Putting the Power Back Into PowerPoint Presentations

Chances are good you give PowerPoint presentations. Chances are even better you are doing it wrong. You are not to blame though. Your peers offer poor examples of how to leverage the power of PowerPoint. This article is about how to help you put the power back in PowerPoint.

As a Professional Speaker and Executive Presentation Coach, I have seen PowerPoint used for good and for bad. When used effectively, it is visually stimulating, communicates only the most important points, and makes complicated ideas more digestible. When used poorly, PowerPoint is a distracting crutch that actually diminishes the audience’s retention of your ideas and concepts. Poor PowerPoint is information heavy and wordy.

The changes you need to make will take the focus off the screen and place it on the connection between you and your audience. All presentations are emotional at some level. Therefore, your goal as a presenter is to transfer emotion. Even highly technical presentations aren’t about the numbers alone. They are about either how you feel about the numbers and/or what you are or aren’t going to do about the numbers.

Make your PowerPoint presentations more interesting, more informative (less is more), and more powerful by following these strategies…

PowerPoint should be used only when you need to add visual support (pictures, graphs, videos, etc.) to your presentation.

If you are going to give out copies of your PowerPoint slides to the audience, wait until the end of your presentation.

Go to http://www.istockphoto.com and http://www.canstockphoto.com to purchase engaging images as cheap as $1 per image.

Fonts should be at least 30 point and never more than 20 words per slide.

No more than 15 slides. Ever!

Use dark backgrounds and light text (or vice-versa) and never use red or yellow text.

Never read what is on the slide (unless it is a very short phrase).

Type “Really Bad PowerPoint Seth Godin” into Google to access a free PDF with more tips on improving your PowerPoint use.

Continue to visit this blog to access more useful presentation strategies. Call us at YourNextSpeaker and let us put the power back into all your presentations. 405.216.5050.