PowerPoint Training Mistakes
From the Impact Factory
The following article was contributed by Gareth Butler
Ten Mistakes Not To Make In Your Next PowerPoint Presentation
PowerPoint Skills
Love it or hate it, PowerPoint is used all over the world, every day, to create presentations.
If you're getting ready to design a deck of slides for your next presentation, here are ten mistakes you need to avoid to create an interesting speech your audience will love.
Mistake #1: Don't Cram Too Much On One Slide!
Your audience has to listen to your speech, and read your slides at the same time. When they're doing one, they're not likely to be doing the other. It's essential to keep the slides simple.
Don't have a twenty bullet points on one slide. Or a couple of hundred words. Or four or five pie charts. Or a bar chart full of specific detail.
The best presentations make one clear point on each slide. Less is more!
If you say something during your speech that is clearly backed up by a fact on your slide, it adds authority to the point you're making.
For your next presentation, try limiting yourself to a maximum of five words per slide, including the title. Or can you ditch the words all together and illustrate your point with a photo? Try dropping all the numbers from a chart and just showing the trend.
Mistake #2: Don't Use Bullet Points On Every Slide!
I'm sure you've had to sit though one. You know, a presentation with endless slide after slide of bullet points. I've sat through many. The only good thing about them is they offer a chance to grab 40 winks.
There's nothing interesting about bullet points. They just encourage you to read from the slide, which insults an audience, and they take the audience's attention away from what you're saying.
There are much better ways to illustrate a point rather than bullets. Why not find a good photo that works as well (try BigStockPhoto.com or iStockPhoto.com). Or an interesting quote. Find a chart that shows the trend you're talking about. Show a simple table with raw data. Show logos of companies using the products you're selling (try BrandsOfTheWorld.com). Show newspaper clippings. Or don't show anything – sometimes, you need your audience to focus clearly on what you're saying.
Mistake #3: Don't Make Your Font Size Too Small!
When you're designing slides at your computer, it's easy to forget how your slides are actually going to be used. While 14pt text may look large enough sat in front of your computer, will it be visible from the back of a room when you present?
Just because you're projecting on to a 12' x 9' screen doesn't mean it's going to appear huge to everyone in the room. In fact, it's the opposite. Sat close to a PC, the screen almost fills your vision. From the back of a conference room, however, even a huge projected screen seems tiny.
My tip: when you've designed your slides on your PC, stand up, take five steps back and view your presentation. (You'll find a remote mouse useful for this.)
Can't read your slides now? Neither will your audience. Go into your master template, and double the text size. Now try again.
Mistake #4: Don't Use PowerPoint's Clip art!
I can only think of unprintable comments to make about the clip art supplied with PowerPoint. It's amateurish. It's badly designed. And there's such little choice, you see people shoehorning images into their slides which really don't fit the message or theme of their presentation.
My solution: use professional stock photography.
My favourite suppliers are www.BigStockPhoto.com and www.iStockPhoto.com. Both have almost a huge variety of photos ranging from animals to landscapes, landmarks to technology. Go to both sites and have a look around.
Is it expensive? Not at all. You pay between a couple of dollars per picture, which is nothing.
Tip: find a photo on a white background. In PowerPoint, click the transparency tool on the white area of the photo to cut the object out so it merges seamlessly with your presentation's background.
Mistake #5: Don't Use Sound Effects In Your PowerPoint Presentation!
Yes, PowerPoint does include exciting sound effects like (wait-for-it) a race car! A typewriter! A pane of glass being smashed! Gravy!
OK, I made that last one up.
Just resist all temptation and don't use any of them in your presentation.
They'll make you sound like an amateur who has just discovered some new features in PowerPoint and want to do everything possible to make them fit into your presentation whether they help or hinder.
And, believe me, they hinder.
There's not a lot more I can really say about sound effects. Just please, if you get nothing else from this article, understand this: never, never, use sound effects in PowerPoint.
Mistake #6: Don't Hack Together A PowerPoint Presentation At Random! Structure Gives Meaning
A presentation with no structure is like listening to someone ramble on about nothing in particular. It has no meaning, no message, and five minutes after the ramble has finished, you've forgotten everything about it anyway.
Which is why a good presentation should have a clearly defined structure. And by structure, I simply mean a beginning, a middle and an end.
Beginning: introduce yourself, your topic, why it matters and why you're the right person to talk about it.
