PowerPoint Tips Blog

Public speaking is the number 1 fear — How to beat it

Do you deliver presentations. Would you if you weren’t so afraid? This article, published on the Masterviews Web site, provides some good advice for those who have this problem from J. Douglas Jefferys, a public-speaking expert.

Not only can you read the main points, but you can view them on video on the [...]

12 steps to becoming a charismatic speaker

Have you ever heard a presentation and later realized how attracted you were to the presenter? No, not that kind of attraction. I mean that you felt connected and uplifted while you were listening. You came away feeling happier. The speaker was so eloquent that you were touched in some way. Even if the [...]

Should you say “thank you” at the end of a presentation?

There’s a great discussion going on at The Official Toastmasters International Members Group on LinkedIn. Because you can’t access the group unless you join, I thought I’d summarize the opinions and see what you think. Here’s the question the sparked the discussion:

“In my home [Toastmaster] club, it has been generally accepted that [...]

Put a presentation on a CD that runs automatically

You can send potential clients or friends a CD that contains a presentation that runs automatically when they put the CD in their CD-ROM drive. If you add narration, the presentation will start automatically and run from beginning to end by itself.

This technique works well for sales brochures that you create in [...]

Presentation styles

Recently, I’ve seen some articles on presentation styles.

For example, take a look at a presentation by Dick Hardt of Sxip Identity. If you’re interested in looking at an excellent presentation, watch this one. His slides are very simple; this is sometimes called the Takahashi or Lessig method. The method can be summed up [...]

Quickly change text color line by line

Sigh!

Although I write about communicating in a visual manner all the time (see 5 Steps to Slide Design for Non-Designers, for example), sometimes it becomes clear that certain presenters will never get there. I’m working with the organizer of a conference for physicians. The organizer has asked them all to use PowerPoint, [...]

Highlight important words

Slides with lots of text on them are hard for audiences to comprehend quickly. There’s just too much information. Either people listen to the presenter and ignore the slide, or more likely (and worse), they read the slide and ignore the presenter.

The brain simply has difficulty listening to one set of words [...]

Create notes as you deliver in PowerPoint 2003

If you are delivering a presentation and get feedback, ideas, projects to do, and so on, you can immediately enter them into your presentation using the Speaker Notes feature.

Since the Meeting Minder was eliminated in PowerPoint 2003, Speaker Notes is the only way to add to your presentation in Slide Show view.

[...]

3D and reflection technique

Mark James Normand has started a new blog, Presentation Design, which includes a very nice technique using a gradient background, 3D placement of objects, and reflections. Here’s the sample slide that he creates:

Normand's sample slide

The slide incorporates 3 elements:

The gradient black/white background The 3D credit cards, which are AutoShapes, [...]

How to design more effective slides with the Tell ‘n’ Show(SM) method

A number of communication experts have recommended slide design as follows:

A slide title that makes a complete statement (often suggested to be a complete grammatical sentence) An image that provides evidence of the statement

In an article, “Rethinking the Design of Presentation Slides,” Michael Alley of the Pennsylvania State College of Engineering [...]

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