For the next 5 minutes we’re going to discuss how to effectively utilize powerpoint.
Hopefully by the end, you will have a better understanding of what makes a successful presentation using powerpoint, and can upgrade your skills with this software, and/or feel comfortable hiring my services to design presentations for you.
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There are two primary reasons to use powerpoint to enhance verbal presentations. The first of these is clarity.
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If there is any possibility of a misinterpretation being made during any of your presentation, it is safe to assume that it will happen. Using powerpoint to keep the audience engaged and focused on each topic, allows you to easily return to discuss confusion later. Additionally it serves as an aid to piece topics and their explanations together.
Which brings up the next reason to use powerpoint: Retention
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Discussing your topic without visual aids runs the risk of losing the 50% of your audience that learns by reading rather than hearing. Furthermore humans have a tendancy to recall words and phrases much more effectively than entire lengths of dialogue. Even should you include easily memorable phrases in your speech, without the added visual the chances of retention are significantly lower.
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There are numerous mistakes made during the creation of powerpoint presententions, and I am going to address the most common and most detrimental mistake of all right from the get go: Verbatim bullet points!
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If there was any reason for the audience to pay attention to the presenter it has immediately been lost when all they have to do is read the screen. When both your words and the on screen text are the same, the ability to quickly retain a topic based on it's heading does not exist, and having duplicate information gives the idea that your presence was uneeded. Why bother wasting their time with your presentation when you could just hand out sheets for them to read?
This nicely transitions into the second common mistake: Poorly designed or timed handouts
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Much like the first point, if the handout containing all of your speech is given to the audience as soon as they walk in the door, the chances of them 'checking out' and simply reading what you gave them is very high. In fact, at any point, regardless of how well designed your handout was, should the audience get bored (and lets face it, not everyone is as interested in your presentation as you are) they will stop listening to you and start to read.
The only good handouts are handouts that are given at the end of the presentation to reinforce information, or handouts that you, the presenter, control.
The next issue that needs to be discussed is the use of company specific lingo. That is to say: Acronyms are the bane of communication.
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While acronyms are okay for bullet points as it can shorten a difficult to remember topic, use during your presentation of any acronyms that are not immediately recognized by anyone not living under a rock, need to be removed and replaced with real words. If confusion is possible, it will happen.
Successull presentations always, without question, contain purpose.
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Whether that purpose is to sell real estate, communicate a policy change, or convince management to allocate their budget somewhere else, if the presentation does not clearly set that objective as it's tone and reiterate that objective as it's finishing point, it needs to be redesigned. Included in this is the requirement to stay on focus of that purpose. Extraneous information should be contained in a different presentation, if at all. Brevity is Key.
In order to ensure the direction your presentation takes conforms to your objective it must be designed before construction.
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Pre-designing a presentation means placing your goals and dialogue on paper before ever opening the program. Even the type of font, the style of animation, and the pictures that would be appropriate for the presentation can be planned before creation. The more of these steps you can manage, the more likely your ideal presentation will take place and the less hassle you will have in designing it. This is especially true if you are not directly responsible for it's creation.
Finally successful presentations, those that we remember most, engage us.
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Engaging the audience can be done with handouts that contain information such as diagrams for the audience to reference while you discuss a topic, or using your Q&A portion to actively ask your audience to re-iterate key points in your presentation. Alternatively it could be as simple as including interesting animations during each slide transition. The lesson here is, if anyone is losing focus, the design could use improvement.
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As a closing note, if for any reason you are nervous presenting in front of an audience, do not hesitate to mention as much. The vast majority of people are surprisingly lenient towards any errors you may make during the presentation if they feel it is due to nervousness; a failing most people have in front of audiences.
If you found the information in this presentation helpful in using power point effectively, then I am pleased. Should you be interested in hiring my services to design or edit a powerpoint presentation for you, please send a request to my email address: Russoj7@gmail.com
Thank you for your time, and take care.
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