Our experience is that this probably happens more than 9 times out of 10.

So that’s about 90% of PowerPoint presentations where the lack of PowerPoint presentation skills actually undermines the very presentations PowerPoint is supposed to enhance.

So why do people continue down this road to presentation anesthesia?  And can we divert at least some of them to a more enlightened, creative approach?

Here are seven PowerPoint presentation skills tips to help you on your way.

1. Do you really need to use PowerPoint?

If its not absolutely necessary to use PowerPoint in your presentation then …

STOP USING IT!

Next time you’ve a short presentation or talk to deliver, rather than immediately starting up PowerPoint to get the slides ready and using it again when you are delivering your presentation, think about what you want to say and how you might do that without using PowerPoint at all.

Check out our article on how to prepare a presentation to get some good tips on creating and structuring a presentation.  Then have a look at Tip 2 to see how to avoid using PowerPoint to prompt you.

2. Stop using PowerPoint as your prompt!

Once you know what you want to say, try and condense the words into a series of key phrases (prompts) that you can then refer to as you start to deliver the presentation.

Then put your prompts for the talk onto record cards (white sheets of cardboard roughly 6″ by 4″). Just like the photo on the right.

We use them all the time when training people in presentation skills.

By using these “prompt cards” instead of the PowerPoint you can eliminate one of the biggest problems with PowerPoint use today:-

Where the slides are there mostly as prompts for the presenter!

3. Ruthlessly reduce the number of PowerPoint slides

If you absolutely have to use PowerPoint during the presentation then use it as sparingly as possible.

Be ruthless in removing the unnecessary slides.

Use prompt cards for your prompts so remove any slides that might just be for your benefit.

Then review the set of slides AGAIN against your presentation and remove any more slides that you possibly can.

Be ruthless!

4. Use images in the PowerPoint slides whenever possible

Hopefully by now you’ll not be using PowerPoint slides as your prompts – so much of the text heavy bullet points will have disappeared.

But remember that ideally PowerPoint is a VISUAL aid that’s there to enhance your presentation – to help you get your message across and achieve your objectives.

Real visuals (ie Pictures) can help create feelings in the audience, can help make a complex process easier to understand etc.

So think carefully about opportunities you might have in your presentation to use pictures, graphs etc to compliment what you are saying and to help you get your message across.

5. Use headline summaries only for text slides in PowerPoint

If you must include some text in the presentation then pull out only the headline or summary information.

Keep to a maximum of 3 lines of headline text (summaries) on a slide and one slide title.  And make sure that each headline uses large fonts.  Aim to keep to 4 or 5 words maximum per heradline.

Try and include an image on the page as well to compliment the text.  But don’t use the clip art that comes shipped with PowerPoint.  Try a resource such as www.istockphoto.com or similar for photos.

6. Dont just use PowerPoint slides as your handounts

If you have to provide a set of handouts for your audience after the presentation then do so.

But it doesn’t need to be just copies of your PowerPoint slides.

Don’t constrain your presentation slides (if you’re using some) by having to include all the facts and figures that you might need to get across in your slides.

Keep the detail for the handouts and only have summary headline text on the slides.

7. Use hidden PowerPoint slides for the Q&A session

If you are likely to have questions either during or after the presentation then as part of your preparation you’ll probably spend some time brainstorming the likely questions and deciding how best to answer them.

So if you’ve the time, and only where appropriate, include one or more “hidden” slides that will help you answer some of the most difficult questions that you might get asked.

For example if you are talking about a process or a strategy in your presentation and have only covered things at a high level in your slides, then it might be useful to include a more detailed diagram of the contentious part of the process (for example) on a hidden slide that you can refer to ONLY if needed.

In summary

If you can then dont use PowerPoint at all.

If you have to use PowerPoint, then use it for the audience’s benefit and use it as sparingly as possible.

And remember it is supposed to be a VISUAL aid so use it for visual images and not just bullet points!

So why is it that with so much experience of bad PowerPoint presentations so many people still present as if they are there simply to run through someone elses badly composed PowerPoint slides?

Might it be that having seen so many bad presentations, many just think that these “terrible presentations” are simply a fact of business life and something that presenters are expected to produce and the rest of us endure!

Anyway, I dont have all the answers and it’s now late on Friday night – it’s been a long week … so a more light hearted look at PowerPoint is called for.

“Good Evening PowerPointers”

I said Good Evening PowerPointers!

(a response at last)

Thank You … at least you’re not all fully asleep yet

Dont worry …

You will be by the end because its now PowerPoint time!

Welcome to The PowerPoint Comedy Show

Firstly, my thanks to Max Atkinson for pointing out this YouTube video to me on his blog.  (I was looking for some video examples of bad PowerPoint.)

Thanks also to the Presenter / Comedian – Don McMillan (http://twitter.com/donmcmillan) for what is certainly one of the most entertaining presentations using PowerPoint badly that I have seen!

And here’s some of the points that Don was making …

1. Powerpoint slides are your prompts

When composing your powerpoint slides, remember that they are there for your benefit only.  Forget about the audience.

The PowerPoint slides are great prompts for what you have to say, so include as much of your presentation text as you want on them.  In fact, if you have any difficulty remembering what you want to say, then put every word of your speech on them – just to be on the safe side. That way, you can ensure that you wont forget anything on the day!

