Tag: Powerpoint

Captivating Presentations: Tailoring Your PowerPoint to Engage and Inspire Your Audience

audience

Powerpoint

Jun 20, 2014

When it comes to live presentations, connecting with your audience is everything. Apart from providing you with the right push to carry on, being able to engage your audience means you have somehow earned their trust. Whether you are pitching an idea, selling a product, or sharing a lesson, that connection will make it possible for your call to action to get the appropriate response. So how do you connect with your audience? Try tailoring your message to them.

Know Your Audience

It pays to learn some information about your audience in advance. If you have access to such info, take note of the following:Do the members of the audience belong to the same age bracket? Are children going to be present?Is your potential audience a formal or informal crowd?What are their levels of education?What are their common interests (business, recreational activities, political belief, etc.)?Most importantly: Why are they attending the presentation? Did they volunteer or their bosses sent them?Take into consideration the answers to these questions so you’ll be prepared to adjust to any scenario.

Use Visuals That Appeal to Them

Make use of images, diagrams, and chart designs are familiar to your audience. (This is where the info you have of them would be very useful). If majority of the audience members is composed of business executives, for example, then it is safe to say that you won’t be using images of Pokemon or Little Pony. The point is, select images that your audience will be able to relate to.You may also want to use the colors that is most associated with your audience. If you’re pitching to a company, incorporate the colors of their logo. Or if you are presenting to a group of students, make use of their school colors.

Watch Your Language

Certain groups of people have their language or jargon. Techies have their own and so as business professionals. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to speak like them. Just be mindful of your choice of words and make sure that they fit your audience.Designing your PowerPoint for your audience gives you the edge you need to establish rapport with them. It allows you to sort of condition their mind before you go in for the kill.

A Shot in the Arm: How to Improve Your Healthcare PowerPoint

healthcare powerpoint

physicians

Powerpoint

public speakers

Jun 17, 2014

Improving a healthcare PowerPoint presentation requires clarity, engaging design, and credible data. Here are some tips for giving your healthcare presentation a much-needed “shot in the arm” to make it more effective:

1. Simplify Complex Information

  • Why it matters: Healthcare topics are often loaded with technical terms and complex data. Simplifying this information ensures that your audience can follow along and retain key points.
  • How to improve: Use bullet points, infographics, and diagrams to break down difficult concepts into digestible pieces. Limit text on each slide and explain complicated terms in layman’s language, especially if your audience isn’t highly specialized.

2. Leverage Visual Storytelling

  • Why it matters: Healthcare is a data-heavy field, and charts or graphs filled with numbers can overwhelm the audience. Visual storytelling helps transform data into compelling narratives.
  • How to improve: Use data visualizations like bar charts, line graphs, and infographics to illustrate trends in patient outcomes, research findings, or budget reports. Use icons and illustrations for processes like patient care pathways or treatment protocols, making them easier to grasp visually.

3. Use Real-World Case Studies

  • Why it matters: Real-life examples help connect theoretical data to practical applications in healthcare. Case studies can make your presentation more relatable and impactful.
  • How to improve: Include success stories or case studies about patient care, healthcare technology implementations, or medical breakthroughs. For example, discuss how a particular intervention improved patient recovery rates, or how technology helped streamline hospital workflows.

4. Data Accuracy and Credibility

  • Why it matters: In the healthcare field, providing accurate and up-to-date data is critical for maintaining credibility with your audience, whether they are doctors, nurses, or healthcare administrators.
  • How to improve: Always cite reputable sources, such as government agencies (CDC, WHO), peer-reviewed medical journals, or established healthcare organizations. Present clear data points and avoid overcrowding slides with too much information.

5. Focus on Patient Outcomes

  • Why it matters: Healthcare presentations often deal with patient-centered care, which means emphasizing outcomes that improve the quality of life for patients.
  • How to improve: Highlight metrics related to patient outcomes such as recovery rates, patient satisfaction scores, and reduction in hospital readmission. Use visuals like before-and-after graphs or case-specific improvements to drive the point home.

