Making a PowerPoint Slideshow: Common Mistakes

Over the last decade PowerPoint has become one of the most central presentation tools in both business and education. At every key meeting you run, you’re expected to put together a PowerPoint presentation that will update each attendee of your idea in a way that is clear, brief, and to-the-point.

In other kinds of commercial meetings, they can help to underscore the point being made, or simply present an outline for the presenter to follow. Putting time into creating a good quality PowerPoint presentation is a great way to show to attendees of a meeting that the facts you’re giving is important, right,and in the case of sales presentations, financially helpful to all

But supplying a high quality PowerPoint presentation takes time. And while it is often tempting to simply pass this work on to somebody with more time, it is often a good plan to do this work yourself, or at least create and set up the information for each slide.

One way to create better quality PowerPoint presentations is to use higher quality graphics. Clipart taken straight from Microsoft Office screams “this information wasn’t important enough for me to attempt.” In particular, avoid using MS Office “screen beans,” which are so usual as to become laughably cliché.

Another good way to improve your PowerPoint presentation is to make a handout to go along with the information. With PowerPoint, you want to augment the information you’re providing, so be sure to keep the facts in the presentation itself to a minimum. Keep slides clean, succinct, and impactful.

Costly PowerPoint templates incorporate the kind of pictures, animation, and transitions that you might not be able to create yourself. With well-made flash animation and sharp pictures, your presentation will really stand out. But be sure not to get anything too fancy. You don’t want to distract from your presentation itself.

Don’t use too many bullet points and specifically don’t use paragraphs to get your idea across. You should be doing that yourself. Also, don’t overwhelm your presentation with graphics, fancy animated transitions, and graphics. Remember that the lecture is about the information. Especially for sales presentations, you don’t want anybody in the room to depart feeling that they’ve wasted their time watching fancy animations. Too many extras on your PowerPoint slides will detract from your presentation rather than add to it.

As a normal man cannot absorb more than ten new concepts in a sitting, each of your ten slides will give you the highest effect. It should take you about five minutes to show each slide. Much more than that and you’re rambling. Much less, and people will question the necessity to have that slide in the first place. A twenty-minute lecture leaves plenty of time for set up, and allows questions to be asked afterwards.

PowerPoint is one of the most helpful presentation tools you can use for business meetings and sales presentations. A effective PowerPoint presentation helps to underline your idea while giving the audience pieces of information that will last. While a good presentation will help your business and add to your meeting, a ineffective one can do just the opposite.

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