Middle: the meaty substance. Talk pros and cons. Talk benefits. Talk features. Show them over and over why the message you're selling is essential. Repetition is good.
End: wrap it all up by referencing back to the beginning of your presentation. Give your audience a call to action – tell them what to do next.
Remember the saying "tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, tell 'em, tell 'em you just told 'em."
Mistake #7: Don't Read Your PowerPoint Slides Aloud!
Occasionally, I see presenters who bring a slide on-screen, then read it, word-for-word aloud to their audience.
It's such a bad thing to do. Your audience will be insulted, and you're missing the chance to use your slides to back-up and give authority to what you're saying.
If you think you have a habit of doing this, the secret is all in the preparation. If you use a script to speak from, write the script first, then create your slides second, without copying chunks of your script into PowerPoint. If you prefer to speak from notes, then create a list of notes using different wording than what's on your slides.
Then practice in front of a live audience. Maybe a partner, or a colleague. Get them to stop you every time you start reading from your slides. You'll soon loose the habit.
Mistake #8: Don't Loose Your Audience With Ambiguous PowerPoint Slides!
All slides need a clear, simple path for the audience's eye to follow. When slides are filled with content that looks the same (for example, a long list of bullet points in the same type, colour and size) they get lost in the detail.
By making the importance of different parts of your slide clear, you'll instantly improve your audience's understanding of the message you're communicating.
Here's three of my favourite ways of improving the clarity of your slides.
Contrast: make more important items stand out. Make the font size bigger or brighter. Allow lots of space around the most important items.
Highlights: highlight important items with a different colour. For example, highlight rows in a table as you talk about them.
Simplify: reduce the number of words or bullets or pictures in a slide. Split one complex slide into several simpler ones.
Brainstorm your own ideas for more!
Mistake #9: Don't Irritate Your Audience With Annoying PowerPoint Animations!
Yes, PowerPoint does include lots of flashy effects in its custom animations palette.
Yes, you can buy add-ons if you want even more.
No, you shouldn't use them!
Like sounds and clip-art, over used animations in your presentation look amateurish.
They distract the audiences attention away from what you're saying as they focus on the screen. And do lots of random effects impress your audience? No, never.
Stick with one or two that you like. I tend to use Wipe Right and Box Out. That's it.
It's the same with slide transitions. Find one you like and use it throughout your presentation.
Concentrate your efforts on giving a great presentation, not experimenting with all out PowerPoint's animation styles!
Mistake #10: Don't Use The Amateurishly Designed Templates Supplied With PowerPoint!
Like most of the artwork supplied with PowerPoint, it's awful. Why didn't Microsoft hire someone to create some decent templates to bundle in with the software. Hey, Microsoft, I'm for hire if you want me!
The second-worst habit is finding free ones on the web. I can't remember ever seeing some nicely designed PowerPoint templates that someone is giving away for free. The quality is usually around about Microsoft's level!
The solution? Do it yourself, or hire a pro.
Try creating something simple. A graduated background, maybe, with your company's logo in the bottom corner. Or a good royalty-free stock photo with a semi-transparent tinted box laid over the top. Both solutions could look good.
Avoid these ten mistakes and you'll give a much better presentation the next time you speak.
MY THOUGHTS
Ugh! Ouch. It does pay to update yourself from time to time. You've prepared thousands of slides for probably a hundred presentations and you find out (by reading this article) that you're over using this and that or not using this and that. Whew! The biggest mistake I ever made was not having an lcd! Ha!ha! Well, I didn't know the talk was to be at an open space in one of the biggest malls. When my friend said 'hall', I assumed a hall with four walls! Well, the talk turned out pretty well without the slide presentation. So I guess, the best tip should be to know what you're talking about - with or without your slides.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
The Key to Creating an Effective Presentation
Planning is the First Step to a Successful Presentation
By Wendy Russell, About.com
What does it take to create an effective presentation? Is it the beautiful colors and pictures? Is it the animations and transitions?
"No", you say. "It is the content".
Well, you are partially right.
Planning is probably the most important step in creating a successful presentation of any kind. Planning helps you decide on the content and the order in which the information will be presented. Whether you are using PowerPoint, OpenOffice Impress or any other presentation software, use the following steps as a guide in planning the presentation.
1.Determine the Purpose of the Presentation
•Is this presentation about a product for a client?
