5 Simple Tips for Effective PowerPoint Presentations

PowerPoint presentations are mostly delivered by students and professionals. Presentations are a great tool to convey ideas as well as educate and convince people. However, delivering a presentation is not an easy task; it demands substantial research, organization, presentation skills and self-confidence etc. A good presenter is one who has the ability to engage his or her audience throughout the presentation and compels them to take action. Here are five simple tips to hone your presentation skills: 1. Storyboard Storyboarding is very important and it is with storyboarding where it all begins. Treat storyboard as a visual outline of your presentation. Why create a storyboard for your PowerPoint presentations? Well, stories are part of the human experience and preserve cultures. By virtue of passing on experience stories connect people. Preparing a storyboard prepares you to connect with your audience. A storyboard brings continuity in your message. It helps you identify the gaps and plan to fulfill those. With the help of storyboard, have a proper beginning, middle and ending for your PowerPoint presentations. Make sure your story flows in a logical sequence. 2. Less text While working on our presentations we commit the mistake of barfing alphabet all over the slides. So we know this is a problematic but how to fix it? Do not duplicate the words you speak on the screen. It will be redundant and even kind of mind numbing. Do not treat or prepare your ppt slides as a stand-alone document. Heavy text kills the audience with boredom. So use visuals that compliment what you are saying instead of taking recourse to bare text. Your slides are just to illustrate your presentations. 3. Effective Presentation design Presentation design is a very important component of PowerPoint presentations in professional and academic settings. PowerPoint like other presentation packages provides you with the scope of inserting visuals and effects into your presentations. But, do not cover up your slides with fancy effects. Use appropriate PowerPoint template and concentrate on following design basics: • Using sans serif font for the body text in your professional and academic presentations is a good idea. • Do not unnecessarily use fancy fonts. Keep those for the slide headers. • Align text to left or right baseline. 4. Do not limit your creativity Do not limit your creativity when delivering a presentation. The slides of your presentation are just to complement you and not the presentation itself. Be creative enough to present even without your slides. 5. Engage your audience Actively engage your audience by posing relevant questions from time to time. This helps in arousing their interest. Ask questions generously during your presentations. Follow these five simple tips to hone your presentation skills and deliver outstanding presentations.