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how to make a memorable ppt

our topic is heisenberg's uncertainty principle. no one gives a shit about the material you talk about, only how visually eyecatching the ppt is. i just want to know how can i make it look memorable, thanks.

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How-To Geek

8 tips to make the best powerpoint presentations.

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The First PC Word Processor Is Now a Free Download

7 windows settings you should always keep enabled (and why), how i use microsoft word as a bullet journal to achieve my goals, quick links, table of contents, start with a goal, less is more, consider your typeface, make bullet points count, limit the use of transitions, skip text where possible, think in color, take a look from the top down, bonus: start with templates.

Slideshows are an intuitive way to share complex ideas with an audience, although they're dull and frustrating when poorly executed. Here are some tips to make your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations sing while avoiding common pitfalls.

It all starts with identifying what we're trying to achieve with the presentation. Is it informative, a showcase of data in an easy-to-understand medium? Or is it more of a pitch, something meant to persuade and convince an audience and lead them to a particular outcome?

It's here where the majority of these presentations go wrong with the inability to identify the talking points that best support our goal. Always start with a goal in mind: to entertain, to inform, or to share data in a way that's easy to understand. Use facts, figures, and images to support your conclusion while keeping structure in mind (Where are we now and where are we going?).

I've found that it's helpful to start with the ending. Once I know how to end a presentation, I know how best to get to that point. I start by identifying the takeaway---that one nugget that I want to implant before thanking everyone for their time---and I work in reverse to figure out how best to get there.

Your mileage, of course, may vary. But it's always going to be a good idea to put in the time in the beginning stages so that you aren't reworking large portions of the presentation later. And that starts with a defined goal.

A slideshow isn't supposed to include everything. It's an introduction to a topic, one that we can elaborate on with speech. Anything unnecessary is a distraction. It makes the presentation less visually appealing and less interesting, and it makes you look bad as a presenter.

This goes for text as well as images. There's nothing worse, in fact, than a series of slides where the presenter just reads them as they appear. Your audience is capable of reading, and chances are they'll be done with the slide, and browsing Reddit, long before you finish. Avoid putting the literal text on the screen, and your audience will thank you.

Related: How to Burn Your PowerPoint to DVD

Right off the bat, we're just going to come out and say that Papyrus and Comic Sans should be banned from all PowerPoint presentations, permanently. Beyond that, it's worth considering the typeface you're using and what it's saying about you, the presenter, and the presentation itself.

Consider choosing readability over aesthetics, and avoid fancy fonts that could prove to be more of a distraction than anything else. A good presentation needs two fonts: a serif and sans-serif. Use one for the headlines and one for body text, lists, and the like. Keep it simple. Veranda, Helvetica, Arial, and even Times New Roman are safe choices. Stick with the classics and it's hard to botch this one too badly.

There reaches a point where bullet points become less of a visual aid and more of a visual examination.

Bullet points should support the speaker, not overwhelm his audience. The best slides have little or no text at all, in fact. As a presenter, it's our job to talk through complex issues, but that doesn't mean that we need to highlight every talking point.

Instead, think about how you can break up large lists into three or four bullet points. Carefully consider whether you need to use more bullet points, or if you can combine multiple topics into a single point instead. And if you can't, remember that there's no one limiting the number of slides you can have in a presentation. It's always possible to break a list of 12 points down into three pages of four points each.

Animation, when used correctly, is a good idea. It breaks up slow-moving parts of a presentation and adds action to elements that require it. But it should be used judiciously.

Adding a transition that wipes left to right between every slide or that animates each bullet point in a list, for example, starts to grow taxing on those forced to endure the presentation. Viewers get bored quickly, and animations that are meant to highlight specific elements quickly become taxing.

That's not to say that you can't use animations and transitions, just that you need to pick your spots. Aim for no more than a handful of these transitions for each presentation. And use them in spots where they'll add to the demonstration, not detract from it.

Sometimes images tell a better story than text can. And as a presenter, your goal is to describe points in detail without making users do a lot of reading. In these cases, a well-designed visual, like a chart, might better convey the information you're trying to share.

The right image adds visual appeal and serves to break up longer, text-heavy sections of the presentation---but only if you're using the right images. A single high-quality image can make all the difference between a success and a dud when you're driving a specific point home.

When considering text, don't think solely in terms of bullet points and paragraphs. Tables, for example, are often unnecessary. Ask yourself whether you could present the same data in a bar or line chart instead.

Color is interesting. It evokes certain feelings and adds visual appeal to your presentation as a whole. Studies show that color also improves interest, comprehension, and retention. It should be a careful consideration, not an afterthought.

You don't have to be a graphic designer to use color well in a presentation. What I do is look for palettes I like, and then find ways to use them in the presentation. There are a number of tools for this, like Adobe Color , Coolors , and ColorHunt , just to name a few. After finding a palette you enjoy, consider how it works with the presentation you're about to give. Pastels, for example, evoke feelings of freedom and light, so they probably aren't the best choice when you're presenting quarterly earnings that missed the mark.

It's also worth mentioning that you don't need to use every color in the palette. Often, you can get by with just two or three, though you should really think through how they all work together and how readable they'll be when layered. A simple rule of thumb here is that contrast is your friend. Dark colors work well on light backgrounds, and light colors work best on dark backgrounds.

Spend some time in the Slide Sorter before you finish your presentation. By clicking the four squares at the bottom left of the presentation, you can take a look at multiple slides at once and consider how each works together. Alternatively, you can click "View" on the ribbon and select "Slide Sorter."

