Creating a Commercial Slideshow with PowerPoint: Tips to Improve
Over the last decade PowerPoint has become one of the most significant presentation tools in both business and education. At every important meeting you run, you’re expected to assemble a PowerPoint presentation that will notify each attendee of your meaning in a way that is clear,succinct , and to-the-point.
In other kinds of corporate meetings, they can help to underscore the point being made, or simply offer an outline for the presenter to follow. Putting time into creating a good quality PowerPoint presentation is a great way to demonstrate to attendees of a meeting that the knowledge you’re giving is important, correct,and in the case of sales presentations, financially valuable to all
But supplying a high quality PowerPoint presentation takes time. And while it is at times tempting to simply pass this chore on to somebody with more time, it is often a good plan to do this work yourself, or at least create and set up the information for each slide.
One way to create greater quality PowerPoint presentations is to use higher quality graphics. Clipart taken directly from Microsoft Office screams “this information wasn’t important enough for me to attempt.” In particular, avoid using MS Office “screen beans,” which are so average as to become laughably cliché.
Another good way to improve your PowerPoint presentation is to write a handout to go along with the information. With PowerPoint, you want to underscore the information you’re providing, so be sure to keep the knowledge in the presentation itself to a minimum. Keep slides clean, concise, and impactful.
Costly PowerPoint templates incorporate the kind of pictures, animation, and transitions that you might not be able to create yourself. With professional flash animation and sharp pictures, your presentation will really stand out. But be sure not to get anything too over-the-top. You don’t want to distract from your presentation itself.
Don’t use too many bullet points and particularly don’t use paragraphs to get your meaning across. You should be doing that yourself. Also, don’t overwhelm your presentation with graphics, over-the-top animated transitions, and graphics. Remember that the lecture is about the information. Especially for soliciting presentations, you don’t want anybody in the room to depart feeling that they’ve wasted their time watching fancy animations. Too many extras on your PowerPoint slides will take away from from your presentation rather than add to it.
As a normal woman cannot absorb more than ten new concepts in a sitting, each of your ten slides will give you the best effect. It should take you about five minutes to show each slide. Much more than that and you’re rambling. Much less, and people will question the necessity to have that slide in the first place. A twenty-minute lecture leaves plenty of time for set up, and allows questions to be asked after.
PowerPoint is one of the most useful presentation tools you can use for business meetings and sales presentations. A effective PowerPoint presentation helps to underline your meaning while giving the audience pieces of information that will stay with them. While a good presentation will help your business and add to your meeting, a ineffective one can do just the opposite.
Last modified January 1, 2008Author 1450 > has blogged 36 times
