5 PowerPoint Presentation Enhancement Tips

One of the secrets to presenting an excellent PowerPoint presentation is to win over the audience. Unfortunately, it is also feasible to achieve the inverse.

Here are some PowerPoint strategies that everyone should know to keep a conference room table audience engaged.

1. When putting together your slides, keep the presentation’s timing in mind.
When putting together slides, keep your audience’s time in mind. Few things seem more unprofessional than a presentation that begins and concludes late. Start your presentation on time and finish within the time limit.
Practice is the most effective approach to doing this. Rehearse ahead of time and time yourself so you know how long each slide takes to complete. PowerPoint has a useful feature for keeping track of time. To utilize them, go to the Slide Show menu and choose Rehearse Timings. You’ll be able to keep track of the time spent on each slide as well as the entire PowerPoint presentation.

Also, ensure that your equipment is operational and that you understand how to use it. Don’t keep the audience waiting as you fiddle with the projector. Allow enough time for set-up in case something goes wrong.

2. Don’t cram too much information onto the slides.
Busy presentations with a lot of little text are particularly difficult to read. Simply put, viewers will not. To create a more streamlined and straightforward PowerPoint, keep slides short, dynamic, and engaging, with large text and graphics that convey the primary idea of each. Deliver the details using your notes and the spoken portion of the presentation.

If necessary, divide your slides. More easily readable presentations will be more effective than a few dense ones.

3. Describe everything.
Don’t assume that everyone is working from the same set of facts. Otherwise, you risk losing your audience if you don’t clarify acronyms and abbreviations, as well as other complicated issues.

4. Ask the same questions again.
Unless you’re in a very small presentation space, answer every question. Others may have missed it or been unable to hear the inquiry. If the listener does not understand the question to which you are responding, to your response is meaningless.

5. Continue the conversation.
Avoid the following trap: Someone asks you a question, you respond, they retort with another question, and before you know it, you’re engaged in a back-and-forth conversation with a specific member of the audience. Allow folks to ask questions and even follow-up questions. If the conversation continues, notify them that they may meet with you following your presentation to ask more questions. If one individual dominates the discourse, the rest of the audience will lose interest.

The key to crafting a successful PowerPoint presentation is audience involvement. PowerPoint death is not unavoidable. You may produce a more effective presentation by giving condensed information in a well-timed presentation and being prepared to answer questions and enable appropriate discourse.