Powerful Ways to Make PowerPoint Presentations More Catchy

Even artists find it stressful to make PowerPoint presentations! However, they are an integral part of almost all corporate jobs, and is hence, a skill that we need to develop. Designing a creative and catchy presentation is quite frustrating because often we fall short on ideas. Yet, even if you aren’t creative, you can create great presentations with practice. Having a catchy and enticing presentation helps you speak on stage with confidence. So, how do you make and upload PowerPoint presentations? Here are a few tips to help you create a catchy presentation with ease.


Know What to Avoid

Never read directly from the slides as this leads to lower engagement with the audience.
If it is an important meeting and you have enough time to make a new presentation, do not lean on the stock templates that are available on PowerPoint. These are too bland and have been used too much to provide any freshness.
Make sure your slides aren’t cluttered, but rather are engaging, easy to read and have enough pictures and infographics representations.
Also, if the presentation is for work purpose or college purposes, make sure you do not over-do the animations, to prevent looking childish.
Finally, PowerPoint is essentially just a tool to help you to share your ideas with an audience effectively. To drive the point home, you need to be able to talk precisely and clearly. Therefore, ensure that your public speaking is also up to the mark, rather than completely depending on your presentation.
Now that you know what to avoid, let’s move on to tips to help make your presentations catchy, concise and clean.

Start Small but Make an Impact

Making the right first impression is very important, as this decides whether your audience will stay with you or not. Hence, getting off on the right foot, as soon as you start your presentation should be made a priority. Use a catchy slide to grab your audience’s attention using a “Less is more” approach. Don’t crowd the first slide with information so that a shroud of mystery covers your presentation. This, in turn, will help people give more attention to your speaking.

Use SWOT Analysis

Once you have your audience’s attention, the next step is to provide some facts. Start building towards your main concept by using a SWOT analysis. This allows you to list out all the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with your action plan. This will help you introduce your concept without giving too much away.

Product Reveal

This is the part wherein you reveal your product or idea, and hence, one of the most important parts of the presentation. The slides associated with this contain all the information regarding your idea. Make sure that the slides aren’t too cluttered or full, but rather, have the right mix of images and text. Try to include screenshots and videos in this part to hold your audience’s attention.

Showcase your Product’s history

Add into your presentation a roadmap of how your product got to where it is now. This helps the audience connect with the product and see it as a tangible asset. This could include what led to the development of the product, journey of design and what features you want to add in the future. Not only does this allow customers to understand your vision, but it also lets them witness your growth.

Time for Impact

One important part of any PowerPoint presentation is timing. Apple’s founder Steve Jobs is famous for using this technique to generate interest for the product. He would always keep aside a wow factor for the end so that his product would stay in the minds of the customers. This factor wowed audiences and can be any unique feature of your product. The slides that are associated with this key feature must be bold and loud.

Be Creative

PowerPoint comes with an array of different tools, but make sure you don’t try to use them all and cramp your presentation. Choose slide themes that go along with the general tone of your presentation. Stay away from default fonts such as Calibri and Times New Roman to appear more creative.

Only add bullet points if it goes with the style you want to pursue, as this might not always be the case. Align all objects on your slide to create an organized and polished look. Further customization may be achieved by cropping images into custom shapes. Maintain a good white space and black space combination to make the slides easy to look at. You also have the option of boosting PowerPoint’s capabilities by using third-party add-ons to add multi-media and import different images.

Make Use of Infographics

Use graphs and visual data as much as you can as this leads to more comprehension and engagement. No one likes to look at slides with lines and lines of text. Switch things up a bit by adding relevant images and infographics. Studies show that such graphs help people grasp the concept more easily. You may even choose to animate the key elements to further the impact made. This helps to add an extra dose of flair to your presentation, which will surely be appreciated by your audience. However, make sure you don’t go overboard with animations to avoid the risk of coming off as childish.

End Strong

Another important thing that needs to be considered is your closing statement. Ending strongly goes a long way in convincing your audience, and building trust. Since an ending is the last thing the audience hears, it is what will resonate in their minds even after the presentation comes to an end. Therefore, your concluding slides must be innovative, while reiterating the concepts you talked about before.

Originally published at https://kizinew.in on January 21, 2020.

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