How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint

No doubt about it PowerPoint is king when it comes to users who use the software to create presentations. It is simple to use and comes with preformatted slides and color schemes. Although easy to set up this is where death by PowerPoint begins. Most presentations are created within days before the actual day of the presentation.  In the corporate world, final financial data for the quarter is coming in, latest service statistics are being culled and by the time it gets to the person who needs to create the presentation there is very little time for enhancements.

During my eight years of working in a corporate communications department, I created tens of PowerPoint decks.  Part of my job as a web developer was to make the presentation design look exceptional within the corporate color palette,  make the presentations interactive by adding animation, embedding videos, Excel sheets, and audio files, and lastly, make the font styles consistent as some content was culled from other departments. What really bugged me though was that I wasn’t able to change the content. Most slides were chockablock full of bullet points on how the company is doing,  and of course, most speakers would just read the slides to the audience.  Boring! The death march would start right after the Agenda slide. By the fifth slide, the audience was fidgeting in their seats, by the tenth slide some were sleeping and others glued to their Blackberries. Despite my best efforts as a designer – slide design was great, but I couldn’t stop the inevitable death by PowerPoint.

When I left the corporate world in 2008  I was appreciative that I didn’t have to be part of the corporate death by PowerPoint. I  started my own company and within a couple of years, I was being asked to speak at seminars and conferences. So I opened up PowerPoint and looked at a blank canvas.  It was rather invigorating and quite the challenge.  It took me a couple of times of presenting and getting feedback to get comfortable in establishing a presentation approach.

Here is what has worked for me:

 – Know Your Audience

One of the speaking engagements I had about a dozen slides that were all metaphorical depictions about social media.  As I started my first slide, the first question I received is “What is social media?” I, unfortunately, assumed that the audience knew what social media was. I ditched the presentation and spent the next 45 minutes talking about what is social media. Lesson learned: if at all possible determine your audience’s knowledge on the subject matter.

 – Spend Time on the Design

Get away from the cookie cutter PowerPoint design elements. Mix it up. Look online for interesting designs. Look to places like Fiverr, eLance to hire someone for as little as $5 to create a PowerPoint template.  It doesn’t have to be fancy as your content will be primary focus. Sometimes keeping it simple works just as well. Most of my designs are white background and black or dark blue text – a simple clean look.

 – Tell a Story

 Organize your presentation to tell a story. Use paper and pen before putting text on slides. Whether it is sharing company financials or how to build a better mousetrap your presentation has to tell a story.  You can tell a story through vibrant images – no clipart! Find images that fit your story in royalty-free directories like iStockPhoto.  What is it you want your audience to walk away with? A feeling, a call to action, etc.

Lastly, I’ll share with you an excerpt from Seth Godin’s e-booklet Really Bad PowerPoint and How to Avoid It written in 2001:

Five rules you need to remember to create amazing PowerPoint presentations:

1. 1. No more than six words on a slide. EVER.
   2. No cheesy images. Use professional images from corbis.com instead. They cost $3 each, or a little more if they’re for ‘professional use’.
   3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions. None.
   4. Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never (ever) use the sound effects that are built into the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have.
   5. Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They’re emotional, and they won’t work without you there. If someone wants your slides to show “the boss,” tell them that the slides go if you go.

 What are some of your presentation tips?

Photo credit:  Flickr user MaffLong