Creating Powerful Presentations
You know that huge presentation you have next week… the one where you plan on showing that glorious 80 slide PowerPoint that you spent four hours on? Please stop right now and save your audience the headache they’ll have after your meeting, by making sure you follow these tips on creating a powerful presentation.
Presentation Pro Tips:
Less is More: I know you’ve probably heard this a million times, but it’s important! Less is always more, when it comes to the amount of content on each slide. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience with tons of text (this leads to disengagement and people checking their watches to see how much longer it is until lunchtime). It’s best to take large chunks of information and break them up into smaller consumable pieces. Use bullets or include only a few sentences per slide to clarify your main talking points.
Less is also more when it comes to the amount of slides you should have. By all means, use as many slides as it takes to get your message across clearly, but keep in mind that the more slides you have it’s likely that your audience will start to become impatient and potentially irritable.
Remember the Rule of Thirds: The rule of thirds is commonly used in photography, but can easily be applied to the layout of your presentation slides. Imagine two horizontal and vertical parallel lines making a grid on the slide. You want to place your content where the lines intersect to create the most visual interest. This also applies to any photos you add to your presentation. Templates are great, but to make your presentation stand out try using the rule of thirds to create visual interest on each slide.
Compliment or Confuse: Ask yourself what your visual aid is doing for your pitch or meeting. Is it complimenting what you’re telling your audience or is it confusing them by adding too much information for them to digest every time you click to the next slide? It’s hard to do two things at once, such as listening to a speaker and reading a slide for additional information. The brain will essentially pick one over the other, so showing only one photo or video on a slide to help clarify your points is effective, because it breaks up the monotony of having several slides with the same text layout.
Get the Job Done: One thing that sometimes gets overlooked is the type of presentation software that you use. Determine what kind of presentation you’ll need and who you’ll be speaking to. There are tons of different choices for creating a truly unique presentation that will wow your audience. Stay tuned for my next post on different types of presentation software to use!
Content contributed by Valyn Reinig, IASourceLink. IASourceLink is a proud affiliate of U.S. SourceLink, America’s largest resource network for entrepreneurs.