6. Maintain Consistent Branding and Professionalism

  • Why it matters: A professional design builds trust with your audience and ensures that your presentation looks polished and credible.
  • How to improve: Use consistent fonts, color schemes, and branding that aligns with your hospital, clinic, or organization. Avoid using too many colors or fonts, and stick with a clean, easy-to-read design.

7. Add Videos or Animations for Engagement

  • Why it matters: Multimedia elements like videos or animations can bring your healthcare message to life and increase engagement, especially for demonstrations of new medical procedures or equipment.
  • How to improve: Include short videos that demonstrate medical procedures, new technologies, or patient testimonials. Use animations to guide the audience through complex processes or data, but keep them minimal to avoid distraction.

8. Incorporate Actionable Takeaways

  • Why it matters: Your audience should walk away with actionable insights that they can apply in their professional roles.
  • How to improve: Conclude your presentation with clear recommendations or next steps, whether it’s applying a new healthcare policy, implementing a patient care strategy, or adopting new technology.

By focusing on these strategies—simplifying content, enhancing visual appeal, maintaining data integrity, and incorporating real-life examples—you can create an impactful and engaging healthcare presentation.

How to Find Pictures for PowerPoint Presentations in the Vast Expanse of the Internet

pictures for powerpoint presentations

Powerpoint

Presentations

SlideGenius

Jun 12, 2014

As the age old adage goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

We previously tackled the importance of reducing text in your PowerPoint slides. Your presentation needs to be visually engaging. A block of text that simply mimics your speech is an easy way to lose your audience. Instead, stimulate their brain’s ability to easily pick up visual cues by using carefully selected pictures.The best image to use is the one that summarizes what you’d normally try to say in five bullet points.The Internet is a great resource to find pictures for PowerPoint presentations, but practice caution.Not everything that comes up in your Google image search is advisable to use. You might be in danger of infringing copyrighted materials without even knowing it!So, how do you find perfectly legal pictures for PowerPoint presentations, then? Where should you go without having to worry about possible complications?

Sites to Get Your Pictures From

1) Royalty Free Images

In exchange for a one-time fee, you can continuously use a copyrighted picture according to agreed upon terms without having to pay license fees in the future. A royalty-free license is common in stock photography.

2) Creative Commons-licensed content

You can use a photo with a creative commons (CC) license for free under specific conditions. There are different types of CC licenses, but the most important thing you’ll need to remember is Attribution. You’ll have to give credit to whoever owns the picture you decide to use.

3) Images in the public domain

An image in the public domain doesn’t hold any license, so it’s free to use. Works are considered to be part of the public domain if it meets the following:

      • the copyright has expired, or the work was never granted a valid copyright in the first place
      • the creator has relegated the work to the public domain
      • when they’re ineligible for copyright based on this criteria.

How do you find pictures like these? 

If you’d like pictures for PowerPoint presentations that are appropriate to use, don’t look for them using Google or Bing.A huge selection of CC-licensed content can be found on Flickr. The search tool can be a little tricky, though, so you can use sites that find CC content like CC Search and Wikimedia Commons. Another option is to visit photo-hosting site 500px, which gathers all CC-licensed pictures in one place.While there are no specialized searches to find photos in the public domain, Wikimedia Commons labels each picture with its license information. Public domain photos are tagged with this symbol:If, however, you’re willing to splurge a few couple of bucks, you can get royalty free images from websites like Getty Images, iStock, and Shutterstock. While you might have to stretch your budget, the photos you get from these sites usually look more professional and polished.

References

“Vision.” Brain Rules. Accessed June 12, 2014.”What Is in the Public Domain, Always, besides Ideas?” PublicSherpa. Accessed June 12, 2014.Featured Image by HikingArtist from Wikimedia.org 

4 Steps to Mastering the Elevator Pitch

elevator pitch

Powerpoint

powerpoint presentation

powerpoint presentations

presentation

presentation skill

presentation skills

Presentations

Jun 10, 2014

The idea behind the elevator pitch is said to have originated from businessmen who needed to pitch proposals to prospective investors as quickly as possible.Incidentally, it also gives the investors a chance to turn down ideas promptly (especially those that are not that good or do not match their investment profile). The fast paced delivery indeed works well for both parties. If you have a plan to acquire funds from a potential investor, mastering the art of the elevator pitch will definitely work to your advantage.In his Forbes article, Rick Frasch already provides the eight mistakes entrepreneurs need to avoid in their elevator pitch. Now here are four tips from us on how to get it right:

1. Establish your story

Set aside a time to write your story, preferably without interruptions. When you write, visualize that you’re telling the story to a family member or a close friend. This can help you put your mind at ease.Write anything relevant to your ideas. Don’t forget to silence your inner critic and not edit just yet.

