How To Get The Best Out Of Powerpoint Presentations Without Overwhelming Your Viewers

One of the mot important points to remember while making Powerpoint presentations is not to let Powerpoint overwhelm the audience and dominate with its many gimmicky features. Instead, you should master the technology and use it as a mere tool which works to your advantage, so that the contents of your presentation are something which the audience will remember and act upon.  The key to make a Powerpoint presentation to work for you is mastering the subject you are going to present, keep it simple, consistent and meaningful. 

The first thing that you have to make up your mind is the entire purpose of your presentation. Is it to entertain, sell or convince. That will decide whether your Powerpoint slides need to look light or serious. Since Powerpoint allows you the flexibility to modify the look and feel of your presentation, knowing your customer and your goal is critical. 

If you notice carefully, all great public speakers through out the world keep their message simple. No jargon, no acronyms and no high-flying concepts which literally go over people’s heads. They may admire you for your knowledge but unfortunately they will not understand anything! Similarly in Powerpoint presentations the whole idea is to keep it simple in look as well as content. Never use more than two types of fonts at any point of time or more than one graph or chart per slide. Do not use more than 4 to 5 bullets in a slide and more than 6 words per bullet. Many of us make the mistake of putting an entire concept under one bullet. This makes your audience to read it rather than paying attention to your talk. Instead simply put some key words or key phrases which trigger your thought to talk about the topic.

Powerpoint has many standard templates and it is up to you to choose one or create one of your own. The internet is full of such free templates which you can use for your business presentation, if you want it to look smart and professional. Slide transitions and animations of Powerpoint more often than not distract the audience. These are hackneyed and really over-used. Again, depending upon the situation and your primary goal of the presentation, use such effects sparingly. This is applicable for any over-use of sound effects too. It is a great attention deviator. 

If there is anything called a visual cliché, it is the clip art used by many in their Powerpoint presentations. If you are keen on showing graphics, you can down load many graphics free from the net or take from scanning a photograph. Another popular mistake which people do with their presentations is to incorporate charts and graphs which are photocopied from printed materials. These turn out to be of very poor quality and ultimately serve no relevant purpose as mostly they are illegible. 

One of the biggest advantages of Powerpoint presentations is that it is compatible with any type of computer and extremely flexible to use. You can make many last minute changes in the text as well as other components of your presentation.

So with these several do’s and don’ts surely you can make your next Powerpoint presentation a roaring success and achieve whatever purpose you had in mind.