Are you presenting too much text at once? Move an image in. Could a series of slides benefit from a chart or summary before you move on to another point?

It's here that we have the opportunity to view the presentation from beyond the single-slide viewpoint and think in terms of how each slide fits, or if it fits at all. From this view, you can rearrange slides, add additional ones, or delete them entirely if you find that they don't advance the presentation.

The difference between a good presentation and a bad one is really all about preparation and execution. Those that respect the process and plan carefully---not only the presentation as a whole, but each slide within it---are the ones who will succeed.

This brings me to my last (half) point: When in doubt, just buy a template and use it. You can find these all over the web, though Creative Market and GraphicRiver are probably the two most popular marketplaces for this kind of thing. Not all of us are blessed with the skills needed to design and deliver an effective presentation. And while a pre-made PowerPoint template isn't going to make you a better presenter, it will ease the anxiety of creating a visually appealing slide deck.

• Microsoft Office

6 dos and don’ts for next-level slides, from a TED presentation expert

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Want to prevent yawns and glazed-over eyes? Before you deliver your next speech, pitch or address, learn how to create exceptional slides by following these rules (with real before-and-afters).

Slides are an expected and crucial part of most speeches, presentations, pitches and addresses. They can simplify complex information or messages, showcase relevant images, and help hold an audience’s attention. But quite often, the best slides aren’t those that make people sit up and comment on how good they are; instead, they’re the ones that people take in without really noticing because the content is effortlessly conveyed and matches the speaker’s words so well.

These days, showing high-quality slides is more important than ever. “We’re living in a visual culture,” says Paul Jurczynski , the cofounder of Improve Presentation and one of the people who works with TED speakers to overhaul their slides. “Everything is visual. Instagram is on fire, and you don’t often see bad images on there. The same trend has come to presentations.”

He says there is no “right” number of slides. However, it’s important that every single one shown — even the blank ones (more on those later) — be, as Jurczynski puts it, “connected with the story you’re telling.” Here, he shares 6 specific tips for creating the most effective slides. ( Note: All of the examples below were taken from the actual slides of TED speakers. )

1. Do keep your slides simple and succinct

“The most common mistake I see is slides that are overcrowded. People tend to want to spell everything out and cover too much information,” says Jurczynski. Not only are these everything-but-the-kitchen-sink slides unattractive and amateurish, they also divert your audience’s attention away from what you’re saying. You want them to listen to the words that you slaved over, not get distracted by unscrambling a jam-packed slide.

“The golden rule is to have one claim or idea per slide. If you have more to say, put it on the next slide,” says Jurczynski. Another hallmark of a successful slide: The words and images are placed in a way that begins where the audience’s eyes naturally go and then follows their gaze. Use the position, size, shape and color of your visuals to make it clear what should come first, second and so on. “You don’t just control what the audience sees; you have to control how they see it,” says Jurczynski.

BEFORE: Too crowded 

After: easy to absorb.

2. Do choose colors and fonts with care

Colors and fonts are like the herbs and spices of your presentation. When used wisely and with intention, they’ll enhance your slides; but when tossed in haphazardly, they’ll make it an unappealing mess.

Let’s start with color. “Color is a key way to communicate visually and to evoke emotion,” says Jurczynski. “It can be a game changer.” Your impulse might be to pick your favorite hue and start from there, but he advises, “it’s important to use color with a purpose.” For example, if you’re giving a presentation about a positive topic, you’ll want to use bright, playful colors. But if you’re speaking about a serious subject such as gun violence or lung cancer, you’d probably go for darker or neutral colors.

While it’s fine to use a variety of colors in your presentation, overall you should adhere to a consistent color scheme, or palette. “The good news is you don’t need a degree in color theory to build a palette,” says Jurczynski. Check out one of the many free sites — such as Coolors or Color Hunt — that can help you assemble color schemes.

With fonts, settle on just one or two, and make sure they match the tone of your presentation. “You don’t have to stick to the fonts that you have in PowerPoint,” or whatever program you’re using, says Jurczynski. “People are now designing and sharing fonts that are easy to install in different programs. It’s been an amazing breakthrough.” Experiment. Try swapping a commonly used font like Arial for Lato or Bebas , two of many lesser known fonts available online. Most important: “Use a big enough font, which people often forget to do,” advises Jurczynski. Your text has to be both legible and large enough to read from the back of the room, he recommends — about 30 points or so.

BEFORE: Weak and hard-to-read font, muddy colors 

AFTER: Strong font, color that’s striking but not jarring

3. Don’t settle for visual cliches

When you’re attempting to illustrate concepts, go beyond the first idea that comes to your mind. Why? The reason it appears so readily may be because it’s a cliché. For example, “a light bulb as a symbol for innovation has gotten really tired,” says Jurczynski. Other oft-used metaphors include a bull’s-eye target or shaking hands. After you’ve come up with your symbol or idea, he advises people to resist the lure of Google images (where there are too many low-quality and clichéd choices) and browse other free image sites such as Unsplash to find more unique visuals. One trick: If you do use stock, amp it up with a color overlay (as in the pic at the top of this article) or tweak it in some other way to counteract — or at least muffle — its stock-i-ness.

One potential source of pictures is much closer at hand. “If it fits the storyline, I encourage people to use their own images,” says Jurczynski. “Like one TED Talk where the speaker, a doctor, used photos of his experience treating people in Africa. That was all he needed. They were very powerful.” Major caveat: Any personal photos must support your speech or presentation. Do not squander your audience’s precious time by showing them a gratuitous picture of your children or grandparents — beautiful as they may be.

