What Makes an Effective PowerPoint Presentation?

An effective PowerPoint presentation can make a lot of difference in facilitating a business meeting or making a sales pitch.

Can you imagine spending the entire time speaking in front of an audience without something to attract their attention? Nothing beats having a visual aid to back you up, not to mention keep your audience awake.

Of course, you need to work on making your PowerPoint powerful enough to communicate your message effectively. So what makes a presentation effective?

Design

In terms of PowerPoint presentation design, the main consideration should be legibility. One of the most common mistakes that many presenters make is stuffing their slides with entire blocks of texts. PowerPoint presentation specialists would advise you to avoid this.

Apart from making the slides look illegible and boring, it creates the impression that you are not prepared. This could put a dent on your professionalism and credibility.

In general, the layout isn’t meant to detract the viewer’s gaze. It should be able to highlight your points. Keep the text large enough for easy reading, with the color contrasting well with the background.

If you’re using images, make sure they don’t detract from the message. They should work to support the text, not overpower it. According to Inc.com‘s Eric Markowitz, consistency is essential in establishing a visually engaging deck. Make sure you know your brand, and you stick to it.

Content

Regardless of the message you want to communicate, you need to make sure that the content is presented clearly. The best way to do this is by organizing whatever you have to say into three main points.

Whatever details you want to include, they should all lead to those points.

Creating an outline of your main points can help you organize the flow of your PowerPoint presentation. It can also help you determine the parts of your talk where slides are necessary so you can avoid overusing them. Presentation slides are extremely useful.

Overusing them, however, might confuse your audience.

Delivery

Whatever you do, remember to talk to your audience and not to your slides. As a mark of a lazy presenter, reading the slides can tune your viewers out. The important thing is to engage your audience by maintaining eye contact as much as possible.

Use your slides only as supporting tools. Just take your main points to heart (without disregarding the amount of time you spend on each of them) and you’re good to go.

PowerPoint is an essential tool for business communicators. It can make your life so much simpler.