When have you seen the last time an overloaded presentation during an event and you just thought? Oh no!!!
Let's discover the five best ways to make your presentation stand out from the crowd.
Number one, structure your content and tell a story.
Your audience is composed of humans and humans need some guidance. They need some helping hand. Be this helping hand and guide them through your presentation.
The best way to do so is to tell a story. Imagine that you would tell your presentation to a good friend of yours. Would you tell it the same way as you would tell it to the audience? Why not?
Try simply to see in your audience your best friends and talk to them the same way as you do. Strip away everything from your presentation, which is not necessary.
Every single presentation has to be streamlined and focused on the most important things, nothing around which is blah blah and which will distract from the main message of your presentation.
Number two, keep it short and guide your audience.
I don't want you to bombard your audience with tons of slides. Stop this click-and-slide mania.
What you need is maybe an average, something like one or a maximum of two slides for every two minutes. That should be enough to transport all the information that you want to transport.
Every slide that you will show has to be meaningful. Don't use any slides just because you think that you want to put additional information left and right.
Don't do it. Streamline everything and strip away all those slides where you don't feel that they're absolutely meaningful and necessary to transport what you want to say as your key message.
Number three, the content is in your speech
and not in your PowerPoint. What do you want your audience to do? Do you want them to read your slide while you are speaking or do you want them to listen to you?
I hope the letter is a case because I always like it when my audience is listening
to what I have to say. And that's why your PowerPoint has to support no matter what you say and not the other way around because if you put too much information on your slides,
What the audience will do? Exactly. They will go and they will just read the information which are in the slides and they will not listen anymore to you because the human brain is not complex enough to read and at the same time listen to your speech.
That means, applying the KIS principle, “Keep It Simple” to your slides. Strip away every single thing which is not necessary and limit yourself maybe to one maximum, maximum facts on your slides. Just a couple of words, not more, that should be enough to support your speech in the most efficient way possible.
Number four, use photos but use them wisely.
Photos can be a great way to transport a message, but you have to use them wisely, and you have to avoid several pitfalls. The biggest pitfall probably is making sure that you have the right. If you don't have the right to use a photo, then simply don't use it because if you do so, you might be in big big trouble.
The next thing is, if you choose photos, just don't choose them because they're so nice and you just want so desperately to have this photo in your presentation. No, the other way around. Just make sure that this photo is supporting your content and your speech.
It has to provide additional information or additional support to your speech. If it distracts from your speech, then simply don't put it.
And last but not least, number five provides value and not only information.
How do you want your audience to perceive you when you're standing in front of your audience? As someone who's just reading through a long list of information that anyway, they can find later on somewhere on a download section or maybe on the internet even, all you want to be seen as someone who's providing added value, who's providing insights, experience, something that you can share that other people might find extremely useful for them.
Just make your slides personal and I can guarantee you one thing. If you share these insights, then people will remember you. And also, from time to time, a little anecdote, some funny picture, or maybe some fun fact in your presentation, will be the total icebreaker just added.
That's it for the five best ways to make your PowerPoint stand out of the crowd.