BEFORE: Fake-looking stock photo to illustrate teamwork 

After: eye-catching photo of nature to illustrate teamwork.

4. Don’t get bogged down by charts and graphs

Less is also more when it comes to data visualization. Keep any charts or graphs streamlined. When building them, ask yourself these questions:

What do I want the audience to take away from my infographic?

Why is it important for them to know this?

How does it tie into my overall story or message?

You may need to highlight key numbers or data points by using color, bolding, enlarging or some other visual treatment that makes them pop.

Maps are another commonly used infographic. Again, exercise restraint and use them only if they enhance your talk. “Sometimes, people put a map because they don’t know what else to show,” says Jurczynski. He suggests employing labels, color schemes or highlighting to direct your audience where to look. He adds, if you have the skill or know an artist, “you may even consider a hand-drawn map.”

BEFORE: Yikes! What’s important?!? AFTER: The takeaway is clear

5. don’t be scared of blank slides.

It may seem counterintuitive, but at certain points in your speech or pitch, the best visual is … no visual at all. “At the beginning, I was not a fan of blank slides,” says Jurczynski. “But the more talks I’ve seen, the more a fan I am of them, because sometimes you want all the attention on yourself and you don’t want people distracted by what they see in the slides. Or, you might use them to give the audience a visual break from a series of slides. Or maybe you want to shift the mood or tempo of the presentation.”

The blank slide is the visual equivalent of a pause, and most stories could use at least one. And with blank slides, Jurczynski has one main “don’t”: “You cannot use white blank slides, because if you do, people will see it and think something is broken.”

6. Do remember to practice

The easiest way to figure out if your slides really work? Recruit a colleague, friend or family member, and run through your entire presentation with them. Sometimes, people can get so carried away with rehearsing their delivery and memorizing their words that they forget to make sure their slides complement and synch up with what they’re saying.

“Even if you have the best visual s in the world, you need to practice in front of someone else. Once you start practicing, you may see, ‘I’m talking about a sad story, but on the slide behind me, I have something funny and that doesn’t make sense,'” says Jurczynski. “Or, ‘Oh, this could be a good place for a blank slide.’”

About the author

Amanda Miller manages curation for partner events at TED.

• business advice
• data visualization
• idea visualization
• presentation literacy
• public speaking

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• Presentations

30 PowerPoint Presentation Tips to Make Good PPT Slides in 2024 (+ 6 Expert Tips)

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Here are 30 quick PowerPoint presentation tips to help you improve your presentations. 

Plus, get PowerPoint tips on changing your slide design to make your content shine. We've even called on six presentation experts for their best tips.

How to Make a Good PowerPoint Presentation (Watch & Learn)

This screencast is a speed round of my very favorite PowerPoint tricks. It's a great resource to learn how to make a presentable PowerPoint. I'll walk you through ten of my favorite PowerPoint tips and tricks to create a better presentation.

Keep reading for an illustrated version of these good PPT tips (and more) that you can use to improve your PowerPoint presentations. You'll see 30 of our favorite PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks, including techniques to update slide master PowerPoint 2024 designs.

Jump to content in this section:

• How Do You Give a Memorable PPT Presentation?
• Practice Makes Perfect
• Adapt Your Presentation to the Audience
• Use a Custom Font
• Use Contrast
• Avoid Too Many Animations
• Use the Rule of Three
• Use a Custom PPT Theme Design
• Make Use of Charts and Graphs
• Use the Built-in Slide Layouts
• Align Text Consistently
• Make Your Exports User-Friendly
• Try a Different Color Scheme
• Edit Slide Masters for Consistency
• Use the Alignment Feature
• Use Stock Assets
• Reduce Your Content
• Rethink Your Slide Order
• Use PowerPoint Animations
• Invite Collaborators
• Add Supporting Video Clips
• Use Infographic Templates
• Use Impactful Closing Techniques
• Include Data in the Appendix
• Alternate Between Solid Color and White Slides
• Present Information With Maps
• Keep the Design Best Practices in Mind
• Set a Time Limit
• Test Your Content Everywhere

30 Tips: How to Make Good PowerPoint Presentation Designs Fast in 2024

A few tried and true tips can help you speed up your PowerPoint presentation design. Check out 30 of my favorite PowerPoint tips to do just that. Each of these give you PowerPoint slideshow help to create good PowerPoint slides:

1. How Do You Give a Memorable PPT Presentation?

If you're learning the top PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks, you're probably asking yourself: how do I give a presentation that won't be forgotten?

We all want to be remembered. The best PowerPoint slideshow help to make a mark on the audience. There are tried-and-true ways to do just that, and expert Neil Tomlinson shares expertise on being remembered:

Get your main point into the presentation as early as possible (this avoids any risk of audience fatigue or attention span waning), then substantiate your point with facts, figures etc and then reiterate your point at the end in a ‘Summary’.

2. Practice Makes Perfect

Also, don’t forget to practice your presentation. Go through your slide deck a few times to make sure you know it like the back of your hand when the big day arrives. Doing so helps you feel more confident. It'll reduce any anxiety and nervousness you might feel as the presentation day approaches.

