PowerPoint – Top 10 Tips for Presenters

Could our current fixation on the PowerPoint presentation inspire a future generation to take a critical look at this turn-of-the-century social convention? Will our approach to this style of presentation be worthy of social comment? In the same way that today’s graduates laugh at how we used to send memos through internal mail, will our business successors marvel at the convention that is PowerPoint?

If the answer is “no”, then I hope it’s because the convention is short-lived; that somehow we get rid of the idea that because they can create some text-rich slides in our notebook they cantherefore present at will. The one does not follow the other. Giving an effective PowerPoint slide-based presentation involves much more than just creating the slides themselves. There are 10 main tips that I follow:

1. Don’t forget the basics. As a speaker, our role is to entertain, motivate, inspire, persuade, cajole or inform the audience. No matter the sophistication of the software at our fingertips, the primary role we play is no different. If the software gets in the way of our primary function, we shouldn’t use it. All speaker techniques and effects are still fully applicable when using PowerPoint.
2. Go light on the bullet points. PowerPoint’s defaults can push us into one of several presentation slide formats (text and content layouts) that feature bulleted lists. If we use them we must be careful. Bulleted lists should summarize, in one, two or three words per bullet, each of the points we want to highlight. When we fill each bullet with words we run the risk of exhausting our audience. The lists themselves should also be short. Just a few bullets. Not a whole slide full of them.
3. Be careful with the data. Yes, we need to show how we reached a conclusion or recommendation, but we don’t need to show all the available data. An avalanche of data projected on the back wall of the meeting room is simply not going to read. Our audience wants to look for trends. They will look for anomalies and want to know the causes. Our audience is not in a position to digest large amounts of data and we must respect that.
4. Use only one word where two might suffice. Editing our material is a must. We need to keep our material succinct, readable, and indicative of our main points so our audience can take it all in. PowerPoint lends itself to excellent graphics, image display, and video. These are the most powerful parts of the package and we should try to use them more as speaker stands. However, whatever we do, we shouldn’t be tempted to use copy/paste to insert text snippets from another document into the PowerPoint presentation slide layout. It will not work.
5. Don’t read the slides. PowerPoint tends to encourage us to read our own slides, whether from the laptop screen or the larger projection screen. Both are inappropriate. They indicate that we are using the slides as a crutch. Reading from the screen also ensures that we do not have eye contact with the audience and risk blocking the view of the audience. But worst of all, reading our slides suggests that we don’t know our own material, aren’t sure of its content, and haven’t rehearsed. The public respects the experience and authority of its presenters; reading our slides does not suggest either.
6. Reference the points on the slides. We clearly use PowerPoint slides for a purpose. Either to summarize our main points or to illustrate them. Given the purpose, therefore, it is up to us to refer to these points once they are illustrated. Try to break. State the point, look back at the audience, and make the reference. Doing this ties our talk into our slideshow, helping our audience digest the main points.
7. Use the technique of creating slides. This is a gem of a PowerPoint that is underused. It deserves more attention, especially since it lends itself to an interactive approach in our presentation. Using slideshow techniques, we can reference a point on the display screen, we can ask an open-ended question to the audience, and then we can all witness an answer appear on the screen. This could be a word build or a graphic display. The options are virtually limitless. All settings are accessed through the slideshow, animation scheme settings in PowerPoint. Again, the cautionary note, we must not let technology take over, but there is a great opportunity here.
8. Use the black slide technique. We often need to take stock during a presentation, to confirm where we are or the direction we are headed. Right now we need the total focus of our audience on us, the speakers. We don’t want a distracting slide on the display screen. It’s tempting to project a corporate logo or title slide. These are fine, but they can still be distracting. Instead, we should use a black slide (Format, Background, Colors, Apply to Selected). The black slide gives the impression that we have turned off the projector or the laptop. Naturally, our audience shifts their attention to us. Once our point is made, we can continue with our slides. The technique also works at the end of a presentation.
9. Use fonts and font sizes carefully. PowerPoint will always default to a selected font and font size when we prepare a slideshow. Our task is to stick with the default arrangement or use a better option for the job. When we use alternative fonts and font sizes, our drivers must be: readability and consistency. Some fonts are made to read from a distance, others are not. Fonts can indicate structural changes, such as headings, subheadings, and content. But when applied indiscriminately, they signal nothing more than disaster. Excess capitalization is also a huge hit to readability. It seems that the human race is not designed to read in CAPITAL LETTERS – the case sensitive approach is best. PowerPoint will warn us when we’re going too extreme in our selections, but many of us have already turned off the Office Assistant!
10. Take it easy with the images. Slide color schemes can actively hinder the readability of our PowerPoint slides. Reading red or green text at a distance is difficult. Plan to use dark text colors (black or blue) on a white background if you can. Or, when using corporate color schemes with a template format, aim for crisp white lettering on a dark background. We noted earlier that PowerPoint is great for incorporating high-quality images (not necessarily clip art!) into our presentations. These should be used whenever possible. But be careful not to overdo the explosion effects in the slideshow menus (Slide Show, Slide Transition and Slide Show, Animation Schemes).

Any slide show can distract the audience from your speaker. But if we stick to the basics of making a presentation and note the advantages and disadvantages of PowerPoint, we can use this package to its full effect. Our slides are not a crutch, we still need to fully prepare. Our slides are not designed to be read by us, the speaker, we still have to rehearse. And our slides must be consistent with our primary goal of entertaining, motivating, inspiring, persuading, cajoling or informing. If we take note of these principles, our audience will not smile at our PowerPoint convention. But they will respect our experience and authority as presenters.