How to Stimulate and Captivate Your Audience with PowerPoint!
by Allan Misch
How many times have you said to yourself, "Oh no, another
boring, dull PowerPoint presentation?" You know, the kind that
makes you fall asleep with slide after slide of never-ending bullet
points, paragraphs of text, and captalized text.
Or do you sometimes feel like you're drowning in a sea of animated
text slides that make you boiling mad? You've seen them, slides
that have every animated text trick in the book—fly-ins; zooms;
and the hated typewriter animation, where every letter, of every
word, of every line appears as if it was being typed (with an accompanying
typewriter clicking sound).
Doesn't this make you want to have a major nervous breakdown rather
than sit through the rest of the presentation?
Are you tired of seeing the same old slides that have a poor, low-quality
graphic thrown in that breaks up the monotony of the other text-intensive
slides? Unfortunately for you, the graphic doesn't appear to have
anything to do with the point of the
slide, adds another distraction to the presentation, and makes you
want to throw the laptop at the presenter.
This doesn't have to be the way your audiences feel about your
PowerPoint presentations. You can join the small handful of business
presenters who engage and galvanize their audience with vivid, easy-to-follow,
eye-opening slide presentations.
Each of their slides contains a main message; little or no bullet
points or subtext; and sizzling, compelling graphics that illustrate
the slide's point.
Their slides are in line with current research on multi-media learning
such as research by Richard E. Mayer of the University of California.
Mayer concludes that an audience's interest and learning is maximized
by using less text with interesting, meaningful graphics.
You can have PowerPont slides that sizzle. Just be B-O-L-D.
Here's how.
B—Begin by Designing
Your Oral Presentation
First, organize and outline your presentation. Your outline should
have all the ideas and points for your presentation's opening, body,
and close. Plan on having a slide for each idea and point.
Then, on a blank page in MS Word, write a headline that describes
each idea and point. Separate each headline by a hard return, so
you have only one headline on each line. Save the Word file with
an
appropriate name such as WidgetSlideHeadlines.doc.
The headlines will be the titles of your slides. Headlines should
have a subject, verb, and predicate, but at least a subject and
verb. They should have from 2 to 7 words that fit on no more
than 1 line of 36-point to 40-point text on your PowerPoint slide.
For example, if you want to discuss the 5 benefits of your product,
you probably would have a slide that's titled "Benefits."
Now that's dull! Using the B-O-L-D approach, you would write
an engaging headline such as:
5 reasons Apex widgets rocket your profits
Next...
O—Open Up PowerPoint
and Create a Slide Template
Avoid using the templates that come with PowerPoint. Most of them
tempt you to create cookie-cutter type slides that wind up bullet-point-
or text-intensive.
Create a master slide with only a Title text placeholder. The text
should be a sans serif font such as Arial or Verdona. The size should
be 36 to 40 points. The color should be black.
Delete the placeholder for bullet-point text. Avoid using headers,
footers and logos on slides, unless it's company policy to include
a company logo on each slide. Headers and footers on slides detract
from the slide's function—to help your audience understand
the slide's message.
You can save this template in your templates folder. Give it an
appropriate name such as BoldPresentation.pot. Then...
L—Lay In Your
Headlines and Create Your Speaker Notes
From within Word, export the headlines file (WidgetSlideHeadlines.doc)
to PowerPoint. PowerPoint will create a file with slides that have
your headlines as titles.
Next, open up your template file (BoldPresentation.pot) as a PowerPoint
document. Copy the slides containing your headlines to the file
created from the BoldPresentation.pot template. Name this PowerPoint
file (for example, WidgetPresentation.ppt).
If you don't want to go the importing route, you can open up the
PowerPoint template as a document, switch to Outline view, and type
your headlines there. Save the file.
Then, switch to Notes view. Notes view shows a picture of the slide
with your headline in the top portion of the page and room for notes
in the bottom part of the page.
Put all your text, notes, and bullet points in the bottom part
of the page. Do this before you work on your slides. When you finish,
you will have the notes and bullet points for your entire presentation.
Be sure to save your file every few minutes. Now it's time to...
D—Design Your
Slides with Riveting Graphics and Color
Switch to Slide view. Find an appropriate picture, clip art or
other graphic that illustrates the point of the slide, and place
it on the slide. Make it big, covering the entire slide if possible.
Vary the placement and color of the headline depending on the characteristics
of the graphic. For example, if the graphic is light at the bottom
and dark at the top, move the dark text to the bottom of the slide.
You also can leave the headline at the
top but change the color from black to white.
If your graphic doesn't fill the entire slide, you can move it
to one side. Then, move your headline to the other side so it fills
up several lines on one-third or half of the slide.
Use different background colors on your slides. Use a background
color on a slide that compliments the colors in your graphic and
headline. Use the same background color for slides that cover a
major point and another background color for slides that cover
a different major point.
If you need to include minimal text to compliment your graphic,
create a text box with a sans serif font that's the same as or compliments
your title text. The text size should be 28 to 32 points.
After you design the slides, add a presentation title slide in
front of your first slide. Then, make your slide transitions subtle
and simple.
Consider using a dramatic transition, such as a Wheel or Wipe,
when moving from your presentation's opening to the body and the
body to the close. Use another transition when moving from the last
slide of one major point to the first slide of another major point.
Switch to Notes view. You now have a page with your finished slide
at the top and your notes and bullet points at the bottom. Go to
the header and footer of your Notes view (not the slide) and set
up your header and footer if appropriate. Then, print the Notes
pages for your speaker notes. You also can print them as handouts
for your audience.
If you want a different set of notes for your handout, copy the
file, rename it, change the notes, then print it. Your audience
will have copies of your outstanding slides and all the bullet points
and text that you'd normally see on those dull, send-you-
to-dreamland slides that you're used to seeing.
So capture your audiences and be B-O-L-D. First, begin by
designing your oral presentation. Then, open up PowerPoint and create
a slide template. Next, lay in your headlines and create your speaker
notes. Finally, design your slides with riveting
graphics and color.
Your PowerPoint presentations often spell the difference between
failure and success. If you're tired of the same old humdrum slide
shows, isn't it time you begin to stimulate and captivate your
audiences with commanding PowerPoint presentations? Just be B-O-L-D.
© Allan Misch and Allan Kaufman,
Allan and Allan, Inc., 2005. All rights reserved.
Allan Kaufman and Allan Misch http://www.nosweatspeaking.com
specialize in rapidly reducing public speaking fear and offer 2
valuable, bonus reports and public speaking tips in their complimentary
monthly No Sweat Speaking™ Ezine.
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