By 
At a workshop recently, I overheard someone giving a talk that was really interesting and I took away some valuable points. So it got me thinking about what makes a good presentation. Now, I have designed many PowerPoint presentations in my time, but I have delivered very few. Like many people, the idea of standing in front of a group makes me nervous. However, others can stand up for an hour and speak spontaneously on your topic, and make it interesting and memorable. How they did it? Granted, there are some people who are natural public speakers, but for most of us, it takes a lot of preparation to stand up and speak clearly and concisely on our topic.
So from my experience in both creating and listening to presentations, I have put together some tips on what I think can make or break a presentation.
Do
- Rehearse your speech and ideally get someone to listen or record you.
- Use humor and a personal story to open the presentation, but be appropriate.
- Know the message you are trying to convey and stick to the key points.
- Keep the color scheme simple and make sure the text is legible against the background.
- Have the same slide layout throughout your presentation.
- Put your company brand and logo on the presentation to make it look professional and help build a relationship with your brand and audience.
- Keep animations and transitions to a minimum so they don’t confuse or distract your audience.
- Use creative ways to present your information, for example, images, graphics and animations that grab people’s attention.
Whose
- Speak without preparation or notes unless you’ve done it before.
- Start the presentation without checking that everyone can hear you.
- Stay on topic, and if you do, make sure the audience knows why and quickly get back on topic.
- Use technical language, acronyms, or jargon unless it is relevant to your audience.
- Read a script: It can sound forced and prevents you from making eye contact with the audience.
- Put everything you want to say on the PowerPoint slide and then read it.
- Overload the slide with too many graphics or animations. They should be used to clarify the message and not confuse the audience.
- Use different formatting and color schemes on each slide.
Maybe you have other tips to add to the list? However, it is important to remember that a well-designed and clearly delivered presentation will promote you and your business professionally and effectively to your audience.