2. Let it sit for some time

Once you are done with your pitch’s rough draft, go and do something else. You may want to go for a walk or drive around the neighborhood.The idea is to let the story sit for a day or two so you’ll have a fresh perspective when you read and work on it again.

3. Polish your hook

Start editing down your story to its barest essential. Your goal is to craft a killer 60-second elevator pitch. While you’re at it, think about adding a good hook.The hook is the part that will let you jumpstart your pitch. It should be about 15 seconds long. This is important because those 15 seconds are your only chance to convince your prospect to listen to the rest of the pitch.Add an element of curiosity to your hook. You may choose to start with engaging phrases such as “What if…” or “Picture this…” At this point, you should have you prospect intrigued.

4. Explain what’s in it for them

Now that you have the attention of your prospective investor, it’s time to key in on engaging the audience. Persuade your listeners into actually investing by explaining how your idea can bring in profits. PProve that there’s a market for it and that your solution is something that customers would be willing to pay for. Close your pitch by creating a sense of urgency.Whether your product is only available during the Holidays or you’re racing with a rival in filing a patent, use urgency to motivate, not force people to invest.

The Final Word

Spend enough time practicing your pitch. Time yourself as your practice. Make sure that you can say whatever you need to say within the 60-second limit.The key to a great elevator pitch is not just to pitch in a rapid-fire approach. Even if you can’t deliver a mile a minute speech, you would still be able to impress your audience.And most importantly, memorize your lines. If you’re using a PowerPoint presentation, do not read from the slides. Investors can sense if you’re not ready and just winging it, so practice extensively to perfect that pitch. 

Reference

Frasch, Rick. “8 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Pitching To Investors.” Forbes. Accessed June 10, 2014.

Dilbert on PowerPoint: Serious PowerPoint Lessons from a Comic Strip

dilbert

pie charts

Powerpoint

powerpoint lessons

slides

Jun 09, 2014

Dilbert creator Scott Adams is one of those people who was able to take a personal setback and turn it into something extraordinary: he turned the inanity of his workplace experiences into a successful career. Currently, the Dilbert comic strip runs in 2,000 newspapers in 65 countries and printed in 25 languages. Adams has also published several books compiling the strips and several actual business books that feature his characters. Not bad for a former bank teller.To the uninitiated, Dilbert draws its humor from ordinary office situations. It pokes fun at the silliness of rank-and-file employees (at least in its own world) while taking witty potshots at the self-importance and absurdity of the higher-ups.One of the most common office-related topics that the comic strip has tacked is PowerPoint presentation. Some of the strips about it are funny. When you look beyond the ridiculousness, however, you will see serious lessons in there somewhere. Here are just some examples:

Add Value to Your Slides (Make sure your audience will get something from them)

dilbert on powerpoint

Make Your Slides Interesting (Or risk putting your audience to sleep)

dilbert 2

Don’t Read From Your Slides (and avoid bullet points, if possible)

dilbert 3

Impress the Audience with Visual Aids (Such as Pie Charts)

dilbert 4dilbert 5There you have it. Comic strips can make your day as you sit back and read the morning papers. But when you think about it, they do more than just entertain. Just take these Dilbert strips. Hopefully, these samples would inspire you to create or design PowerPoint presentations that won’t put your audience to sleep or make them think of harsh things to do to you. When in doubt, you may just leave everything to the professionals.[sg-blog-modules module=two]

