PowerPoint Tips
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Prepare Yourself - Presenting
to an Audience
Everybody gets nervous before a presentation. So What! Its you that you are worried about!
A very useful technique is to visualise yourself giving the presentation
and it going well. Clearly picture the scene and think what is
happening that is making it go well.
This surprisingly simple
method is extremely effective in making you more confident and
improving the quality of the experience for everybody.
As
a precursor to this visit the place where you are to give the
presentation before hand to help you picture the scene.
Keep the nerves down by preparing thoroughly. Allow between 5
hours and 8 hours per hour of presentation.
Rehearse
the presentation in front of an audience. Don't skip anything,
these will be the bits that may go wrong.
Nerves
are a good thing, the extra adrenaline helps you think faster
and with a little control helps you properly focus on the task
ahead.
To
gain that extra control and to reduce anxiety the 7 11
method is a useful breathing technique. The aim is to breath
out for longer than you breath in. This gives the body the signal
that all is well and you automatically calm down. It works every
time. Breath in slowly for 7 seconds, hold for 5 seconds
and then breath out for 11 seconds then hold for 5 seconds.
Its fine to build up to the eleven seconds.
Presenters,
Actors and stage musicians will tell you that for a big audience
you present to a point at the back of the room
above the audience's head.
Most
PowerPoint presentations are often given to a small number and
it is far better to build a rapport with a couple of people (preferably
important people!) in the audience.
Get
feedback during the presentation, this helps make the audience part of the presentation and can
reduce the fear factor dramatically.
If no feedback
is coming from the audience no need to worry. People react differently
at presentations and that bored looking person may actually
be concentrating intently.
Oh and please don't sway from foot to foot. This is very off putting for the audience and there may be snipers present, it could be the end of a promising career. (This last tip provided by Lynn of Sussex Enterprise).
Humour can be a powerful tool but if your not sure if you can pull it off then you probably can't, use sparingly.
PowerPoint
Strategy
Remember
that the main power of the "stand up in front of an audience
and talk to them whilst showing some slides" format is not
the slides, its you!
People will get a great deal of their confidence
in what you tell them from the way you move, talk and enthuse.
Don't be tempted to try and hide behind your PowerPoint slides,
they are there to support you they are not the main event.
Before planning your presentation work out exactly what you want the presentation to achieve and base everything around that. What do you want the audience to do differently following the presentation?
Use the PowerPoint to enhance what you are saying rather than to repeat what you are saying. This is the major place people go wrong and probably causes more agony for audience and presenter alike then anything else.
Many people have used the PowerPoint slides themselves as prompt cards. Now that you are using PowerPoint to back up what you are saying you need a different approach. Instead use the PowerPoint Notes Pages as personal prompts for yourself. You can print these out and they can have a picture of the slide that is supporting you. (From the menu bar choose View/Notes Page).
Watch TV adverts and try and learn from them. See what they are doing to communicate a message. Count the number of bullet points you see.
If
you are going to use slides as a handout create your PowerPoint
presentation accordingly. If the PowerPoint is backing up what
you are saying then they may not be much use! We feel this is
normally done to make the presenter appear to be giving good
value and almost never serves any useful purpose. If you want
a leave behind for your presentation then write one specifically.
Design the presentation to be dynamic with highs and lows.
Don’t just design the slides to be read out! This is a good cure for insomnia as peoples minds retreat from this exotic mental torture.
If you can vary
the tone of your voice during the PowerPoint presentation. This
adds a dynamic and helps hold interest.
PowerPoint
Design & Before you Start
Make sure you are aware of exactly what the audience expect from your presentation as well as what you and your team want to communicate.
Know your audience and the key people in it.
Know your subject.
Peoples attention comes in waves. Be aware of it and use it.
Tell the audience why its a good idea they are there for the presentation early on.
People remember 20% of what they read but can remember 80% of what is presented using sound, animation, video and text.
Making the PowerPoint Presentation
Use the master slide view to design the layout for all your pages. (Menu Bar/View/Master/Slide Master). The layout will then be incorporated into all the new pages you create.
Remember what you are paid for. If the presentation is important and when you are putting it together you find yourself wishing you had a degree in graphic design and education, pay somebody to build the presentation who does.
Use
the Outline View to quickly put in the headings of each slide
to help you structure the presentation but stop there.
Adding sub headings at this stage will result
in a presentation of pages and pages of bullet points.
Avoid page after page of bullet points. This will induce sleep.
Audiences
these days expect a great deal from a PowerPoint presentation.
Just because you have a piece of clip art on slide 13 don’t
expect people to think you are the new Steven Spielberg of PowerPoint.
Never use clip art. The audience is likely to have attempted PowerPoint themselves and seeing clip art they recognise will start them on another train of thought. There are now a plethora of digital cameras and scanners available. Think laterally and don’t forget there are many image libraries out there.
This is the same for the sound files that come with PowerPoint. avoid.
Say
who you are and your relevance to the situation early, don't
be tempted to give your family history.
Include
diagrams in the presentation. They are excellent for those who
perceive information graphically.
Less is more! Cut cut cut! Be brutal and remove everything that is not absolutely necessary.
When
making or choosing a PowerPoint template use an uncluttered background,
it is the content that you put on each slide that is important
so it should be the most interesting thing on the screen.
Add gravitas to your presentation by including references to bodies or people that your audience respects.
Peoples eyes will tend to move form the top left to the bottom right of the screen.
In
your minds eye divide the screen vertically and horizontally
into thirds. Screen thirds and intersections of the thirds have
special emphasis for the brain.
Chose a simple layout and stick to it. You can spend hours fiddling
with the minutia of PowerPoint screen layout.
It is a sad fact that almost all PowerPoint transitions that Microsoft supplies are dire.If you want to use slide transitions use the same simple one until you want to highlight a break point or underline a change in thinking.
To add a transition on the menu bar click Slide Show/Slide Transition and then choose form the Task Pane that appears.
Give
your slides a sense of openness by using plenty of "white space" around
headings and key items.
Remember that individual slides are not shown in isolation. Think sequence.
Use type sizes to show hierarchy of importance where appropriate.
Avoid
slides that are full of data unless your point is that a large
amount of data has been gathered or analysed.
Information/data often only means something when it is compared and contrasted to something else.
The use of graphics can show relationships between concepts and ideas.
Simple
animation can be worth a thousand bullet points. PowerPoint provides
good animation functions.
Use one font or a maximum of two. Using simple font options will encourage you to structure your presentation in other better ways.
Be aware of the colours that go together and those that don't. It might be worth taking a short course.
Get
your major point in early. Some of your audience are in fact
goldfish. (You see the sweet irony of putting this comment last.
How many readers have continued to concentrate this far into
the page!)
By Keith Farmer
Useful Links
Microsoft PowerPoint slide layouts
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