What's the best way to rehears for a good PowerPoint? Here's one of the top PowerPoint presentation tips from expert presenter Sandra Zimmer :

Once slides are ready, practice one slide at a time aloud until you feel like you know it and like the flow of speech. Be willing to change anything that does not feel in flow. At the end of learning all your slides, practice the whole talk.

If you want even more great PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks, check out the following post:

3. Adapt Your Presentation to the Audience

Let's say that you're a seasoned presenter with a pretty standard set of presentation topics. Maybe you're an expert in your field, and you're asked to give a PPT presentation frequently on similar topics.

That's the value of being an expert. You might have a standard spiel that you give your audiences, and your content won't totally change from one presentation to another. That's why it helps to make only slight tweaks to adapt your presentation to each audience.

Leading presentation expert Suzannah Baum offered up this advice:

Different audiences will have different needs and different challenges, which requires me to re-sequence the slides, or create new ones. I tend to do a lot of research on my audiences – via surveys, interviews, and conversations with the hiring manager – to help me better understand what information would be most relevant to them.

How do you adapt to your audience? Here are a few more tips:

• Learn about them. If you're asked to speak, talk to the curator of the presentation to learn more about the audience and their background.
• Ask about them! With contact details, send out a survey or a response link to ask for feedback and preparation info. Ask leading questions like "what do you want to learn?"
• Consider the environment.  If you're presenting via Zoom, your style will differ from presenting in person. The key is to acknowledge the difference and adapt to your environment.

Learn everything you can about your audience. Learning how to make a presentable PowerPoint is all about thinking of the recipient, not the presenter!

4. Use a Custom Font

A PowerPoint presentation tip that'll make your slideshow more interesting and more engaging is to use a custom font.

Fonts set the tone for your presentation. So, when you use a premium font, you’re opting for a high-quality font while also adding a personal or creative touch. 

When choosing a font, remember that you want everyone to read your text easily. 

5. Use Contrast

One PowerPoint trick is to use contrast to make some of your text stand out or make it easier to read.

If you’re putting text over an image on our PowerPoint slide, you may need to use a white box with black text in it to make your text easier to read. You can also use contrasting colors to highlight important text.

6. Avoid Too Many Animations

Another PowerPoint tip is to avoid having too many animations or transitions.

When you've got too many animations, it can be distracting to the audience. It’s not only distracting, but it's unprofessional.

It’s best to stick to one or two animations throughout your presentation. Also, if you've got any animations in your presentation, make sure to test them to see if they work before presenting.

7. Add Audio

Include audio on a slide on PowerPoint to increase audience engagement. Audio can be anything from fun sound effects to interview clips. You can even add an audio clip of your voice.

Audio gives you a break from speaking while also engaging the audience. Envato Elements has hundreds of premium audio clips if you want to add some.

8. Use the Rule of Three

One PowerPoint tip and trick is to follow the rules of PowerPoint.

One of those rules is the rule of three. It's where you start by dividing your presentation into thirds. Everything should come in thirds, so if you use bullet points, you should only have three. If you use icons, you should only have three.

When things come in threes, it's easier to remember them. For more information, read this informative article:

9. Use a Custom PPT Theme Design

Above all, consistently use custom PowerPoint themes. Microsoft has built-in themes that you can use for free, sure. But the premium themes that are on Envato Elements   are a major step-up from PowerPoint's built-in themes. 

When you subscribe to Envato Elements, you'll have access to unlimited downloads of all the PowerPoint themes. Right now, Envato Elements has almost 4,000 PowerPoint themes and that number is always growing. You'll learn tips for a good PowerPoint presentation by using the best templates.

10. Make Use of Charts and Graphs

Illustrate your data with the use of charts and graphs. Not only will you be able to make your presentation more visually appealing, but you'll also help your audience remember the information better.

Many PowerPoint templates already include chart and graph elements. Easily customize them to make your data and stats more interesting and easier to understand.

Want to learn more about how to use data? Turn to expert Adrienne J ohnston , a presentation professional:

When it comes to visualizing data in presentations, we have to remember that our audience does not need all the fine details of the data - they need the main takeaway and we need to make sure that's evident to them when looking at the slide.

11. Use the Built-in Slide Layouts

Inside of PowerPoint themes, you'll find layouts , which are custom slide designs.

Most themes include a selection of content layouts that you can use as a starting point for your own slide designs. You can leverage slide master PowerPoint 2024 designs with the help of layouts.

Layouts are like a starting point for your PowerPoint presentation slides. They contain combinations of placeholders for text boxes, images, and more.

Instead of clicking and drawing individual objects onto the slide, use one of these layouts to start your slide off. It's one of the top PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks to save time.

12. Align Text Consistently

When you're working with text on your slide, it helps to ensure that it aligns consistently. Keeping your text aligned in the same orientation really makes a slide look clean. 

In the example below, I've basically got three text boxes:

• list of bulleted points

Notice that all this text is aligned left. 

Aligning text was the " aha " moment that I learned when I started studying slide design. It's one of those steps that makes a slide look much neater and professional, so keep it in mind when designing.

13. Make Your Exports User-Friendly

No matter how great your PowerPoint presentation slides look, you need to think about how your user will use the presentation file. 

Any of these are likely scenarios if you're regularly sending presentations to other users:

• The viewer may not have PowerPoint installed on their computer.
• The recipient may be using a version of PowerPoint that renders the presentation differently.
• Maybe you don't want the user to be able to make any edits or see your notes in the presentation file.

In this case, my favorite tip is to export the presentation as a PDF. To do that, go to File > Export > Create PDF , and then save your presentation as a PDF.

