Your PowerPoint Will Create Engagement, Not Slumber

We’ve got to talk about PowerPoint and visual aids during presentations and speeches.

Look folks I like PowerPoint.

I use PowerPoint all the time so my best friends are PowerPoint but let’s get real here.

Most PowerPoint presentations are really dull.

They’re boring they’re excuses to put people to sleep or to encourage them to check their Facebook feed because it’s so darn boring.

Now they’re more than 6000 books about PowerPoint on Amazon.

I’ve done entire courses on PowerPoint.

I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about PowerPoint in just a few minutes right here.

For starters if you’re thinking of giving a PowerPoint presentation.

Time out right there.

You’re not giving a PowerPoint presentation.

You are giving your presentation your ideas that you have to make come alive for your audience.

The PowerPoint slides are just an extra it’s just an enhancement.

The second you tell yourself I’m giving your a PowerPoint presentation for most people.

It flips a switch and they become boring robotic incompetent speakers and presenter.

Don’t let that happen.

My advice don’t create the first slide until you’ve done some of the things we’ve already talked about in this course.

You’ve really identified in one sentence the one thing you want your audience to do.

You’ve identified your five key ideas messages to resonate with the audience.

You have a story for each one of your message points.

Then and only then should you think about having slides to back it up.

Now here are the rules you need to follow.

If you really want to be successful using PowerPoint rule number one one idea per slide.

When you see three bullet points or ten bullet points it just doesn’t work.

Folks I understand that’s how it’s done your organization.

You’ve seen other people do it but there’s no evidence that that helps people remember your ideas.

If you want notes.

Remember I gave you a solution on notes already have a single sheet of paper the PowerPoint slides are not for your notes.

The next big rule use images not text.

Now I love text.

I’ve written half a dozen books.

I like to read.

I don’t have any evidence that putting text on slides that you are projecting actually helps your audience remember it.

And guess what.

You don’t have any audience evidence that that works either.

It’s just gut.

It’s just.

That’s how it’s been done before.

But you don’t really have evidence that putting text up on a slide while you speak to the slide works.

So if you want to be effective put one image per slide that doesn’t have text on it.

I know I know this sounds crazy.

It isn’t how you normally do it.

You have lots of text email that to people in advance.

Give it as a handout but don’t projected during your presentation next when you’re speaking.

Let people look at you.

Don’t have a slide up.

You want people to look at the slide but the slide up and close your mouth and let them look at it.

One solution to that is if you hit the letter B on your keyboard it will black out the screen if you want people to listen to you.

Let them just look at you.

Don’t have anything up there any key whatsoever.

Brings back the PowerPoint to wherever it was so you can be in complete control even if it’s someone’s bad PowerPoint your boss just gave you a horrible PowerPoint so deliver this in five minutes.

You can still control what people look at and when they look at it by using the letter B hitting it once Black’s out the screen hit any key whatsoever.

It goes back and you can advance to the next screen.

Here are the two rules you need to apply to every PowerPoint slide.

Two questions need to ask.

Does this slide actually make my idea more understandable.

The major saying it and does this slide make my idea more memorable than me just saying it.

You can’t say yes to both of those things it is a horrible slide.

Do yourself a favor do your audience a favor and throw it in the trash can.

I know that sounds harsh but you know what else is harsh.

Being in the middle of your presentation and you look around and everyone the audience is doing this I’m trying to help you avoid that harsh reality just because you can use PowerPoint doesn’t mean that’s always the most effective visual aid.

Someone like Steve Jobs had unlimited budgets for presentations known as a great presenter.

He is the Apple version of PowerPoint keynote but he didn’t rely on that exclusively when he wanted to unveil a brand new laptop that was extraordinarily thin.

He didn’t just put up a slide and put the statistics of how wide it was he doubt that when he did he walked over to a table picked up a novel.

He said how thin is this new laptop.

He picked up an envelope reached in and pulled the laptop out of the envelope.

It was such a powerful message because it was a powerful image.

Wow.

This laptop is so thin it goes right into an envelope.

That’s much more powerful than just writing the facts and the specs on a slide and quickly going through the numbers.

So remember you can use props.

What are this cost Steve Jobs 20 cents.

So look around you and ask yourself what tools to you have.

What images do you have.

What things in real life do you have that will make your ideas come alive for your audience.

If you’re just looking for the poor man’s the poor woman’s teleprompter you are not looking in the right place.

There’s nothing like a good old fashioned piece of paper if you just need notes for what you want to say.