Powerpoint Presentation Skills Go Beyond Just Presenting

 Powerpoint, undoubtedly has become an indispensable part of any presentation. The skill to develop a Powerpoint presentation is easy to learn, the slides are easy to update and carry around and is known to hold the listeners’ interest. While Powerpoint, as a presentation tool is easy to learn and operate, you must know how to use the tool to your maximum advantage; otherwise Powerpoint will rule your presentation while you will be a mere bystander. For this, you need to master some of the Powerpoint presentation skills.  

But before you master the skills, you must be aware how Powerpoint can make or break your presentation. One of the most common tendencies of Powerpoint presenters is the overuse of transitions and super-effects. Even if it is for fun, try and interchange your seat with one of the members of the audience – see for yourself how ludicrous and distractive the whole thing looks and sounds. If you wish your audience to pay their entire attention to your message, cut short the gimmicks and concentrate more on the contents of your presentation.   The use of in-built clipart can take away any semblance of professionalism from your presentation. If you really wish to enhance your message through visuals select one of your own. There are plenty of shareware pictures and graphics available on the net. You could think of using them instead of stagnant and over-used clipart visuals. 

Try and avoid using standard Powerpoint templates. Unless you are making a presentation to pre-school children, who are yet to lay their hands on a computer, your otherwise worthy presentation can get ruined with the over-used and incompatible designs and colors. Again the net is a good resource to hunt for some amazing template graphics. 

Agreed you have a lot to communicate. But do not make the mistake of putting an entire story on a slide. Slides which are over-burdened with text have a major problem. Your audience will concentrate more on reading what there is instead of listening to you. Instead limit the slide content to a few key words, which could be part of what you wish your audience to remember as take-home message. These keywords are your trigger to talk about the issue. Most of us make the critical mistake of duplicating graphs and charts straight from printed material. The problem with putting such cluttered visuals on the Powerpoint slide is that the figures are too small and the legends are illegible. Size in a Powerpoint presentation is important – remember your audience is not sitting at reading distance, as if they were reading a document. Use large font size in your slides and stop copying graphs from other printed documents. 

The other frequent mistake most of us make is to read from the slide. It is important to remember that Powerpoint slide presentation skills include making it an interactive session. If you can read from the slides, so can your audience. It is as simple as that. Instead, look straight into the audience and communicate – keep the Powerpoint slide as a mute witness to the whole presentation and not dominate.

The last but never the least important is to keep a technology back up. even in the most advanced countries of the world, there could be a technical snag which can cause major hiccups to your presentation. A back up CD of your presentation would not be a bad idea. 

In summary, it is important to note that learning Powerpoint presentation skills is not just about how to make and present slides, but there is a lot to learn about preparations before and actions during presentations.