This is sure to help most of your users see the presentation just the way you intended.

14. Try a Different Color Scheme

Many PowerPoint themes have more than one color scheme that you can apply to your presentation. On the Design  tab, click on the drop-down next to Themes to try out a different color scheme.

Typically, these will restyle your entire presentation. Premium themes that you might get from Envato Elements, for example, may have many versions inside the original presentation zip file.

15. Edit Slide Masters for Consistency

The slide master controls the design for your PowerPoint slide. Instead of making the same change to each slide, apply a change to a slide master. It'll affect all the PowerPoint presentation slides that use the same master.

It's ideal to apply a logo to the slide master itself, for example. This keeps the logo the same size and in the same position on each slide.

To do that, go to View > Slide Master.  On the right side, you're likely to see a variety of slide masters that control designs for many slides. Drop the elements that you want to remain consistent onto one of the slide masters.

16. Use the Alignment Feature

PowerPoint presentation slides look better when the objects on them are in line with one another. There's a certain visual rhythm that occurs when objects line up in the center or along certain boundary lines.

When you start dragging objects on your slide, you'll see guiding lines that pop up. These are very intuitive, and you'll likely notice that they help you line up your objects. You might seem them pop up when you've got a box that's equidistant between two other objects on the slide, for example.

This is one of the best tricks for improving the look of your PowerPoint slide. Spend some time making sure that your key elements line up cohesively.

17. Use Stock Assets

Earlier, I mentioned using Envato Elements to grab PowerPoint themes. But there's more that comes with an Envato Elements subscription for presentations.

That includes a wide variety of stock photos, graphics,  and custom designed fonts  that you can use in your presentation. Instead of reusing the same stock photo or clip art, Envato Elements has everything you need to supplement a presentation. 

Again, Envato Elements is the perfect subscription if you build presentations. It's a one-stop-shop that you can use to fill content.

18. Reduce Your Content

There's nothing that makes an audience tune out faster than being overloaded with slide content. Sometimes we try to make so many points that the audience misses all of them due to information overload.

Less is truly more. When you cut the weaker points of your presentation, the audience's attention will follow your key points accordingly.

It seems like cheating, but one of the best steps that you can take for your slide is to simply reduce the number of items that are on it. Convert some of your typed points to things you'll speak verbally.

19. Rethink Your Slide Order

Sometimes, I find that my presentations are out of order. I might spend too much time explaining my decision before I get to the conclusion.

In these cases, I like to use Slide Sorter View  to re-sequence the slides in my presentation. To access this view, go to View > Slide Sorter  on PowerPoint's ribbon.

From Slide Sorter view, you've got a top-down view of all the slides in your presentation deck. It sometimes becomes obvious that the slides can be reordered into a better sequence from this view.

20. Use PowerPoint Animations 

One of my favorite PowerPoint presentation tips is to complement your major points with a bit of animation. Using animation can bring a key point onto your slide with style!

Check out ten of the best PowerPoint tips for how to use animation from expert Sven Lenaerts below:

21. Invite Collaborators

Building a presentation often benefits from a second set of eyes. That's why it helps so much to invite a collaborator to work with you side-by-side in Microsoft PowerPoint.

Pushing your presentation up to OneDrive and inviting collaborators is easy. Thanks to the cloud-based approach, more than one user can edit a slide deck in real time. Learn how to do that in the tutorial below:

22. Add Supporting Video Clips

Building impactful presentations is all about adding other perspectives and angles to the content. One of my favorite ways to do that is to add a video clip. Maybe that's a production that you built on your own or found on sites like YouTube.

Either way, learn how to add and auto play a video clip in the quick tip below:

23. Use Infographic Templates

More presentations than ever will feature visuals that tell stories with data. But it's easy for an audience become overwhelmed with data. 

That's where infographics come into play. Learn to use them in PowerPoint in the tutorial below:

24. Use Impactful Closing Techniques

I've sat through many presentations in my life. I can only remember a few that really stick out, thanks to techniques that highlighted key points. You need PowerPoint tips and tricks that help leave your audience with an impact.

To do just that, make sure you use some of the techniques highlighted in the article below:

To do that, just drag and drop the thumbnails into the order you want. When you return to Normal view, the PowerPoint presentation slides will be in the resequenced order you set here.

25. Include Data in the Appendix

Many PowerPoint presentations include data in the form of charts and graphs. That means that you'll condense specifics into a few easy-to-follow charts.

But what if your audience wants more of the backing details? Maybe they want to validate and review the detail for themselves. In that case, a   set of  appendix slides  with extra data is sure to help.

Appendix slides are included at the end of a presentation deck for backup purposes. You might not present them, but your audience is certain to appreciate that you included them. That helps your presentation continue to be useful even after you leave the room.

Here's a great tip from: pro presenter  Graeme Thomas of Johnny F Designs:

If (my clients) are sending the deck straight to clients however, I would then put all the information on the slides but will often use more slides so that they aren't too cluttered. In cases where there is a lot of content, like financial statements, I would use  appendix slides.

Including an appendix helps your audience understand data  without  overwhelming them with that data. Follow these tips so that you get the best of both worlds.

26. Alternate Between Solid Color and White Slides

Alternating between solid color and slides with a white background can produce an interesting visual effect and engage your audience. You can use the solid-colored slides to signify a new section in your presentation.

Not to mention, solid-colored slides are the perfect way to re-enforce your brand colors and build your brand recognition.

