power point presentation ideas

power point presentation ideas

Powerpoint Presentation Ideas

1. Introduction

PowerPoint was developed by engineers as a tool to help them communicate with the marketing department, and the original visual concept was fairly simple “to place a series of large, often vibrant pictures on a few individual pages meant for projection while verbally guiding the orchestrated slide show.” What differentiates a good presentation from a poor one is often the effective use of visual aids. It is not necessary to use every single slide, or even stay with the original visual concept. As computers are widely available on campus, you might want to email the presentation document to yourself so you can retrieve it from a computer in the room when you make the actual presentation. This way you can edit slides right up to the last minute. Also, we can scan your photos into the presentation and make it more lively and interesting.

Creating an effective PowerPoint presentation can be a straightforward proposition. If you have clear objectives, good content, and a way with words, the rest will almost take care of itself. This document helps you think through the presentation process. It will enable you to see exactly what you need to consider when turning your written document into a PowerPoint presentation.

2. Choosing a Topic

It’s what you give your idea! The hardest part of making a presentation is to decide on a topic. Your presentation can be judged or approved just by the topic that you choose. If the audience or the examiners are not satisfied with your topic, then most probably they will give you an additional task. So you have to be careful when choosing a topic. Here are some tips for choosing your topic: Choose a topic that you’ve known. Not just a little, but all, or almost all of it. This will give you an advantage. You don’t have to open your textbook or ask others to verify the accuracy of your data. And when there’s a question from someone, you will have no problem explaining it to them. Because you’ve known that much of your topic. Choosing the right topic for your audience. Your audience must be your concern when you want to present something. Find a topic that will get their attention and will be useful for them. If your audience is a group of nurses, then you can choose a medical or health topic. If it’s a group of children, then you can choose something fun and has moral values in it. But if you must present it in front of a mixed audience, then you have to find a general topic. Choose a topic that still interests you. You won’t have trouble finding the material and learning it deeper if this topic still interests you. Otherwise, your task just to find the material will be a boring task and you won’t completely understand your topic.

3. Creating Engaging Slides

Your business presentation isn’t just about sharing facts, it’s about selling your ideas and vision. We can do that more effectively with a lot less words. No one’s going to talk to your bullet points after the presentation – they’re either going to get it or they’re not. So the more words on the slide, the more opportunities for your audience to disengage. Get people to focus. Big statement. Use a clean bold font and graphics to make a clear compelling visual statement. It’s become a bit of a cliche to say you should stick to one idea per slide, but it’s taken for granted because it’s true. Note that solid content doesn’t translate to a solid visual. A concise statement is always more powerful than mind dumping your train of thought. Telling stories can make information much more memorable and repeatable; however it’s a step often skipped in business presentations. Avoid laying out information as statements, instead talk of causes and effects as a sequence. Build tension by setting up a question that you answer with the next slide. You’re not underestimating the intelligence of your audience, you’re just realizing everyone loves a good story. It’s part of human nature to pity anything living that is caged and unloved – even if it is just a mouse. Empower your bullet points by freeing them of the bullets and text boxes which trap them in an ordered list. Scatter them on the slide and let the visuals explain a sequence or relationship. Then empower your audience to actually listen to what you have to say, instead of just listening to you read out your slides. If you can’t talk about a slide, it shouldn’t be there. Real pictures of real people and real things naturally engage our empathy and interest. Marketing departments worldwide make a living from this truism. If you must use clip art, use the very best from the brand spanking new office 2007 clip art collection. Do not under any circumstances use those creepy drawing/sketch things that clutter the search results.

4. Delivering an Impactful Presentation

To achieve an ideal impactful presentation, you need a perfect blend of logic, emotion, and credibility. Your goal is not only to satisfy the informative needs of your audience, but you have to persuade them to agree with your cause. In order to persuade effectively, there are 4 vital points to take into account while developing your argument. These are stated by Aristotle. The first is to gain the attention of your audience through the use of emotion and logic. The second is to create a liking between you and the audience (use of the right image congruent to the desired image you wish to portray). Thirdly, you should establish credibility. This can be the toughest point, especially if you are a new business owner, selling a new concept. Finally, Aristotle suggested that once credibility is established, you can begin to present a change of belief or action for the audience. (McCroskey, 1978)

5. Conclusion

This tutorial should give you a good idea of the possibilities in PowerPoint to change the look of your diagrams. It is often time-consuming but the results are worth it. The PowerPoint Presentation from which the examples come is available for download on the Tushar-Mehta.com site. Direct links are Diagram Changes palette and Diagram Change Font Color. The techniques described in the tutorial use various features available in versions 2002-3 and above. While the instructions are accurate, the specifics of the features invoked do depend on the version. Features that are specifically new to 2007 are not covered. Changes to SmartArt offer formatting features similar to the changes for diagrams. If SmartArt meets your needs, it is easier to use and the changes more intuitive to apply and alter. If SmartArt does not meet your needs, by all means, use the more powerful diagram feature. This was developed using the techniques on this page and an adaptation of a SmartArt diagram from the Office 2007 SmartArt gallery. Shading varies with light source and surface texture. It is black in the upper left and gets progressively lighter until it matches the background color at the bottom right. This adds a 3D effect to the diagram but can involve a lot of work to get the color transitions and intensities right. Details on fill effects are provided in the prior version of this tutorial.