2. Have lots and lots of bullet points

• Bullet
• points
• are
• there
• for
• a
• purpose

- so use them and use lots of them especially if you want to kill off your audience before they can ask any questions!

3. Use the most outrageous colour schemes

Dont be grey add some real colour especially

those that can hardly be seen.

Its much better that way!

4. The more slides the better

Remember quality is inversly proportional to quantity.

So if you’ve nothing of any quality to say just make sure you use as many slides as possible.

5. Cram in as much information as possible

Confuse them … leave nothing out … and make sure that nobody (even yourself) can really understand the slides.

That way nobody is going to be stupid enough to ask you any questions … are they!

6. Animate everything you can

PowerPoint has lots of crazy animations that you can use to confuse your audience even more – so remember to use them.

And dont use them sparingly!

7. Choose your fonts to reflect your personality

Remember the types of fonts you use say a lot about you.

So express yourself liberally – use as many different fonts as possible!

Suffering from PowerPoint fatigue by now?

You should be!

Then why not spend a few more minutes listening to Doctor Don our PowerPoint therapist?

One final PowerPoint

Remember to tell the audience that you’ve finished

When you come to the end of your presentation and are just about to put up your 100th slide, your audience (if they are still in the room) are probably asleep.

So you need to be kind to them. And from a health and safety perspective its very important that you dont just leave the room with the audience still asleep in the darkness.

So turn up the volume as far as it will go for your final slide transition.  And remember to use the machine gun letter by letter display feature for your final bullet point .. to tell everybody that The End Has Arrived.  And if that doesn’t wake all of them up nothing will.

Then remember to put on the lights and leave quickly.

Got more examples of PowerPoint Comedy?

or just bad PowerPoint Presentations?

Then let us know in the Reply box below and I’ll try and include the best in some future articles.

But slide after slide of bullet points with lots of different transition effects is an absolute turn off for most audiences.

And this is only made worse when the presenter is just reading the bullet points on the slides or has their back to the audience much of the time!

Yet PowerPoint was never designed to be the presentation content itself – nor were its slides supposed to be the prompts for the presenter.

Whats the purpose of your visual aids?

Visual aids can be a great way of enhancing a presentation VISUALLY – when they are used sensibly and with a clear purpose.

You need to relate your visual aids to your audience and to the type of presentation you are designing. It needs to be suited to that audience.

For example, if its just a small intimate presentation you might just want to use a few sheets on a flipchart and forget about using your PC and PowerPoint. Especially if its an interactive presentation / discussion you’re having – as the audience can then partly own the flip chart with you and hence buy into overall process more easily.

Obviously if its a bigger more formal presentation then it’s probably expected that you’ll be using a software tool such as PowerPoint.  But remember it’s there to enhance your message – not just your prompts!

Designing visual aids

If you are designing slides using PowerPoint then you need to make sure that they are not just going to turn your audience off.

They should be there to enhance the message. Not to take over from you – the presenter – or your message.

Keep them as visual as possible.  Wherever possible use images, graphs, diagrams etc that will help your audience understand what you are talking about. Connect with it emotionally – if that’s what you are trying to achieve.  Images can be a great way of doing that.

Keep bullet points to a minimum – for example – key facts – but where possible add some visual metaphor on the same slide.

Few of us are professional designers – so if it’s a very important presentation – get some professional help if you have the budget available. But if you have to do it in-house keep things simple and dont end up spending up 80% of your time on the slides and 20% on the actual presentation content!

Managing your visual aids

It’s also important to think about how you are going to manage your visual aids.

• Where to place them in the room.
• How to work around them physically.
• How visible will they be to the audience.

All these sorts of practical things are best thought through ahead of when you are actually standing there ready to present.

Pitfalls of visual aids

You’ve probably already heard the phrase “Death by PowerPoint”.  You might already have experienced this yourself – as part of an audience.

Use the KISS rule  (Keep It Simple and Succinct), as far as your use of visual aids is concerned.

• Dont over do things.
• Dont use too many different transition effects.
• Dont use too small font sizes
• Keep the number of slides to a minimum
• Keep it as visual and text free as possible

In a future article we’ll be looking at more of the pitfalls that can happen with visual aids such as PowerPoint.  We’ll also look at how to avoid them – so they dont actually become a hindrance to you.

Alternatives to PowerPoint

There are other alternative software packages to MS PowerPoint out there.  We’ll have a look at some of these in a future article.

There are also other tools that you can use that might well be more suited to your presentation that a software tool and data projector.

Visual aids vs handouts

When do you use  handouts or just stick to your visual aids.

Again its thinking about your presentation, the type of audience and what do you want to achieve and whats going to be most suitable.

If you need to give the audience more information to support your message, then you may want to produce some handouts for the audience to take away.

Backups – when it all goes wrong

Finally you need to think about what happens if something goes wrong with the visual aids.  The data projector or pc stops working or your PPT version is not compatible with the PC in the room.

What’s your backup plan?  How do you cope with that?

One simple way is to make sure that you at least have some hard copies of your slides.  If you’re not sure if the presentation PC has the latest version of PowerPoint – try saving your file in the format used by an older version.  Alternatively, it might be worth taking your own laptop along… just in case.

Be prepared! Ask the organiser beforehand wherever possible.

To sum up

Visual aids – can be a great tool – but you need to use them appropriately so that they help you and they enhance your presentation.