27. Present Information With Maps

If you’re trying to make a case for a global expansion or need to report on how other branches are performing, consider using a map to help your audience visualize the data.

There's no shortage of quality PowerPoint templates with maps built in so be sure to take advantage of them.

28. Keep the Design Best Practices in Mind

The design of your presentation matters just as much as the content of your presentation. That’s why you need to devote an equal amount of time to making sure the design of your presentation is on point as you do to the actual content.

Familiarize yourself with best design practices and keep them in mind as you go about customizing your template.

29. Set a Time Limit

How many slides is the right number for you? Well, it all depends on the time limit you set for your presentation.

Believe it or not, setting a time limit is helpful to create good PowerPoint slides. If you want to learn how to make a presentable PowerPoint, it's a must to lock in the time limit and ensure that your slides support that timeframe. 

Expert presenter Stephanie Ottavan offers one of our top tips for a good PowerPoint presentation based on time limits:

A presenter is usually limited to a specific time frame and you want to adhere to that as closely as you can. If you have animations and transitions in your deck, these take added time so make sure to rehearse in “show mode” of PowerPoint or Keynote and time yourself.

Believe it or not, setting a time frame is one of the most important part of creating a PPT presentation. It helps you influence how many good PowerPoint slides you should design.

30. Test Your Content Everywhere

PowerPoint in 2024 could take place anywhere. Maybe you present, online, in-person, or beam it to mobile devices. It's important to remember that the content will appear differently on each device.

PowerPoint Online is a different medium than many other apps. Make sure that your presentation design appears the same by testing it with the help of this tutorial. It shows you how your PPT presentation appears even in a browser:

Discover Great Premium PowerPoint Templates With Google Slides (For 2024)

Creating a great presentation starts with a great template. And a great PowerPoint slide design use the best presentation practices, for example:

• Use high-quality photos and graphics to help tell the story.
• Keep text to a minimum.
• Stick to one idea per slide.

Designing a great template doesn’t mean you've got to start from scratch, though. Take a look at some of the best PowerPoint templates we've got on Envato Elements.

1. Neo PowerPoint Template

The Neo PowerPoint template features a modern and bold design and includes five color variations to get you started. Along with this, you'll also get 10 master slides and 30 individual slides for all your presentation needs.

2. Vexana PowerPoint Template

The Vexana template is a great choice for brands that need a touch of elegance. This template works with PowerPoint and Google Slides and comes with a grand total of 150 slides. It also has five color variations and includes infographic elements and photo placeholders.

3. Sprint PowerPoint Template

The Sprint PowerPoint template features a professional and modern design. The template is easy to customize. You'll find 20 masters in the standard 4:3 size, allowing you to choose the best layout for your information.

4. Travelicious PowerPoint Template

For any presentation that deals with the topic of travel, check out the Travelicious template. This template is compatible with both PowerPoint and Google Slides. It includes three premade color variations as well as 30 unique slides.

 As you can see from the examples above, there's no shortage of beautiful and professional PowerPoint slide designs on Envato Elements . What’s more, Envato Elements allows you to download as many PowerPoint templates as you want. Plus, get thousands of other design assets such as fonts, photos, and icons—all for one low monthly price.

Want to see even more great PowerPoint template examples? Be sure to check out our related roundup:

Need Help? Grab Our Making Great Presentations eBook (Free)

We've got the perfect complement to this tutorial. You can find more information in our eBook on making great presentations . Download this PDF eBook now for FREE with your subscription to the Tuts+ Business Newsletter. 

It'll help you master the presentation process from initial creative ideas through to writing, design, and delivering with impact.

PowerPoint Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Now that you’ve read about PowerPoint tips and tricks, if you want to learn more about PowerPoint, here are some FAQs:

1. What Is a Placeholder?

Placeholders in your slide on PowerPoint help you easily add text or images to your slide without changing your design.

In a template, sometimes the placeholders have prompts such as “Click to insert a picture” or “Click to add text.” These prompts let you know what kind of placeholder it is. To learn more about placeholders, read this article: 

2. How Can I Automatically Play a Video?

A PowerPoint tip is to insert an automatically played video in your presentation. When you've got a video that'll play automatically, it saves you the trouble of starting your video manually.

Videos can illustrate topics or specific points. They're also a great way to keep your audience engaged. If you want to learn how to play a video automatically, read this tutorial:

3. How Can I Add a Map to my Slide?

Another PowerPoint trick is to add a map to your slide. If you're discussing a specific location, then a map can help your audience visualize the location you're presenting. To learn how to add a map to your PowerPoint slide, read this tutorial:

4. How Do I Add a GIF to My Presentation?

Adding a GIF to your slide on PowerPoint is one way you can grab your audience's attention. To add a GIF to your slide, you’ll need to download a GIF.

Once you download it, upload it into PowerPoint and use it on your slide. For more information about how to add a GIF to your slide on PowerPoint, read this article:

5. Can I Recover My Unsaved Presentation?

Another PowerPoint trick is to learn how to recover unsaved PowerPoint files so that you can be prepared in case of an emergency. If you want to learn more, read this tutorial:

Learn More About How to Make Presentable PowerPoints

These quick PowerPoint Presentation tips are some of my favorite ways to rapidly improve a presentation. Keeping them in mind while you build a presentation can help you build a deck that you'll be confident about presenting.