Dilbert on PowerPoint: Serious PowerPoint Lessons from a Silly Comic Strip

dilbert

pie charts

Powerpoint

powerpoint lessons

slides

Jun 09, 2014

Dilbert creator Scott Adams is one of those people who was able to take a personal setback and turned it into something awesome – he turned the inanity of his workplace experiences into a successful professional career. Currently, the Dilbert comic strip runs in 2,000 newspapers in 65 countries and printed in 25 languages. Adams has also published several books compiling the strips and a number of actual business books that feature his characters. Not bad for a former bank teller and failed entrepreneur.To the uninitiated, Dilbert draws its humor from ordinary office situations. It pokes fun at the silliness of rank and file employees (at least in its own world) while throwing witty potshots at the self-importance and absurdity of the higher-ups.One of the most common office-related topics that the comic strip has tacked is PowerPoint presentation. Some of the strips about it are actually funny. When you look beyond the ridiculousness, however, you will see that there are serious lessons in there somewhere. Here are just some examples:

Add Value to Your Slides (Make sure your audience will get something from them)

dilbert on powerpoint

Make Your Slides Interesting (Or risk putting your audience to sleep)

dilbert 2

Don’t Read From Your Slides (and avoid bullet points, if possible)

dilbert 3

Impress the Audience with Visual Aids (Such as Pie Charts)

dilbert 4

dilbert 5 There you have it. Comic strips can make your day as you sit back and read the morning papers. But when you think about it, they do more than just entertain. Just take these Dilbert strips. Hopefully, these samples would inspire you to create or design PowerPoint presentations that won’t put your audience to sleep or make them think of harsh things to do to you. When in doubt, you may just leave everything to the professionals.

Just Scroll With It: Why Convert Your Slides into a Scrolling Web Presentation

Powerpoint

presentation

scrolling web presentation

slide deck

slides

web page

Jun 06, 2014

In today’s fast-paced digital world, static slide presentations can feel limiting and outdated. Converting your traditional slide deck into a scrolling web presentation can offer a more dynamic, engaging, and user-friendly experience for your audience. Here’s why you should consider making the switch.

1. Improved Engagement

A scrolling web presentation allows viewers to consume content at their own pace, which can lead to increased engagement and retention. Instead of passively clicking through slides, users can actively scroll through content, interacting with it more naturally.Why It’s Important:

  • Encourages Interaction: Scrolling presentations are more interactive, keeping the audience engaged.
  • Caters to Different Viewing Speeds: Audiences can move through the presentation at their own pace, ensuring they absorb the information thoroughly.

How to Do It:

  • Use tools like Microsoft Sway, Prezi, or websites built on platforms like WordPress to convert your slide deck into a seamless, scrolling experience.

2. Flexibility Across Devices

Scrolling presentations are often easier to view on different devices, including smartphones and tablets. This format is especially useful for remote or mobile users, ensuring your content is accessible and visually appealing regardless of screen size.Why It’s Important:

  • Mobile Optimization: Scrolling presentations translate well across devices, ensuring a consistent experience for all users.
  • Increases Accessibility: By ensuring compatibility across devices, you can reach a wider audience.

How to Do It:

  • Use responsive design elements in your presentation to ensure it adapts well to both desktop and mobile screens.

3. Continuous Narrative Flow

Traditional slides often break up content, making it harder for viewers to follow a cohesive story. Scrolling presentations, on the other hand, offer a continuous narrative flow, making it easier to guide viewers through a logical progression of information.Why It’s Important:

  • Streamlines Storytelling: The continuous nature of scrolling allows you to maintain a smooth narrative flow.
  • Enhances Clarity: Viewers can easily follow the progression of your ideas without the disruption of slide transitions.

How to Do It:

  • Structure your content to flow naturally, using a clear beginning, middle, and end. Consider breaking up long blocks of text with visuals to maintain engagement.

4. Incorporates Interactive Elements

Web-based presentations allow for more interactive elements, such as clickable images, embedded videos, and dynamic infographics. These features not only make your presentation more engaging but also give your audience more control over how they interact with your content.Why It’s Important:

  • Increases Engagement: Interactive elements keep your audience actively involved with the content.
  • Enhances Understanding: Videos and infographics can help explain complex concepts more effectively than static slides.

