Here are the key steps to a successful PowerPoint:
1. Do you really need to use a Power Point? With a Power Point it is tough to connect with your audience. To make contact with them. Many times with a Power Point, people dim the lights. This gives your audience an opportunity to sleep.
2. If you deem that a PowerPoint is necessary, remember the audience is thinking about other things too. Picking up the dry cleaning, why is Jonny flunking math, did I pay the electric bill? Always give them a hand-out after the speech they can take home with them to remember the key points.
3. Offer to email the presentation to anyone who wants a copy. This is easy to do and they can print it out and share it with their fellow workers.
4. Your first slide should clearly state what your topic will cover. For example: Five Key Ways to Increase sales.
5. Never put a mission statement on a PowerPoint. They are boring, no one pays attention to them and it shows unoriginality.
6. Never use paragraphs on a PowerPoint. People will be so busy reading the paragraph that they won’t hear you.
7. If you make the mistake of putting a paragraph on a slide, don’t torture your audience by reading it aloud to them. They have all gone to school and can read for themselves. Spare all of us the pain. Instead, simply say, please take a moment and read this paragraph.
8. Use bullet points and limit each slide to three bullet points at the most. If your slide has 10 bullet points on it, you have overwhelmed your audience and destroyed the very reason you use bullet points.
9. Think of bullet points as talking points.
10. Use very simple graphs. Bar graphs and pie charts are nice. A graph with a bunch of lines looks like one of those machines you hook up to a heart patient.
11. This is in black and white. See how easy it is to read. My point. Keep it simple. You are not Walt Disney. You are not there to entertain, but rather to get your point across. Black and white can accomplish that easily and quickly.
12. Your type should at least be 28 points. Bigger if possible. That way the people in back can see it.
13. Don’t get fancy. Don’t use all theclever tricks when the slide spins onto the screen or SLOWLY appears on the screen. It is very clever, sure, but your audience has seen clever graphics thousands of time and just wants you to get to the point.
14. Don’t put in clever sound effects. Please!
15. Remember you are there to communicate information. Do it as clearly and concisely as possible. Don’t say we lost $135,723 dollars this quarter. Just say we lost about $136,000 this quarter.