in Misc

How to Create Engaging PowerPoint Presentations

Creating an engaging PowerPoint presentation takes much more than just content. Every day, there are over 30 million PowerPoint presentations created across the world. It can be said that your audience has sat through a considerable number of presentations already. Therefore, your presentation needs to be out of the box if you wish to grab the attention of your viewers. Especially when you’re an entrepreneur or in business, odds are high that you’d have to come up with a presentation at some point in your career. When it comes to pitching your idea to potential stakeholders, you need a presentation that can woo your audience. There is no definition to a perfect presentation, your presentation has to adapt to the type of audience, subject matter, and content it is going to feature.

Knowing your audience is a crucial aspect when the task is to create a presentation that is effective and initiates a call to action amid the audience. One should research the target audience then only draw content. It is after this that you should start designing your presentation and not the other way around. The design of a presentation is another critical aspect. It only feels good when it looks good. When your PowerPoint template features breathtaking design aesthetics, chances are very high that your audience is going to love it. Although there is no hard and fast rule for an effective presentation, a presentation is expected to feature a balanced amount of text, visual elements, and animations. It is your content and design which will win the heart of the audience, together.

Let’s move forward and know how to create amazing PowerPoint presentations

Plan the structure

As mentioned above, once you’re done with researching about your targeted audience, then it comes about planning the presentation outline. You should brainstorm about why your audience is there, what do you want them to know, how do you want them to feel about it at the end etc. When you brainstorm around these psychological aspects, you get the start, middle and endpoints for your presentations. These points can be effectively used as storytelling and taking your audience from one slide to another in an engaging manner. The step involves mapping and outlining the subject-matter, main ideas, sub-ideas, supporting information and how & where visuals are to be put. Once you’re done with the outline, then you can start working on the design of your presentation.

PowerPoint template

An effective presentation features a superior design. Nothing is more distracting for your audience than a slide full of too much text or glaring colour choices. It is always advised to stick to a simple design and not go beyond using two to three colours. Professional PowerPoint templates are a great option when you want to create an attractive presentation in minimum effort possible. You can simply download a suitable PowerPoint template and start putting in the content on the go. Since not everybody has expertise when we talk about designing PowerPoint presentations from scratch. Especially, if you’re short on time, designing a presentation and its every element can be cumbersome. A professional PowerPoint template will provide consistency with your presentation needs. It also provides professional graphic design, quick customization facility and branding. You can save both your time and resources when you have a perfect template for your presentation subject.

Visualization

Another great way of garnering your audience’s attention and building a powerful presentation is to represent information through visuals. You can use visual types such as pictures, infographics, gifs, charts, graphs and tables. This is a blessing in disguise for your audience since it aids hugely in their understanding of the presentation and its content. It doesn’t matter how relevant the content is, if you can’t make your audience picture it, they won’t resonate with you. When your slides feature attractive and relevant images, your viewers can almost instantly attune to the idea. Hence, the comprehension of your presentation content is boosted manifolds. You can also consider using icons. Iconifying slides can help you separate the clutter visually, it takes less space on slides too and helps your audience emphasize on key points.

Keep text to a minimum

Over-cluttered presentation templates lead to death by PowerPoint in your audience. No one likes to simply read off text from your slides. Giving too much information upfront can make it difficult for your audience to digest the facts. Moreover, they won’t be able to pay attention to what you’re saying. One should consider following the 10-20-30 rule of presentation making. The rule is vital for presentation creation and its success. You should never include more than 10 slides, it shouldn’t last longer than 20 minutes and the font size should be at least 30 points. The text should be put-in in your slides in a minimalistic fashion. Attractive visuals should be included which would suffice for the absent text. Creating a compelling PowerPoint presentation is no difficult task, it all depends on your content, design and delivery.

Charts, Graphs & Tables

You can improve your presentation and its integrity when you back up your facts and figures with relevant charts and corresponding graphs. Information such as when, where, how many should be backed by research graphs and charts. You need to humanize your data. It should be able to speak for itself in your presentation. Since the human brain appeals more to visuals than text, your audience is more likely to go through charts, graphs and tables. It is through these you can engagingly convey critical analytical data. These also help your audience draw a conclusion and make assessments seamlessly.

Successful presentations are made by transparency. When your audience can compare contrast amid data and numbers, important inferences can be established between you and your stakeholders. An effective presentation supports and does not replace the speaker. It should be able to present the information in a simple, credible, concrete and beneficial manner.

Bogdan

Bogdan is the founder of Top Design Magazine. You can find him in Bucharest-Romania so next time you want to drink a beer there and talk about web and stuff, give him a message.