PowerPoint slides can be very effective in supporting your presentation when you are public speaking, whether you are in a company meeting or addressing a general audience.
But note that they are there for support, not to persuade your audience. It is your job to do that. Research has shown that your credibility will greatly influence how persuasive your message is. Visual aids help the audience follow the presentation more easily and reinforce your points, but you have to close the deal.
So don’t think that loading up your presentation with a lot of fancy slides will carry the day.
Having made that clear, let’s go over some best practices with regard to PowerPoint, as well as some things to avoid. Note that this is not a detailed tutorial on the mechanics of putting together PowerPoint slides—there are plenty of videos and articles on the Internet to teach you the basics. Instead, I am going to explain how to approach using PowerPoint and suggest some things to avoid. The main thing to remember as a speaker is that the PowerPoint slides are not the focus of the presentation. You are. You need to carry the presentation through your words and delivery if you want to be persuasive.
Because of that, you need to keep the attention on you as much as possible.
Here are some best practices for using PowerPoint in your presentation.
· Start with Dark Screen or Placeholder Slide
You should keep your screen dark or use a placeholder—perhaps the company logo—when you begin speaking. Don’t put up your first slide until you need it.
This is important for two reasons. The first is that you want their undivided attention from the beginning. The second is that you don’t want them making assumptions about what you are going to say or making decisions based on the partial information in the slide.
· Keep Graphs and Tables as Simple as Possible
The phrase “less is more” should be your guiding principle when putting together any slide. You need to be ruthless in cutting as much as possible out of all tables and graphs as you can.
Say you want to convey the sales history of a particular product. What time periods do you need to show to make your point? Weekly, monthly, yearly? If you need to make the point that the products sales have tripled in the past five years, showing annual sales is enough.
I have been in some scientific presentations when researchers felt they needed to show weekly results of chemical tests. The tables were so dense—and the changes so minor from week to week—that they were indecipherable.
· Use Bullet Points Instead of Full Sentences
You don’t want your listeners to be reading your slide when they should be listening to you. Pick the most impactful words or phrases you need to hone in on your topic and bullet point them. Again, less is more here. Which is more persuasive?
“The sales of product X in the period of 2021-2023 increased a cumulative 200%”
Or
“Sales triple” (with you explaining the time period)
· Skip the Fancy Animation If Possible
Don’t be tempted to use a lot of PowerPoint animation tools in a company presentation. Having words fade in or zoom in from the edge of the screen, to cite two examples, can look amateurish, gimmicky and even childish in a serious presentation. They can also distract audience members from your message and lead them to wonder how you did them rather than pay attention to what you are saying.
However, there may be times when such animation works. My wife used a lot of animations when she was a public school teacher doing remote classes during Covid to keep the children engaged. Her students appeared to better absorb the information she presented when she used animation than when she did not.
· Fade to Black
Don’t leave a slide up once it has served its purpose and don’t move to the next slide until you need it. Instead, fade the screen to black so the focus returns to you. Remember, you want the audience to place its attention on you as much as possible.
You can use a clicker to fade to black. There are plenty on the marketplace. Some can be pricey (like this Logitech one), but an inexpensive one like this one from Amazon is probably all you need to start out. I use this popular one and I find it serves the purpose very well.
If you don’t feel comfortable with a clicker and you will be at your laptop during the presentation, there are simple key strokes to turn the slides on and off. But that can be distracting and can ruin the pace of your speaking so I don’t recommend doing that.
Another simple trick you can use if you don’t have a clicker is simply to insert solid-black slides as placeholders between your presentation slides.
· Use Your Final Slide Wisely
Fade to black while making your final pitch so all the focus is on you. That is very important.
Depending on the situation, though, you may want to put up a final slide after that.
If it is a company meeting in which you will be taking questions, you might want to put up a final slide with a call to action or a main point you want your audience to remember. If you are making a presentation to a general audience, a final slide with your contact information might be appropriate. If you are an author, a slide showing your latest book is good marketing as people disperse.
Remember, PowerPoint can be a useful tool in your presentation when used properly.
But it is only a tool. Only use PowerPoint when it will help you persuade your audience. In most cases, less is more.
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