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January 25, 2017 by Helen Leave a Comment

How to avoid ‘death by PowerPoint’

Death by PowerPoint. It’s what we trainers call it when your presenter talks through slide after boring slide of bullet-pointed lists. The trouble is this has crept into screencast videos, too. Yawn.

death by powerpoint

There’s really no excuse for this because there’s so much you can do to make your presentations and videos look better. It’s quick to do and you don’t need any technical or design skills. Here are some simple ways to make your slides pop:

Use PowerPoint templates

There are loads of PowerPoint templates inside PowerPoint itself that will add things like fonts, layouts and graphic elements in seconds. You can apply these to your presentation using the ‘Design’ menu at the top of PowerPoint.

As PowerPoint is so widely used, you may want something that looks a little different from everyone else so don’t be afraid to look beyond what’s on the Design menu. Try the Microsoft Office website or if you don’t mind adding credits, you can download some very nice templates from Slides Carnival for free (these also work with Google Slides, by the way). Or if you want something unique, you can always pay a designer to create a custom template for you.

Keep it brief

Your slides should be a visual aid, to illustrate or emphasise what you say. You shouldn’t be using the slide as a script, so keep the number of words on a slide down to a minimum. In fact, you often only need one, two or three words on each slide to make your point. If you have a bullet-pointed list, try putting each point on a separate slide.

(To avoid this…)

(...ugh.)

Use images

Images add interest and help to communicate your message. Try to make your images say something rather than just filling up blank space. Adding an image to the background of the slide so that it fills the entire slide can be very effective – you can do this by right-clicking on the slide and choosing ‘Format background’

Keep it consistent

To make sure you have a consistent look all the way through, stick to one colour palette, use up to three fonts and try to choose images with a consistent look, too. Paying attention to these points will make your presentation look far more professional.

Ditch the bullets

Do you really need the bullets? If the slide or text appears as you speak, then you probably don’t need a little black circle to emphasise it. Try losing the bullet points to see if it makes your slide look cleaner. There’s a good chance it will.

Need some inspiration?

Take a look at Slideshare. Lots of ideas for avoiding death by PowerPoint there.

The done-for-you courses I sell at here at Totally Courses come with source PowerPoint files that you can edit and use to record your own training videos if you wish (or you can just use my videos that come in the pack). No death by PowerPoint, I promise. 

Do you have a PowerPoint horror story? Please leave me a comment and tell me about it. Think of it as therapy…

Filed Under: PowerPoint Tagged With: PowerPoint

April 19, 2016 by Helen Leave a Comment

20 Tips for using PowerPoint slides in your marketing

We’ve all been on the receiving end of a live presentation using PowerPoint slides. I bet you’ve even seen some really boring ones (death by PowerPoint,  anyone?) But did you know there are tons of creative ways you can use slideshows in your small business for marketing and as the basis for digital products? And if you don’t have PowerPoint, Google Slides have many of the same features for free. Just log into Google, go to Google Drive and create a slideshow. Easy.

Here are twenty tips for using PowerPoint slides for marketing

  1. Upload a presentation to Slideshare – here’s a post explaining more about this. From there you can share share your presentation on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else you can think of and embed them in your blog or pages of your website.
  2.  Your presentation slides should have plenty of ‘white space’. The less clutter, the better your message shows up. Keep the number of bullet points low, probably no more that three or four.
  3. If your presentation is being shared without a narration (e.g. using Slideshare) you’ll need to make sure it makes sense using the slides alone. If it’s difficult to get your message across using just the slides, you could use the presentation to make a video with narration instead.
  4. If you’re uploading your presentation to a third party platform such as Slideshare or YouTube (you’ll need to convert it to a video first for YouTube), make sure you optimize it by adding keywords and a detailed description. This increases the chances of it being found in a search.
  5. Liven up your slide show presentation with graphics and photographs. It can be really effective to add the photo as a background image, too.
  6. Use your own branding – such as your colours and fonts – to create a slideshow with a look that’s consistent with the rest of your material. You can create master slides to use as a branded template to make this faster for next time.
  7. You can add relevant links to your presentation. That way you can link to supporting articles and keep the presentation tightly focused.
  8. Don’t forget to add links to your Twitter page, Facebook page, YouTube channel or any other social media platform you use to your presentation.
  9. Be logical. There must to be a beginning, middle, and an end to your slide show presentation.
  10. Add a call to action at the end of your slide show. What would you like your readers or viewers to do next?  Make sure you tell them!powerpoint slides
  11. Try structuring your PowerPoint as a story to help hold your audience’s attention and make it more memorable.
  12. How-to and tutorial training slide shows can be used to educate your audience. This can be particularly effective if you answer the questions you’re asked most often.
  13. If you’ve delivered a live presentation, you could upload the presentation to Slideshare so that your audience members can review the presentation after the event.
  14. Create a promotional PowerPoint presentation detailing what you can do for your clients. Include links to your product pages. Or create a portfolio using a PowerPoint presentation.
  15. Post a question and answer slide show on your customer service page.
  16. Don’t get carried away with animations and transitions in your slide show as it can be distracting. Use them sparingly and keep them simple.
  17. The must-have slides for every presentation: Title slide, Content Introduction, About you, Section slides, Recap, Call to action slide.
  18. Turn your slide show into a PDF file to use as a free giveaway for your list. Or bundle your slide show PDF and webinar audio/recording  to sell or give to those who couldn’t attend the live presentation.
  19. Print out single slides from your slide show – or save them as images – to include in your offline marketing materials such as brochures and print newsletters. To save a PowerPoint slide as an image, click on the slide you want as an image, go to File > Save as, then choose .jpg or .png as the file type. PowerPoint will ask you if you want just this slide or all your slides converted to images so choose which you’d like.
  20. Don’t forget to repurpose! Turn your blog posts into slideshows (here’s how to do that) and you can turn your PowerPoint slideshows into documents. To speed this porcess up, export your PowerPoint presentation to Word by choosing File> Export >Create handouts. You’re given the option to include the slides as images in the document, but the outline option is very useful to convert the presentation to simple text.

If you’ve found this useful, please do share it, thanks!

Filed Under: Content marketing Tagged With: Google Slides, PowerPoint

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