Stop Boring Your Audiences with PowerPoint
Advice on how to take advantage of social media is everywhere — articles, blogs, webinars, podcasts, etc.
Of course, much of the interest in Facebook, Twitter and the like is being driven by younger people. The message to companies and other organizations is clear — communication has changed. Audiences want simple, understandable, interesting messages or they’ll tune you out. They also want their voice heard and they’ll use it no matter what you do or say.
Then why are so many people who are tuned into social media still giving the same horribly boring, non audience-focused PowerPoint (and Apple Keynote) presentations? How long will it be before Gen Yers, Xers, and even Baby Boomers revolt by walking out on or even refusing to attend speeches that bore them with bullet points?
Often when I tell people their speeches would be much better if they dumped all their bullets, sub bullets and sub sub bullets, they’re shocked. They’ve always done it that way. How else would they deliver messages if they couldn’t fill their slides with words?
The answer, simple but not easy, is to fill slides with visuals — pictures, charts, and graphs — while using a bare minimum of words.
Chances are, if your PowerPoint presentation can stand alone without you explaining it, you have too much information on your slides. Your audience will either start texting and checking emails, or fall asleep as you drone on and on.
Here are five steps to help you make your slides — and your presentation — more engaging:
1). Plan your content before you ever start working on the slides to go with it. When we start with PowerPoint we often aren’t clear about what our important, overlying messages are.
2). Don’t put your company name and other information on every slide. Besides being unnecessary and boring, it takes up important real estate that you can use for conveying your message.
3). Plan on preparing three different presentations instead of trying to accomplish all your goals with one. The first presentation is your slides: visual, colorful and interesting. The second is your notes page at the bottom of PowerPoint or Keynote. Here you put all the bullet points that would have appeared on your slides. Finally, if you need a leave-behind or want to give your audience more in-depth information, prepare a handout.
4). Write a short headline that states the main point of your slide. It’s best to use a full sentence with an action verb. This immediately lets the audience know what you’re trying to convey.
5). Most importantly, present information in small chunks rather than a data dump. This means using only one idea per slide. So if you have a list of five bullet points, it might be best to convey the information in five different visually focused slides, rather than trying to put it all on one.
Yes, this is harder and takes more time. But what’s the alternative? Wasting your time and the audience’s on a presentation that makes no impact whatsoever.
