There is no debate that an excellent PowerPoint presentation can make a big difference in how the presentation is received. A good PowerPoint has the potential to showcase your business and help you build confidence with employees, clients, and investors, but it will only do so if you know how to use the PowerPoint well.
There are some basic guidelines and techniques for creating a masterful presentation. These recommendations are straightforward but can be easily overlooked by an overwhelmed business owner. To improve the quality of your future business presentations, concentrate on these three easy ways to make a better presentation.
Create a Storyline
Every presentation has a reason for existing. It shouldn’t be purely information without a proper conclusion or call to action, so before you create a presentation, you need to create a storyline or narrative. Creating a story will guide you through the presentation, help you avoid unnecessary information, and keep you on track to only discuss your key ideas.
It’s proven that great storytellers engage the audience and get results which is why your narrative needs to include some personality such as a personal story, a humorous anecdote, or other interesting information. Your audience may not remember all the details you give, but they will remember a solidly driven story, example, or quote.
One piece of cautionary advice when it comes to stories, though: don’t make your presentation too long. In this world of instant information, people will be bored if your presentation drags on. Experts state a presentation shouldn’t last any longer than twenty minutes. A general rule is to use no more than ten slides if you intend to have text that is below the thirty font-size mark.
Use Great Slides
Slides are a standard in PowerPoint presentations, but that doesn’t mean all of them are useful. Slides that contain too much information, small print, typos, grammatical errors, or are visually unappealing will do more harm to your presentation than good.
Thankfully, there are some tools that can help you create great slides for your presentation. One is Google Slides, which you can use for free. Google Slides is a styling tool that is a web-based presentation tool. You can use it to create slides in a variety of formats to suit your presentation needs, or you can use it to easily get input from your team members, staff, collaborators, or advisors through its sharing options.
The downside of Google Slides, though, is that it has a limited number of templates. However, you can upload your PowerPoint slides, edit them on the platform, and then download the files for your presentation.
You can also get a PowerPoint add-in that will make creating your presentation a lot easier. The add-ins are tools that make creating the perfect presentation much faster and easier for you to do on your own. These include advanced text and shape manipulation, YouTube embedding, and the ability to generate charts and split tables to make attractive data-driven slides.
Use Video
There is no substitute for a good video. So, if you are doing a virtual presentation, make sure your background is attractive and your face is well lit. It’s the small details that people will notice.
Also, you can insert videos into your presentation. Shooting a video may be an expense you can’t afford now, but that doesn’t have to stop you from including one. There is a software tool called Animoto to help you out.
You can easily make custom videos with Animoto. These videos can be used for your presentation or be used for your website or other marketing items. With this platform, there is a large selection of templates which allow you to add your own logo, depending on the plan. Animoto also allows you to produce unlimited numbers of marketing videos for a low annual fee.
Using these three basic guidelines to create your PowerPoint presentation will help you put your best foot forward. Having an awesome presentation will also give you confidence to talk about your business and hopefully, bring about better results and improved numbers of leads.
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