By Barrera Alcova
Presentation skills are pretty critical today if you want to succeed at school or work. The ability to express your ideas clearly relies heavily on your familiarity with key software for creating presentations.
Undoubtedly, for a presentation to be successful, it should always be supported by excellent public speaking skills. However, it’s the visualization that people remember the most.
Image: Unsplash
Knowledge of a few PowerPoint tips could have saved lots of freshmen from failure while making their first presentations. With that in mind, we turned for advice to Ben Crane – a writer working for a custom dissertation writing service and a recent Ph.D. graduate. Check out the list of things every freshman should know about PowerPoint.
Don’t Plan to Create Your Own Design Template
… unless you do have enough time for it. If not, a desire to stand out may turn out to be a total failure. Unfortunately, it often happens with PowerPoint that the presentation that you saw as perfect on your PC ends up being totally distorted on your school’s equipment.
Design templates, however, ensure that you can count on certain consistency. Also, these design templates are usually balanced in terms of colors and font styles for your audience not to get distracted.
Don’t Write a Lot on Each Slide
Yes, having all the information you need is helpful but only if you intend to read instead of presenting. If you want to make others interested or persuaded, having all the text on the slides is the worst idea possible.
Usually, it’s only names, numbers, and dates that should go to the slide. The rest is about your public speaking skills and subject-matter knowledge. So, don’t put it all on the slide, highlight only the most important stuff.
Don’t Make Your PowerPoint Huge
Lots of freshmen make the same mistake in their first presentations. They create 20+ slides that no one has time to listen to. Usually, the attention span lasts no longer than 20 minutes. Ideally, you should have up to 10 slides to stop for 90 seconds at each of them.
Making your audience bored is the worst thing you can do. It kills your presentation no matter how great it looks. If you feel tempted to create a big presentation, do that but then filter it to 10 slides.
Highlight What’s Important
Ideas you find critical to your presentation should be highlighted. Your PowerPoint presentation will be checked by your professor and other students and these highlights will help them remember what’s been already said.
However, do not exaggerate. Numbers, percentages, and other figures are already quite visible. Leave all the highlights to key facts and words.
Use Visuals
A presentation is great if you use visuals in it. Otherwise, it’s just a wall of words. Try to find:
- images;
- videos;
- GIFs;
- materials to support your ideas (charts, diagrams, and graphs).
Don’t be afraid to add some humor and game if possible and relevant. If not, still make sure your presentation is not monotonous.
Consider Adding Animation Effects
If you believe that special effects will benefit your presentation, don’t hesitate to add them. After being so popular, they have been avoided for quite a long time. Today, animation effects are back. However, it’s usually smart and moderate effects that make a difference.
You can either make your ppt unique or destroy it with animation. That’s why you should think of the subject and your audience beforehand. For example, a presentation on Holocaust can hardly sustain any effects while a ppt on your favorite book may only benefit from a few of them.
Never Turn Your Back
As a presenter, you are a key figure when your presentation is played. There is usually a huge temptation to turn to the screen and read from it. However, the presentation you’ve created is not for you. It’s for your audience.
That’s why you can either access it from the computer in front of you or use your peripheral vision to remember what you’ve planned to say when working on the slide.
Make Pauses
Unfortunately, many perceive pauses as weaknesses. However, they can actually help you restore your energy, recollect all the information, and keep the audience engaged. How? You can pause to get some feedback or ask questions. Or let the audience pose their questions. Both options help you recover your energy and avoid putting filler words here and there.
Know More Than You Discuss
Quite often, we tend to put it all into our presentation to make it comprehensive. Instead, you should focus on making it informative. That means deep research behind each slide so that when you are asked a question, you’ll know what to say.
Invest your time in studying the subject to become an expert rather than put it all in the presentation. Look for interesting facts to know the answers to probable questions. It will both help you engage the audience and make your professor impressed.
Image: Unsplash
Always Be Prepared
It’s a good idea to create a Plan B for an important presentation. Things happen, and sometimes, a perfectly working file won’t open on another computer. It can be compromised and distorted so much that using it becomes meaningless.
Gladly, there are many options for how you can secure your PowerPoint presentation. First of all, start with creating a PDF version of your presentation. Yes, it won’t look so appealing, but it will help you feel more confident. Secondly, work on a scenario where you have to present information with no supporting visuals. It’s a difficult task but a possible one.
And Finally: Rehearse
Not a single presentation will look great if you don’t prepare. Anxiety and fear of big audiences can make you numb in front of your professor and classmates if you don’t imagine and rehearse this situation at home.
It’s critical to not only learn the information but also prepare to present it. Think about how you will speak, behave, and move. Presentation is usually difficult because you stay exposed to the audience that evaluates you. Learn a few tricks that make you look confident and cool and use them whenever you stand in front of many people.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.