Speakers Bureau Tool Box

PowerPoint Tips

Your first PowerPoint decision, once you decide to us it in your presentation, is how you will use it. If your slides are primarily text (words and numbers, instead of photos, graphs, charts, video clips), you have two choices, each with advantages and disadvantages. Text-slides can be either:

• Outline -- Your slides contain an outline such as a list of numbered or bulleted points. This allows you to speak to the points and elaborate on them, depending on time and audience interaction. This form does not make as good handouts if you expect people to read and learn from the handouts later.
• Text -- Slides contain the full text or abbreviated content of what you are saying in the form of sentences or spreadsheets. This use requires more careful following of what is on the slides and often temps speakers to read the slides word for word. This form makes better handouts as the content of what you present can be easily read afterwards. Ultimately, you want visuals that meet the audience's need for information, as well as your needs as the speaker. So consider:
  1. What's Your Purpose -- What is your one main purpose in speaking? When you finish, what one specific thing do you want the listeners to:
     • Know, believe, remember, understand? For this, you'll need a format that describes: what you're explaining. How it works. Why it exists.
     • Do, perform, give you or carry out? You'll need a persuasive format, like my 4-step model: "So that you ..., do this ..., instead of ..., because ..."
  2. What's Your Message -- In 25 words or less, what is your one central message that you want listeners to know or do. This message should be able to be written on the back of a business card. Ideally, it would be stated in one complete sentence. Think of the 9-second TV sound bite which encapulates your message and gets heard.

Suggestions

• Choose dark backgrounds to outline slides. Take advantage of an optical illusion. White on black appears larger than black on white. for list-formats, prefer solid-colored dark backgrounds: black, dark blue, brown, green, or dark gray. Keep lettering in white, yellows, light greens, blues, light grays.
  • Avoid any background that interferes with easy reading, such as some textures.
  • For slides with lots of text, tables or spreadsheets, keep the background white or a very light color and the tables in black.
• Keep headings close to body text size. Avoid huge headings and tiny bulleted text.
  • NO HUGE TITLES
    • with tiny bulleted points
    • when the points are what's important
  • Which is more important: the title or the content? To differentiate title from text, keep headings in one color and the text in a different color. For lists of four or more items, alternate two colors to make it easier to distinguish each item.

Information provided by Michael Buschmohle, professional public speaker and President of Applause Associates.