Adding a PowerPoint presentation to your talk and spending the time to create and practice it can increase your confidence and help get your message across to your audience.
Well-designed PowerPoint presentations give life to your talk by adding a visual aspect that people can connect with. The printed word, photos, visuals, graphs, icons, and more reinforce what you are saying.
Both you and your audience want your PowerPoint presentation to be engaging, to the point, and effective.
1-Planning ahead gives you the time you need to look for quality photos, create infographics that simplify any data you are presenting, and decide on the best colors, fonts, and themes that will connect with your audience.
Begin planning your PowerPoint presentation ideas as you are planning your talk.
However, do not create your slides until after your talk is fine-tuned and ready.
Instead, jot down ideas of visuals, stories, videos, and demonstrations you may want to include in your presentation.
2-Using a consistent theme for each of your slides creates continuity throughout your entire presentation for the audience and makes your message more memorable.
That means using the same color scheme, fonts, formatting, icons, logos, and types of images and backgrounds throughout your presentation.
While it’s important to stay consistent, you do still, however, want to alternate slide layouts to prevent your audience from predicting exactly what’s next and possibly tuning out your presentation.
This creates a polished look to your creative presentation and makes it easier for your audience to focus on the content instead of being distracted by slides that don’t seem to relate to each other.
A quick and easy way to create a consistent theme for your presentation is to use Powerpoint templates.
PowerPoint has dozens of presentation templates you can choose from within the app. You can also access many more templates online for a fee.
PowerPoint presentation templates include colors, fonts, layouts, background styles, effects, and sometimes content that let you begin creating your slides immediately. Or, you can start with a blank slide and create your own theme.
3-use bullet points on your slides, it lets your audience visualize key points from your verbal presentation. It also gives you speaking cues, in case you lose your train of thought.
Bullet points should be short and easy to scan. As a general rule, keep your bullets to four per slide and eight words per bullet point.
This will keep your audience engaged with you and what you are saying instead of reading your slides and tuning you out.
Your talk is the main event, and your PowerPoint presentation is there to complement what you are saying. Your slides shouldn’t do the talking for you.
Use bullet points to list the main points and highlight important information that you want your audience to remember.
4-Use text that is pleasant to look at and easy for your audience to read when you are giving your presentation. Font styles such as Arial, Times New Roman, or Helvetica are simple and easy to read.
If you want to use fancier text, save it for larger headlines in your presentation. And remember to be consistent across your slides.
Make your font big enough to be read easily in a large room. A font size of 30-point or higher is optimal.
Avoid backgrounds and fonts that are complementary colors. For example, red and green are complementary colors, so red font on a green background would be very hard on the eyes.
Dark text on a light background, or vice versa, has the best visibility.
Play around with bold, underline, italics, and colors for added emphasis on keywords or phrases. Use these features strategically — instead of overusing them — to help your audience focus on what you want them to gain from your presentation.
5-There is no need to have fancy borders or too many images, gifs, or animations in your PowerPoint presentation. Too much to watch on one slide can be distracting.
Limit yourself to what is most essential for the audience to understand your message.
As a general rule of thumb, try to include just one idea per slide. This will likely mean you’ll have more slides, but it will help your audience follow along and increase their understanding.
One feature that PowerPoint presentations offer is transitions, such as fading out of one slide and into the next or moving words across the slide. The rule of thumb here is simple transitions are the best. This keeps the focus on your talk and not on your PowerPoint presentation.
Consider making some slides just a photo with no text at all. One word or phrase on a slide can make it stand out so your audience knows it is important.
6-Quoting a phrase spoken by a respected or influential person can lend credibility and familiarity to your message.
Inspirational quotes also help set the mood and tone of your presentation. They can provide encouragement, calm nerves, add humor, and give your audience ideas they can use to make improvements.
Since quotes are usually short, they are easy to remember. Use them to help your audience take action or drive home the main message of your presentation.
7-One of the most important elements of writing a good talk is to know your audience. The same principle applies to crying your PowerPoint presentation.
To help you craft a creative presentation, choose images, colors, themes, and so on that would appeal to your audience and avoid anything that would trigger the opposite effect.
This requires researching your audience. Get to know what is important to them and what their background is. Knowing age, gender, educational status, career choice are helpful. What experiences have they had that are related to your presentation?
Personalize your PowerPoint presentation to the expectations and tastes of your audience.
In the same regard, add your personality to the presentation as appropriate. Sharing personal experiences helps the audience connect with you and build trust.
8-Some PowerPoint templates focus on a specific industry, topic, or theme. Search the web for some examples of PowerPoint ideas in your field and browse the choices and templates available to see if one will resonate best with your audience.
Within the PowerPoint app, you can search for keywords, such as education, business, sports, travel, healthcare, medical, history, and many other topics related to your talk. Use these presentation templates to your advantage to create crisp, clean, engaging slides.
Along with PowerPoint ideas and templates, you can also access ready-made themes. These consist of a background and complementary fonts and graphics.
As you are searching for a presentation template, browse PowerPoint’s charts, diagrams, and infographics available through the app. These are contained within certain presentation templates to give you customizable layouts for charts, tables, timelines, and more that you can use to make your data come alive.
9-Don’t waste your audience’s time with fluff and nonsense. Use your slides for quality information and only use them to enhance your presentation.
Less is more. The more words and fluff on a slide, the more chances your audience will have to tune out. You don’t want that.
Limit your slides to the most important points of your talk and slides that will help bring clarity to what you are saying.
10-Stay engaged with your audience by resisting the temptation to read from your slide. Practicing your PowerPoint presentation in advance will make this easy.
Your presentation should help to supplement what you have to say and provide emphasis on your key points.
Elaborate on the information in your slides instead of reading them word for word. Keeping your bullet points short will help ensure you engage instead of read.
With each bullet point or main idea, you can elaborate by telling an interesting story, giving an example, telling a joke, or doing a demonstration.
Even if you have an inspirational quote, memorize the quote so that you are maintaining eye contact with your audience instead of gazing at your slide. This will help the audience connect with your and your message even more.
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