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johnesposito

It’s almost impossible to go to a meeting today without encountering a Power Point presentation.

Unfortunately, many of these presentations numb their audience at best, and antagonize them at worst. What should be a powerful business tool instead is often a huge mistake.

Why is this the case? It happens because presenters don’t pay attention to some simple rules that will raise their university homework help and shoulders above the rest. Keep the following points in mind the next time you sit down to create a presentation in Power Point.

1. Consider your audience. A presentation to the Board of Directors is very different from one to the Research and Development Department. Similarly, a presentation on test results for a new product is different from one that is intended to sell that new product to a customer. Not only the content, but the number and format of your slides will be different in each case. The fewest slides should be used for the highest-level meetings—in these cases you want to promote a dialog among the attendees, rather than bore them to tears with a recitation of facts and figures.

2. Don’t put too much on one slide. This is possibly the biggest mistake made. Each slide should be a snapshot of one point you want to make. If the slide contains too much information, your audience is reading the slide instead of listening to you talk. The Notes section of PowerPoint is there for you to have additional information in front of you that expands on the main ideas on the slide.

3. If there is one point, but it has multiple parts (e.g. Product A is inexpensive, easy to use, and colorful), use bullets to highlight the individual parts. Your audience should grasp the concept almost immediately, not after a laborious reading of detailed sentences.

4. Don’t use too many slides. How do you keep each slide simple and to the point, but not have too many slides? Think carefully about what you want to present, and then boil it down to its bare bones for the Power Point slides. Here again is where you use your extensive knowledge of your topic to be able to speak with authority on your subject without using the slides as a crutch. You will make a much better impression this way than if you read your own slides!

5. Limit (or eliminate) jargon and acronyms. Not everyone in your audience will necessarily understand them. If you must use them, explain them the first time (in the case of jargon), or write them out the first time, followed by the abbreviation (in the case of acronyms). For example: Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies (OPEC).

6. Use simple typefaces. Serif faces are easier to read than sans serif. Times New Roman is always a safe choice. Avoid fancy typefaces. They are particularly hard to read from a distance or at an angle. Make sure the typeface is large enough to be read by the person sitting farthest away from the screen. If this is a technical presentation, make sure any graphs, bar charts, and data blocks are clearly legible–ask someone to preview them before you make your presentation.

7. Avoid fancy or complicated formatting. It can distract from the points you are trying to make. Also avoid reversing type out of the background (i.e. white words on either a black or color background); it is much too difficult to read for most audiences, particularly in poor light conditions.

8. If you’re not proficient at formatting the copy and other elements of the slide, ask someone to help you. Every office has someone who is a whiz at creating interesting and effective formats, and they will be flattered you asked (as long as you don’t ask 10 minutes before you need the final product!).

9. Be careful of humor. Avoid not only off-color humor, but also any that may inadvertently offend any part of your audience. Are you sure you know everyone who will be in attendance? What if someone shows up whom you didn’t expect, and your humor strikes them as offensive—you’ve lost them for the rest of the presentation, and possibly made them angry at you.

10. Use spell check and grammar check. Then proofread the entire presentation yourself word by word to double check for errors. Better yet, ask someone else (or several people) to proofread it for you. The more pairs of eyes check it out, the less chance for error there is. While they’re at it, ask them to comment on the content as well. Is it clear and understandable? Is it interesting? Is there something you missed?