Check out these tutorials to keep learning more about PowerPoint. These tutorials will give you more ideas for fixing up your PowerPoint presentation slides efficiently:

Find More Templates

Didn't see a template you like? Here are some more:

Use These PPT Presentation Tips on Your Next Presentation

Now that you've studied some of our best PowerPoint tips, it's time to put them to use. Download one of our top-notch PowerPoint themes from Envato Elements to get started. These PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks give you confidence to make you a skilled presenter.

Editorial Note : This post was first published in February of 2019. Our staff updates this post regularly — adding new, exciting PowerPoint tips and templates (with special help from Brenda Barron , Andrew Childress and Sarah Joy ).

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14 effective presentation tips to impress your audience

Get your team on prezi – watch this on demand video.

Anete Ezera July 15, 2022

An effective presentation can communicate key ideas and opinions, save time, and contribute to your overall success as a business, but good presentation skills don’t come naturally to everyone. In this blog post, you’ll find 14 effective presentation tips you can implement in your next presentation to make it a success. 

Whether you’re preparing for an important presentation at work or school, or you’re looking for ways to generally improve your presentation skills, you’ll find these presentation tips useful. We’ve gathered a list to help you impress your audience from the get-go. You’ll find tips for creating and presenting your slides, talking in front of an audience, and other effective presentation techniques to help you stand out. 

Most common presentation mistakes

Before we list our top effective presentation tips, let’s explore the most common presentation mistakes. If you’ve made one or more mistakes in this list, you’re not alone. Most people have made at least one mistake. However, what’s important is to be aware of these errors and try avoiding them next time.

#1 A poor start

One of the most common mistakes people make is undermining the importance of the first few minutes or seconds of their presentation. 

Let’s say you’ve practiced your key talking points meticulously and gone over your slides a million times, but when you’re in the spotlight and need to say your first line, do you know exactly what to say to wow the audience? 

The start of your presentation is crucial. Not only because how you start sets the tone for the rest of your presentation, but also because people generally require around 8 seconds to decide whether they find the subject interesting enough to keep listening. Starting your presentation with a captivating intro is even more important than you think. To ensure you start off right, read our guide on how to start your presentation . 

#2 Lack of preparation

Yes, even though it’s clear that you should prepare before giving a presentation, it’s still a common mistake amongst presenters. Preparing content and talking points is an obvious start, but there are other steps that you might be overlooking.

Before you even join a meeting or walk into a room where you’re going to present, consider the technical requirements and get familiar with the equipment. If you’re presenting online, make sure to test-run your presentation and the visual aids you’re going to use. The last thing you want is a broken video link, poor audio, or a weak connection when you’re presenting. 

Also, consider the questions your audience might want to ask you about the topic. Think about how you’d answer those questions, or do even further research to really impress the audience with your answers. 

Explore other ways to prepare for a presentation to feel even more confident when presenting.

#3 Losing track of time

It’s great to feel passionate about your topic. However, you’ll have to consider your audience’s level of interest and knowledge. Some details might seem fascinating to you, and you’d like to talk about them for hours, but for your audience, too much information will drain their energy and lose their attention. 

Therefore, make sure to keep track of time. Also, consider your audience’s interests. A concise presentation is always better than a long one with a ton of information. Plus, you’ll have a higher chance of keeping your audience’s attention throughout the presentation. 

Effective presentation tips

Now that we’ve looked at some of the most common presentation mistakes – let’s dive into effective presentation tips that’ll help you excel in future presentations. 

#1 Tell a story

Stories connect, inspire, and empower people. Telling a story can entice action, help understand an idea, and make people feel connected to the storyteller. It’s also one of the most effective presentation tips. A study by organizational psychologist Peg Neuhauser found that a well-told story is easier to remember than facts, which makes it a highly effective learning technique. 

With that in mind, telling a story when you’re presenting can engage your audience and make it a more memorable experience. You can either share a personal story or a historical event, just make sure to have a clear connection between the story and the topic you’re presenting. 

#2 Work on your body language

Body language can make a huge difference in how your presentation is perceived. It’s one of the presentation tips you definitely shouldn’t overlook. 

Body language says a lot about a person’s confidence level, emotions, state of mind, and even credibility. For the audience, it’s a way to understand what the person is saying and how interested they are in the topic. 

Therefore, work on your body language to better convey the message you’re trying to communicate. Practice in front of a mirror before your presentation and be conscious of your hand gestures and facial expressions. 

#3 Understand your audience

Before crafting your presentation, you must know who you’re speaking to. Understanding the interests, demographics, professional background, and other valuable information of your audience is crucial in making your speech successful. 

If you’re speaking at an event, contact the organizers to get more information about other speakers and the audience. If you’re presenting at work, you may already know your audience fairly well. Use this information to your advantage and create content you know they’ll resonate with.

#4 Use high-quality visuals

What’s one of the most effective presentation techniques? Use of visuals. They play a crucial role in your presentation. However, only high-quality visuals will make a good impression and effectively communicate your message. Use high-quality visuals like images, videos, graphs, maps, and others to really land your point. 

Using visuals is a great way to convey your ideas as they’re easier to process than text. If you’re not sure where to find great visuals, check out our blog post on presentation visuals for five free resources.

P.S. the Prezi library holds a variety of images, videos, GIFs, stickers, and other visuals, including different charts and maps to spice up your presentation. It’s all available in your dashboard .

#5 Use data visualizations

Do you want to showcase statistics or other datasets in your presentation? Use data visualizations to make your data stand out and impress your audience. 