•Is it a business presentation about the latest sales figures?
•Is it about a new idea you are introducing?
2.Determine the Presentation’s Audience
•your staff
•a new prospective client
•a group of small children
•a convention for people in the same line of work -- for example; a group of dentists
3.Gather Your Information
•Remember the KISS principle (Keep It Silly Simple) when designing your presentation.
•Focus on three or four main points only
•Know everything about the topic so you are ready for questions after the presentation.
4.Sketch Out the Slides on Paper
•Make sure the slides emphasize the main points to be made in the presentation.
•Try to have only one main idea on each slide.
•List no more than four points per slide.
5.Determine the Order Of Your Slides
•Although this can be changed later, having a rough idea of the order of your topic points, will help you plan the order of your slides.
6.Create the Presentation
•When creating the slides, be consistent in your choice of background colors, fonts, transitions, and animations.
MY OWN THOUGHTS
Having valuable content, content that the audience will want to know because they need to know about them, is the first step to having a great presenation. You can have all the photos you can flash on the screen, all the animations and attractive fonts and colors but if you do not present the right topic for the right audience, your presentation won't have any lasting impact. If you want to wow your audience, then you should take note of these key powerpoint presentation tips.
Planning is the First Step to a Successful Presentation
By Wendy Russell, About.com
What does it take to create an effective presentation? Is it the beautiful colors and pictures? Is it the animations and transitions?
"No", you say. "It is the content".
Well, you are partially right.
Planning is probably the most important step in creating a successful presentation of any kind. Planning helps you decide on the content and the order in which the information will be presented. Whether you are using PowerPoint, OpenOffice Impress or any other presentation software, use the following steps as a guide in planning the presentation.
1.Determine the Purpose of the Presentation
•Is this presentation about a product for a client?
•Is it a business presentation about the latest sales figures?
•Is it about a new idea you are introducing?
2.Determine the Presentation’s Audience
•your staff
•a new prospective client
•a group of small children
•a convention for people in the same line of work -- for example; a group of dentists
3.Gather Your Information
•Remember the KISS principle (Keep It Silly Simple) when designing your presentation.
•Focus on three or four main points only
•Know everything about the topic so you are ready for questions after the presentation.
4.Sketch Out the Slides on Paper
•Make sure the slides emphasize the main points to be made in the presentation.
•Try to have only one main idea on each slide.
•List no more than four points per slide.
5.Determine the Order Of Your Slides
•Although this can be changed later, having a rough idea of the order of your topic points, will help you plan the order of your slides.
6.Create the Presentation
•When creating the slides, be consistent in your choice of background colors, fonts, transitions, and animations.
MY OWN THOUGHTS
Having valuable content, content that the audience will want to know because they need to know about them, is the first step to having a great presenation. You can have all the photos you can flash on the screen, all the animations and attractive fonts and colors but if you do not present the right topic for the right audience, your presentation won't have any lasting impact. If you want to wow your audience, then you should take note of these key powerpoint presentation tips.
Powerpoint Presentation Tips
The 5 Cardinal Rules of Terrific PowerPoint Presentations
By Darrell Zahorsky, About.com
The world of business meetings would probably be a better place with a wide-sweeping ban on bad PowerPoint presentations. A business presentation is meant to inform, motivate and create a call to action. Yet, time after time, the abuse and misuse of PowerPoint technology detracts from the original intent of the meeting.
Minds drift and wander in and out of consciousness while the presentation drones on. You can create and deliver a powerful PowerPoint presentation if you understand the five cardinal rules of terrific PowerPoint presentations.
It’s a Tool: The first broken cardinal rule of effective PowerPoint presentations is forgetting what the software is. PowerPoint isn’t a word document program or a means to dump data. Cutting and pasting text from a written document into the PowerPoint is a sure-fire method to losing your audience. Forget the role of writer. Keeping the mindset of a presenter is the first step in wowing your audience.
Simple Is What Simple Does: Simplicity is at the heart of good business. The unfettered look of the Google home page or the clean and simple design of the iPod creates a passionate fan base.
To move people with your business presentation, you’re PowerPoint needs to evoke emotion with simple, yet powerful messages and images. Less is really more when delivering a top-notch business presentation.
