PowerPoint aided presentation is an integral part of formal presentation before the audience. It not only enhances depth of the presentation but also brings many more things on table like – easy to understand flowcharts and graphics, constant textual reminder, short and easy to comprehend points, sum up checklists towards end, a compact understanding of the entire topic. But while preparing and delivering a PowerPoint presentation speaker often loses focus and commits several notable mistakes. Don’t repeat these mistakes.
Too much of text
We are often tempted to overstuff our PowerPoint slides with too much of text and long paragraphs. Don’t forget presentation is all about putting points on slides and narrating or elaborating them in detail verbally. Don’t suffocate your presentation with too much of text. No one is interested in reading long texts. So write in bullets or points. Elaborate those verbally. Make sure you leave blank space in your slides.
Too much of animation
Many presenters love to show off their technical skills by animating each line or graphic of the slides. Remember, simplicity always sells. Don’t let the whoosh sound of your presentation distract the audience. It’s highly annoying when repeated. Keep slides simple, minimalistic, and elegant. Don’t animate each and every text or header or graphic element in it. Too much of rotation, blinking, floating, swinging of elements worsen a good content. Don’t use those animated sounds which are highly disturbing.
Baseless data
Presenters often put factual data, without mentioning the source. It’s a strict ‘no no’. Never put facts and figures, graphs without mentioning its source. No data seems authentic and valid without the source mentioned. People may doubt credibility of your presentation.
Reading out from the slides
Often presenters are seen doing nothing, but simply reading out whatever is there on the PowerPoint slide. It not only bores the audience, but also doesn’t add any value to the entire presentation session. You can add substantial value to a presentation only when you give your valuable inputs besides reading out from the slides alone. It also shows presenter’s lack of confidence, public speaking fear and lack of knowledge.
Make sure you avoid these mistakes.
Tags: Animation, Audience, Blank Space, Bullets, Checklists, Credibility, Factual Data, Flowcharts, Formal Presentation, Graphic Element, Graphs, Minimalistic, Paragraphs, Powerpoint Presentation, Powerpoint Slide, Powerpoint Slides, Presentation Powerpoint, Reminder, Simplicity, Whoosh
The power of a story lies in its appeal to the human emotions. If the story is good then it makes us empathize with the characters. We feel the pain and pleasure of the hero. Can you connect with a PowerPoint presentation at the same level? Can you empathize with the data cells of an Excel sheet?
This is not hard to do. It is impossible to do, until and unless you are the paranoid Marvin, a crazy robot from Douglas Adams’ famous book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who often wondered about the meaning of life
Story matters because this is what we understand. Our mind can only process and make sense of things or topics that have some relation with the knowledge we already posses, and a story is a channel that helps in forming this relation. Our mind is not a computer or any data processing device designed to process unrelated information or to churn up numbers.
This is the reason why marketing communications aim to build a story –not an Excel sheet— around the product it attempts to sell. Story is what gives lifeblood to ad campaigns, charity drives, fund raising, and sports event. No one watches any sports event for the numbers, and in the real sense no one cares about the numbers. People go crazy about sports because they witness a story getting unfolded in front of them, of which their favorite sports player is a hero.
In the yester years, there was no PowerPoint presentations or Excel s sheets (I know it is kind of hard to believe now, but it is true), but people still manages to communicate values, rituals, goals, ambitions, and sense of duty to the coming generation, almost without any lost of data during the transfer. This is what provided the base for every written book that we have. Story matters because it is just because of the story that we are what we are.
Tags: Ambitions, Charity Drives, Coming Generation, Data Cells, Data Processing, Douglas Adams, Excel Sheet, Favorite Sports, Guide To The Galaxy, Hitchhiker, Human Emotions, Lifeblood, Marketing Communications, Meaning Of Life, Pain And Pleasure, Powerpoint Presentation, Powerpoint Presentations, Sense Of Duty, Sports Event, Yester Years
Since the dawn of the human civilization, we have been using stories to convey the meaning and the message to our peers. Story helps you connect with the listener or reader on an equal level. It is this trait of the story that has kept it alive even in this technological advanced society.
A PowerPoint presentation with objective data, three-dimensional colorful graphs, round-cornered table with drop-shadow effect, and picture of an attractive female provides useful information, which if understood well can fetch the desired outcome. This “if understood” have a big “If” which never get resolved because data, graphs, tables, bullet points, and unrelated pictures fail to make a connect with the audience, and these things can be blamed for the failure of countless meetings and numerous PowerPoint presentations.
Various studies in neuroscience, psychology and human cognition has proved many time that human mind is not a machine fuelled by logic and rationality. On the contrary, it is an organic entity overfilled with the emotionally charged synapses and is flooded with various chemicals that get charged up by the things happening in our surrounding. A good story increases the flow of these chemicals by drawing cues from the immediate environment of the audience, and thus getting the response the storyteller seeks.
A good story helps you cut through the clutter and reach your intended audience with the message you want to deliver, whereas, a PowerPoint presentation, with graphs, tables, bullet points, etc. just adds on to the clutter. A well-crafted story helps you connect, and it will elicit the response that even hundreds of PowerPoint presentations, and reams and reams of objective data working together will not get.
Tags: Attractive Female, Bullet Points, Clutter, Colorful Graphs, Countless Meetings, Cues, Desired Outcome, Drop Shadow Effect, Even Hundreds, Human Civilization, Human Cognition, Listener, Objective Data, Peers, Powerpoint Presentation, Powerpoint Presentations, Rationality, Reams, Storyteller, Synapses
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