How to Do It:

  • Embed multimedia content, such as videos and interactive graphs, to provide a richer, more engaging experience for your audience.

5. Greater Shareability

Scrolling presentations are typically easier to share via web links, making them more convenient for distribution. This format is ideal for virtual meetings, emails, and social media, ensuring that your content reaches your intended audience without needing to download large files.Why It’s Important:

  • Simplifies Sharing: A web-based format makes it easy to distribute your presentation through a simple link.
  • Increases Reach: By making your content more shareable, you increase the chances of it being viewed by a larger audience.

How to Do It:

  • Publish your presentation on a platform that provides easy-to-share URLs, and promote it across your digital channels for maximum visibility.

Final Thoughts

Converting your traditional slides into a scrolling web presentation offers a more modern, dynamic, and engaging way to present information. With improved engagement, flexibility, and shareability, this format is ideal for today’s mobile, digital-first audience. By leveraging the benefits of scrolling presentations, you can create a seamless experience that captivates your viewers from start to finish.

Making Your Slides Less Text-Heavy

bullet points

Powerpoint

presentation

slides

Jun 03, 2014

The main purpose of a PowerPoint presentation is to help a presenter tackle a topic in as few words as possible, without losing the core message.Unfortunately, not all presenters know how to limit the amount of text on their slides. To avoid making your presentation appear too text-heavy, you may want to try the following suggestions:

Use Multiple Slides

The bullet point has been an alternative for many presenters who don’t want to flood their slides with walls of text. However, this solution sometimes proves to be counterintuitive, since many presenters make the mistake of fitting as many bullet points as they can – on a single slide.Just like paragraphs, this practice makes a slide look confusing. To avoid this, do away with bullets and give each point their own slide. Doing so will let you increase the font size as well as improve your slides’ layout.

Think Visually

Instead of describing things with words, consider using images to represent your points. Don’t worry about your audience not getting the reference at first glance. It’s up to you as the presenter to fill them in on the missing pieces, just make sure the connection is evident after you’ve given the explanation. If it’s still not obvious after that, you may want to reconsider your choice of words.This works for you since their attention will come back to you after viewing the slides. If you put text on your slide, their focus will stay on the slide – they’d just read everything instead of paying attention to you.

Keep it Short

While images are a great shorthand for your points, not all slides can contain only one image. Some slides may still require a few words to be effective. If you really need to add text, make sure to keep it to a minimum. Highlighting your main points can help organize your slides. Choose contrasting colors to enhance readability. If you’re going to use a bright background, for example, then choose a darker shade for your text.A good rule of thumb would be: If you can express something in one image, then do it. If you can’t, use as little text as possible. The audience is there to hear your talk, not to read the slides with you (or even ahead of you).

Conclusion

The presenter’s bane has always been walls of text that bore the audience and ineffectively relate key points. You can put an end to this information overload on your slides with a few simple steps.Instead of going for plenty of bullet points that defeat the point of breaking down text, try using multiple slides to get your point across. You can get even more creative and put images instead of text. But if you really can’t help using words in your slides, make sure to always keep them as short as possible.Your deck should complement your pitch, but in order to do that, it first needs to take be visually appealing, not off-putting. 

Reference

Contrast Rebellion. Accessed June 3, 2014.

PowerPoint Presentations Can Benefit From Powerful Storytelling

Powerpoint

presentation

storytelling

Jun 02, 2014

Who doesn’t love to hear stories?PowerPoint presentations become more effective in their purpose when supported by engaging stories.

Why are They Important?

1. Make Your Messages More Relatable

There’s a reason why many of us had filled our notebooks with doodles during our school days: Barrage of facts and figures can make any lecture boring and mind-numbing. When incorporated into your presentation, the right stories can make your message more meaningful and more importantly, digestible. This is especially true if you take the time to learn more about your audience and the type of life stories that are likely to get their attention.After doing your research, draw a story from your own experience that’s similar to that of your general audience and use it to appeal to them emotionally.Stories can help establish a bond between the storyteller and the audience. We may not be aware of it at times but every one of us longs for a connection with others – especially with those who have had the same experiences as ourselves.