Pictures Over Words: The old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words,” is the essence of effective PowerPoint presentations. Winners of Slideshare.net (a PowerPoint presentation website), World’s Best Presentation Contest used heavy graphics and big fonts. Each winning presentation used compelling photos not clipart. We see presentations not read them.
Build the Unexpected: To create a memorable business presentation, you need to go beyond the expected. Stirring up controversy or challenging the beliefs of your audience is a method to wake them up.
“If we want to motivate people to pay attention we should seize the power of big surprises,” say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the bestseller, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Die and Others Survive. The brother’s principle of unexpected stickiness is to break patterns, create mystery, build unique stories, and find knowledge gaps. The unexpected equals attention.
Readers Beware: A good friend of mine did his college presentation from typed notes, never once looking up while reading the entire speech. Talk about boring. It’s a common practice to see PowerPoint presentations load with text and bullet points prompting the presenter to read. To wow your audience, don’t use the PowerPoint as a note toll. Spend the time to know your stuff so you don’t have to rely on crammed bullet point text.
PowerPoint doesn’t replace you. It’s merely a tool in your presentation. Remembering this simple yet profound statement will help you craft and deliver the perfect PowerPoint presentation.
MY OWN THOUGHTS
That's right! Keep them guessing. That's a sure fire way of keeping them awake. These are great powerpoint tips. Photos are indeed great. And without the texts, the presenter avoids using the powerpoint presentations as a crutch. I guess, the more photos you use the more it shows mastery of your subject matter. Powerpoint presentations are supposed to make your presentations more interesting. But you should be able to do your presentations without the slides. You've heard of power outages, damaged slides, computers not working. You never know what can happen.
By Darrell Zahorsky, About.com
The world of business meetings would probably be a better place with a wide-sweeping ban on bad PowerPoint presentations. A business presentation is meant to inform, motivate and create a call to action. Yet, time after time, the abuse and misuse of PowerPoint technology detracts from the original intent of the meeting.
Minds drift and wander in and out of consciousness while the presentation drones on. You can create and deliver a powerful PowerPoint presentation if you understand the five cardinal rules of terrific PowerPoint presentations.
It’s a Tool: The first broken cardinal rule of effective PowerPoint presentations is forgetting what the software is. PowerPoint isn’t a word document program or a means to dump data. Cutting and pasting text from a written document into the PowerPoint is a sure-fire method to losing your audience. Forget the role of writer. Keeping the mindset of a presenter is the first step in wowing your audience.
Simple Is What Simple Does: Simplicity is at the heart of good business. The unfettered look of the Google home page or the clean and simple design of the iPod creates a passionate fan base.
To move people with your business presentation, you’re PowerPoint needs to evoke emotion with simple, yet powerful messages and images. Less is really more when delivering a top-notch business presentation.
Pictures Over Words: The old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words,” is the essence of effective PowerPoint presentations. Winners of Slideshare.net (a PowerPoint presentation website), World’s Best Presentation Contest used heavy graphics and big fonts. Each winning presentation used compelling photos not clipart. We see presentations not read them.
Build the Unexpected: To create a memorable business presentation, you need to go beyond the expected. Stirring up controversy or challenging the beliefs of your audience is a method to wake them up.
“If we want to motivate people to pay attention we should seize the power of big surprises,” say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the bestseller, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Die and Others Survive. The brother’s principle of unexpected stickiness is to break patterns, create mystery, build unique stories, and find knowledge gaps. The unexpected equals attention.
Readers Beware: A good friend of mine did his college presentation from typed notes, never once looking up while reading the entire speech. Talk about boring. It’s a common practice to see PowerPoint presentations load with text and bullet points prompting the presenter to read. To wow your audience, don’t use the PowerPoint as a note toll. Spend the time to know your stuff so you don’t have to rely on crammed bullet point text.
PowerPoint doesn’t replace you. It’s merely a tool in your presentation. Remembering this simple yet profound statement will help you craft and deliver the perfect PowerPoint presentation.
MY OWN THOUGHTS
That's right! Keep them guessing. That's a sure fire way of keeping them awake. These are great powerpoint tips. Photos are indeed great. And without the texts, the presenter avoids using the powerpoint presentations as a crutch. I guess, the more photos you use the more it shows mastery of your subject matter. Powerpoint presentations are supposed to make your presentations more interesting. But you should be able to do your presentations without the slides. You've heard of power outages, damaged slides, computers not working. You never know what can happen.
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