Rules to Better Powerpoint Presentations

Making your presentation over-complicated is a very easy trap to fall into. Many speakers make the mistake of giving away too much information.

In reality, giving a presentation is an entirely different genre from writing a technical report.

A strong visual speaks louder than words. Improve the way you present, teach and promote yourself adn your ideas with striking presentations. Make sure you get the right people to 'Test Pass' your presentations. Your content might be great - but if it is displayed poorly - it will be overshadowed by its flaws.

So you have a shiny PowerPoint deck with heaps of great content, and you know what you want to say! Are you ready to present? No, not yet.

You need to practice it so that you know your stuff backwards as well as forwards.

PowerPoint templates are designed to engage your audience visually and save you time. When you start creating a new presentation file, always make sure you use a template.

Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to this. What we need is a 'version' field and an 'Update' button - See our Suggestions to Microsoft PowerPoint: Check for Updates

Different layouts have different purposes. While the default layout is nice, it's not the only option available. But remember to keep all things in moderation. You want the audience to focus on the content, not guessing what layout the next slide will use.

Make your positive and negative points a tick and cross.

Each font or style (italics or bold) should be used consistently throughout your presentation. While a different font face or color is a simple way of highlighting certain terms you want for focus, too much of it will do exactly the opposite and distract the audience.

Presentations are hard to get right, it's easy to fall into the trap of putting too much text on your slides.

Science says people can't read and listen at the same time. If they are looking at your slides, they are not listening to you. If they are listening to you, they are not reading your slides.

Add your logo and tagline for branding purposes. The tagline concept is to use a catchphrase that will sum up the tone of a brand and to reinforce the audience's memory of your company/product.

Neither of these elements is intended to distract, so they are placed subtly in the footer of the slide. It is present, but the influence is tiny and your audience's focus will remain squarely on the content.

You may be a natural-born public speaker, but you will not be able to 'wing' a presentation. Setting up a presentation takes time and practice. You want web pages already open, you want VMs ready and demos good to go.

Create a hashtag for your presentation prior to the presentation and display it in your slides! Twitter backchannels are valuable sources of feedback.

If you are presenting to people who you already know, then you have an enormous advantage over someone who is going to face an audience they have never previously met.

In a similar fashion to the Do you indicate 'demo' slides? rule, you can also add a visual cue (icon or simply text) for any audience participation you would like, such as questions or voting.

Open a Word doc at the start of your presentation. It is a good idea to have some interaction with your audience in the form of Q&A. This will instill a lasting message long after your presentation is over.

Always introduce yourself to the audience. However, it is not great to bring up the 'About' slide too early, so you should do it *after* you have asked the audience who they are.

A presentation is a verbal essay and it follows a structure. Shown at the start of the presentation, the 'Agenda' slide sets the expectation.

In the end, the 'Summary' slide should be identical, and summarize what you just spoke about.

You should have a good cover slide for each section of your presentation. They are called "section break" slides and are meant to visually divide the content structure. These slides should be consistent so they do not confuse the audience.

By placing a little visual cue on your slide, you can remind yourself to show a demo to the audience. Avoid displaying the word 'demo', because when out of time, presenters say "Sorry, let's skip that demo since I am short of time" and leave the audience frustrated.

When sharing the presentation content between a few speakers, it might be hard to remember who is supposed to talk during each slide. You can help this by placing a little icon on your slide.

That way you can passively remind each other who is meant to be presenting at the moment. An extra tip is to avoid displaying the name of the person, because when that presenter is unavailable, the replacement presenter feels untrustworthy to the audience.