PowerPoint slide – 5 ways to use it effectively

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A PowerPoint slide is one of the most powerful presentation tools available for presenters. Unfortunately, most presenters never utilize it to its full potential.

Here you’ll learn the five ways to get maximum value from your PowerPoint slides.

1.Use your PowerPoint slides as an additional channel of communication

Take a look at these two slides:

The same message conveyed differently

A PowerPoint slide allows you to use visual expression to support your words, and hence opens up a whole new channel to add clarity to your message. When you use visuals in your slide and support it with your narration you use two channels to convey your message instead of one.

According to dual coding theory, your words engage the left brain of your audience and the visuals engage their right brain. So, your audience not only understands your message better, but also retains it longer.

If you are not using visuals in your slides, you are under-utilizing PowerPoint.

2.Use PowerPoint slides to build your information in stages

Your audience has limited capacity to process information. When you present too much information in one go, they feel overwhelmed and switch off.

A PowerPoint slide allows you to reveal information in stages, and thus helps your audience to take in information in bite sized chunks.

Use the power of custom animation to reveal sequential stages of a process one step at a time, or the growth of an organization one milestone at a time. You’ll see your audience connecting to you better.

If you are not using custom animation feature you are wasting the potential of PowerPoint.

3.Use PowerPoint slides to arouse curiosity

Look at this slide…

Does this slide arousing curiosity?

You just saw the power of ‘curiosity itch’. According to Information gap theory, your mind wants to solve the puzzle of the unknown.

You can use your slide to build curiosity in your audience and hold their attention. Since your audience gets into the state where they want to solve the mystery, your message will be registered much deeper than normal.

You can achieve this with custom animation or by using multiple slides to reveal information in parts.

If you are not building curiosity in your audience, you are not using PowerPoint the way it needs to be used.

Realize that presenters who advice against slides may be using PowerPoint in the wrong occasion.

4.Use PowerPoint slides to show the relation between objects

Studies show that a human brain stores information by forming connections called schema. By showing your audience how the various parts of your information are related, you improve their clarity.

Showing relationship clearly

5.Use PowerPoint to make interactive presentations

Who says your presentation needs to be one way?

You can use hyperlinks in PowerPoint to connect various segments of your information and let the audience decide the priority of your presentation. This is especially useful when you make sales presentations to your clients. Your audience becomes part of your presentation and they own your ideas as if it is their own.

If you want to present information, you can use this format to conduct quizzes to your audience.

If you are not utilizing the interactive features of PowerPoint, you are wasting its potential.

In a nutshell…

A PowerPoint can take your presentation to the next level, provided you know how to leverage its value fully. You can go beyond using your slides as documents or as beauty props. Read more Presentation Ideas here.

Presentation Process gives you all the knowledge you need to get maximum mileage out of your slides. Take your time to learn the vital skill.

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