at your presentation. You have to practice multiple times to get rid of this stage of fear. If you keep too much focus on slides, people are going to look between the images, find mistakes, and see if there is something vague happening on the screen. ‘Hey, he forgot to put a comma after that sentence!’
These random thoughts occur when the presenter is not confident about this presentation. To counter this, move around the room. Speak to the public by looking at them. Use your hand gestures to make them understand your presentation.
4. Presentation Should Be Visible From The Far End Of The Room
If your presentation is not seen by the people sitting at the edge of the room, they are less likely to even listen to you. In many halls, people at the far end are not able to see what is happening on the screen. So, their interest levels decline. You don’t want that, do you? So keep your fonts large and use contrasting colors so that everyone can see the slide from the end of the room.
5. Use A Consistent Format
Many beginners make the mistake of making their slides too colorful. While colorful slides may fascinate children, they don’t help adults. Unless you are making a presentation for toddlers, make sure that the format of the presentation is consistent and to the point.
Each presentation template should be designed with the audience in mind. What type of colors do they prefer? What type of audience is it?
If the audience is made of business professionals, your presentation colors should also reflect corporate colors.
6. One Topic Per Slide
It is crucial that you only focus on a single topic per slide. People often forget that they can have more slides if they want to discuss a topic and put that on the same slide. This breaks the flow.
A single slide should discuss the topic in-depth. This way, you will have more time to prepare, and the audience will follow along with your speech.
7. Rule Of Three
Aristotle made a simple rule of three for making topics more understandable. He said that each topic should have three ideas to explain it. The same goes for presentations. Each slide should have only three ideas around the topic. This makes the topic simple to comprehend by the reasons and easy for you to explain as well.
8. Avoid Animations
While animations make the presentation look good, they are not always the right way to present. First of all, animations confuse the viewers. They also make the coordination of the presentation with the viewer a lot more difficult. So, avoiding animations, especially for business-focused presentations is the best way to move forward.
9. Add Points That Support Your Speech
Your presentation should be written after you have written your speech. When you are speaking to your audience, you should have the right cues available with every sentence where you have to transition from one slide to the other. If there is a mismatch, viewers are less likely to understand what you are telling them and this will eventually kill the purpose of the presentation.
10. Don’t Distribute Copies Of Presentation
Many presentation trainings recommend distributing slides at the start so that the audience knows what the presentation is all about. However, when you do that, viewers stop listening to your speech and instead look at the slide copies available to them. Moreover, the printed copies rarely match the presentation that you have prepared for your company up-front.
11. Your Tone Matters
Have you heard the quote? ‘It is not what you say, it is how you say it.’ The quote explains the crux of presentations clearly.
Using all of the resources at your disposal to get your message through is part of making your business presentation captivating.
Changing your intonation and tone of voice as you speak aids in making the information and points more remembered.
Bottom Line
Creating and presenting your presentations is an art and it comes with practice. You can’t become a pro at a presentation in the first go. Therefore, make sure that you follow the tips offered above while citing your study and practicing your presentation.
The more you practice your slides the better. But at the same time, you should also practice your delivery and tone. The more you practice, the calmer you will be when presenting your speech. The more you practice, the more self-assured you will become.