2. ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE, MAKE YOUR POINT
• Your presentation is over and people are walking out of the
room. What do you want them to be thinking about? Make
sure you say that first and last.
• You're the one telling the story, not the slides. Look at every
element on each slide as a graphic--text and images alike.
Avoid complete sentences: use bullet-point lists of single
words and short phrases.
3. BASICS OF SLIDE CONSTRUCTION
• Remember the contrast: dark on light, light on dark.
Stick with two or three font styles and sizes, none
too small for people in the back row to read. No
italics, no serifs, and no blinking--ever. Use drop
shadows and other text effects sparingly.
4. BASICS OF SLIDE CONSTRUCTION
• Play it safe by embedding everything in your
presentation: fonts, images, other graphics. This will
increase the size of the presentation file, but today's
hardware should handle it. Besides, 16GB USB flash
drives cost less than $20. (See below for instructions on
compressing embedded videos and other graphics in
PowerPoint 2010.)
5. BASICS OF SLIDE CONSTRUCTION
• Keep diagrams simple. If a chart or table has more than a
dozen elements, break it up or consider printing it and
distributing it as a handout or posting it online.
• Timing is everything--keep a brisk pace, but not too brisk. The
key to maintaining the right pace is practice, practice, practice.
Avoid slide fatigue by averaging two or three slides per minute
at most.
6. USE VIDEO AND IMAGES THAT ENHANCE YOUR
MESSAGE
• One of the maxims of show business is show, don't tell.
Images--whether still or moving--capture an audience's
attention and can add impact to any presentation. But
they can also serve as a distraction, diverting people's
attention away from the points you're trying to make.
7. USE VIDEO AND IMAGES THAT ENHANCE YOUR
MESSAGE
• PowerPoint 2010 adds new features for editing images and video.
Two of my favorites make it easy to remove the background from
photographs and to compress embedded images and videos.
Unfortunately, you can't insert a link to video on a Web site in the 64-
bit version of Microsoft Office, as is explained on the Microsoft
Answers forum. You have to download the file and embed it in the
presentation.
8. USE VIDEO AND IMAGES THAT ENHANCE YOUR
MESSAGE
• Cropping the background out of a picture is almost automatic
when you use PowerPoint 2010's aptly named Remove
Background feature. Simply select the image, choose the
Format tab under Picture Tools on the ribbon, and click
Remove Background in the Adjust section to the far left.
9. USE VIDEO AND IMAGES THAT ENHANCE YOUR
MESSAGE
• You'll probably have to manually tweak the background crop
by dragging the borders of the portion of the image
PowerPoint selects for you, and by using the Mark Areas to
Keep and Mark Areas to Remove buttons. The feature can't
match the precision of Adobe Photoshop and other image
editors, but for most presentations, it does well enough
10.
11. TURN THE POINTER OFF
• During a presentation, it is very annoying to have the pointer
(the little arrow) come on the screen while the presenter is
speaking. It causes movement on the screen and draws the
audience attention from the presenter to the screen. The
pointer comes on when the mouse is moved during the
presentation. To prevent this from happening, after the Slide
Show view has started, press the Ctrl-H key combination.
12. TURN THE POINTER OFF
• This prevents mouse movement from showing the pointer. If
you need to bring the pointer on screen after this, press the A
key. If the pointer does appear during your presentation, resist
the urge to press the Escape key – if you do, it will stop the
presentation and drop you back into the program. Press the A
key or Ctrl-H to make the pointer disappear.
13. DON'T FORGET THE DRESS REHEARSAL
• Even if the presentation runs without a hitch back at the
office or in the hotel room, always test it beforehand at
the actual venue on the hardware you'll use to present
it. Think about the people sitting in the back row--and
the front row and on either side of the room, for that
matter.
14. DON'T FORGET THE DRESS REHEARSAL
• Sometimes the most thorough preparations won't
prevent disaster. Always have a backup plan in
mind if the presentation goes belly up. You may
actually have to make eye contact with the
audience. This is when your rehearsals in front of
the mirror will pay off.
15. SOME MORE TIPS ON HOW TO MAKE AN EFFECTIVE
PPT.
• Learn how to give a good speech without
PowerPoint. This takes practice, which means
giving speeches without PowerPoint. Believe it or
not, public speaking existed before PowerPoint,
and many people remember it as being a lot better
then than it is now.
16. SOME MORE TIPS ON HOW TO MAKE AN EFFECTIVE
PPT.
• A few people use presentation software in extremely effective
ways—Steve Jobs and Stanford Law Professor Lawrence
Lessig are two examples. Al Gore’s use of Keynote in the
movie ―An Inconvenient Truth‖ was a good model. But these
three examples don’t look at all like the way most people use
PowerPoint. Avoiding bad PowerPoint habits means, first and
foremost, becoming a good public speaker.
17. SOME MORE TIPS ON HOW TO MAKE AN EFFECTIVE
PPT.
• Don’t ―cue‖ the audience that listening to your speech means getting
through your PowerPoint presentation. If the audience sees that your
PowerPoint presentation is the structure of your speech, they’ll start
wondering how many slides are left. Slides should be used
asynchronously within your speech, and only to highlight or illustrate
things. Audiences are bored with oral presentations that go from one
slide to the next until the end. Engage the audience, and use slides
only when they are useful.
18. SOME MORE TIPS ON HOW TO MAKE AN EFFECTIVE
PPT.
• Concentrate on keeping the audience focused on
you, not on the screen. You can do this by using
slides sparingly, standing in front of the audience in
a way that makes them look at you, and, if possible,
going to the screen and using your hand or arm to
point out things on a slide.
19. SOME MORE TIPS ON HOW TO MAKE AN EFFECTIVE
PPT.
• If you expect to be using PowerPoint a lot, invest in
a remote ―clicker‖ that lets you get away from the
computer and still drive your presentation. If you
don’t have one of those, it’s better to ask someone
to run the presentation than to be behind a screen
and keyboard while you talk.
20. RESOURCES FOR POWERPOINT PRESENTERS
MakeUseOf: 10 Powerpoint tips for preparing a professional presentation
Ellen Finkelstein: PowerPoint tips, techniques & tutorials
Microsoft at Work: 12 tips for creating better PowerPoint presentations
Fripp & Associates: 12 mistakes made when creating PowerPoint slides and how
to correct them
Success Begins Today: Do you make these mistakes with PowerPoint?
Boston.com Job Doc: 7 PowerPoint mistakes that drive people crazy
PowerPoint Ninja: Death by (Bad) PowerPoint--part I
LifeHacker: Five ways to not suck at PowerPoint (slide show, appropriately
enough)