2. Allow You to Connect with Your Audience

As stories can cut through the audience’s filter better than facts, you have a greater chance of earning their trust.If you’re a good storyteller, you could even establish a connection with them. Once you have a connection with your audience, you can practically say anything to them and they’ll hardly express any disagreement.

3. Can Make Your Audience Agree with You

As long as your stories hit their mark, they can help you make your case and have your audience agree with your points.This happens because stories shut down whatever counter-arguments your listeners have, making them less likely to think of reasons to disagree. Another reason for this is that stories have the power to touch human emotions, which increases the likelihood of your audience agreeing with you.Now that you know the importance of storytelling in creating a presentation, what now? How do you take advantage of it? Well, all you need to do is find a nice way to tell your stories. Here are some tips for your to consider:

How to Incorporate Stories

1. Add a human element to your story

As with any stories, you need someone for your audience to relate to. This someone is the hero. In your case, this could be a student, a colleague, a consumer, or anyone who’ll make sense being included in your story.

2. Give your hero a goal and an obstacle from achieving that goal

A story without conflict can be boring. So give your hero something to aspire to as well as some challenges he needs to overcome. In your PowerPoint, this could be the part you introduce the problem.

3. Come up with a satisfying ending

People love happy endings. They inspire feelings of hope and joy. This is where you show how your ideas can solve the problems you’ve introduced earlier.

Hopefully, these three steps are enough to get you started on polishing your storytelling skills. In any case, arranging your deck in this order can make your presentation more engaging and make your job as a presenter much easier.

 

Reference

“How to Use the Persuasive Power of Metaphors.” Enchanting Marketing. 2013. Accessed June 2, 2014.

The Perks of Having the Right PowerPoint Background

Powerpoint

powerpoint background

May 30, 2014

The ideal PowerPoint background is something that looks simple and clear. This helps your audience focus on key points on the slide rather than get distracted by an over-embellished deck. An effective background often utilizes design principles like white space to avoid drawing attention to itself and instead highlight the real objective of your presentation.Ill-designed backgrounds are often those that have too much clutter on it. These present elements on the deck that aren’t necessary to your core message. While an occasional frame or color might actually boost he audience’s interest in your slides, reserve the design for the points that matter.To help give you an idea, the right PowerPoint background has these two qualities:

1. Right Contrast

Your audience should be able to read your text clearly. This is why you should use colors that provide a nice contrast between the slide’s background and foreground. By using dark text against a lightly colored background, you would be able to enhance your presentation’s readability.Just a word of caution: If you are presenting in a room that is not well lit, do the opposite of the advice above. Choose a dark background and make your texts light-colored.It would help to run through a test of the presentation in the designated venue beforehand. Apart from gauging the venue’s lighting, you will also be able to also check the projector’s settings. If you fail to make the necessary adjustments, the impact of the colors may be diminished by the projector.

2. Consistent Look

Consistency is important as it tells the audience that they are still viewing the same presentation during your entire talk. Being consistent with the design of your slides, however, doesn’t have to limit your creativity. It is just that you are eliminating unnecessary details or distractions from the slides.One cause of inconsistency is the use of multiple colored slides. A presentation with multiple colored slides would be an assault to anyone’s retina. According to Creative Content Expert‘s Tara Hornor, poor color choices are among the things that hamper a design. Make sure to limit the number of colors to just two or three. This way, your PowerPoint presentation would look more professional and a lot less ridiculous.A corporate logo on each slide can also contribute to your slide’s consistency. If you don’t feel like adding a logo on every slide as it could look obtrusive, you may choose to place it on first and last slides instead.

Conclusion

Ultimately, as you work on your PowerPoint presentation, your choice of background is always an important consideration. It may seem like a minor detail but the right background can make a whole lot of difference between an impressive, professional-looking presentation and a mediocre one.It may seem like a minor detail but the right background can make a whole lot of difference between an impressive, professional-looking presentation and an ill-designed one. 

Reference

“10 Troublesome Colors to Avoid In Your Advertising.” Site Point. May 08, 2013. Accessed May 30, 2014.