There’s nothing more boring than a bunch of data presented in a flat way. If you want to tell a story with your data, use interactive infographics or slides enriched with eye-catching visuals. Showcasing data will make your ideas appear more trustworthy and credible. 

Prezi Design offers a range of templates to choose from. You can start creating data visualizations from scratch or choose a template and edit the data there. 

#6 Make it engaging with interactive elements

It’s not easy to deliver an engaging presentation. People can easily get distracted or try to multitask, especially in the virtual environment. Sometimes, it’s difficult to focus on the speaker and the written text. Other times, the content just isn’t impressive enough to hold the audience’s attention. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

You can make your presentation more engaging for everyone by including interactive content like graphs and charts. With interactive data visualizations, you’ll make the data discovery process more engaging and exciting for your audience. 

Your audience will be able to hover over data points and click on certain icons or datasets to discover information on their own. Interactive visualizations will make the presentation more memorable and impressive. 

As you can see in the example below, you can discover different data by engaging with the infographic. 

#7 Stay consistent with fonts and color styles

You want your presentation to look visually appealing and highlight essential information. To make that happen, stay consistent with font styles and color schemes throughout your presentation. 

Use one or two fonts max to make the text easy to read and understand. Also, use a carefully selected color scheme that’s not too distracting. If you’re using Prezi Design, you can easily copy and paste styles by right-clicking on your data visualizations and selecting “copy styles.” This makes it easier to stay consistent and saves time when picking matching colors. 

#8 Structure your presentation properly

Before creating your presentation, think about its structure. What’s the main idea you want to convey? Use that as your starting point, and only include information that adds value to the narrative. 

Plan out the first topics carefully to properly introduce your argument. Add the essential information in the middle part of your presentation. Lastly, close your presentation with a summary of the main points and leave your audience with an afterthought. Also, plan when you’re taking questions and for how long. 

For more insight, watch this tutorial on how to structure your presentation:

#9 Practice your public speaking skills

Public speaking may not be your forte, but you can get better with practice. Don’t decline a great opportunity to share your ideas with a larger audience just because you feel nervous speaking in front of a group of people. 

One of the best ways to improve your public speaking skills is to practice in front of your family or friends – people you feel comfortable with. Also, focus on the topic you’re presenting and get excited about the idea you want to convey. This way you’ll appear more confident and feel less nervous about public speaking. 

Explore other public speaking tips from Jessica Chen, the founder, and CEO of Soulcast Media: 

#10 Show your slides next to you on-screen

If you’re presenting on Zoom or in a virtual meeting , think twice before you share your screen. The days of hiding behind slides are over. People want to see and connect with other people, not sit through another run-of-the-mill screen share. To do that, use Prezi Video to showcase all your content right next to you in your video feed. 

As a result, your presentation will look more engaging than a traditional virtual presentation . Also, your audience will have the chance to read your body language and follow along with what you’re saying even better. 

If you already have your slides prepared, don’t worry – you can easily integrate them into Prezi. 

See Prezi Video in action and check out our video templates to get started.

#11 Calm down before presenting

Being in front of an audience can feel nerve-racking. However, there are ways to calm down before presenting that will make you feel more centered and confident. The last thing you want is all your hard work to go to waste just because of stress. 

Try breathing exercises or a five-minute guided meditation before presenting. The trick is to remove all distractions and focus on the present moment so you’re not overthinking right before starting your presentation. Also, be fully prepared and know exactly what to say and when which will help you feel more collected. If you want to discover other ways to feel and look more confident, read how not to be nervous before a presentation . 

#12 Use transitions and animations 

Add movement to your slides with transitions and animations. You’ll make your presentation more visually appealing and engaging. However, be careful not to overwhelm your audience with your choice of transitions and animations. 

Choose a transition that matches your presentation visually and use it throughout your presentation. Consider what animations will be relevant to your audience and select a few to add to your slides. Don’t overdo it. Keep the focus on the message you’re trying to convey, and use animations to only support that message. 

#13 Be enthusiastic 

When you’re in a room with a positive and enthusiastic person, you can’t help but feel uplifted as well. High-energy people have this effect on others. Most importantly, a lot of people tend to mimic people’s behavior and mirror their energy when they feel a connection or relate to them. That’s called the chameleon effect . 

When you’re presenting, you want your audience to feel curious about what you’re presenting. You may also want to leave your audience feeling uplifted, interested to know more, or inspired. To have that effect on others, try to convey those emotions when presenting. Practice your speech, slow down your narration at times, or take a pause after you’ve delivered a statement, and use different presentation techniques to present your project and really drive your points home. 

#14 End your presentation in a memorable way

The first few minutes of your presentation are crucial for captivating your audience’s attention. However, don’t underestimate the importance of ending your presentation as powerfully as you started it. 

The way you end your presentation will play a crucial part in how your audience will remember it. You want to make a memorable impression by closing your presentation with a summarizing statement, a rhetorical question, a call to action, or another impactful way. Discover 10 ways you can end your presentation in our guide.  

There are a lot of factors to consider when creating and delivering a presentation. You want your slides to look professional and visually appealing while conveying your main points. You also want to look and sound confident even if you’re nervous about public speaking. Whatever your concerns may be, remember that preparation is essential. Practice and dedication are the keys to giving a successful presentation . Make sure to follow these effective presentation tips to excel in your future presentations. If you’re interested in creating a captivating presentation with Prezi, contact us to learn more or try it for free . 

Elevating presentations with Prezi AI

Embrace the innovation of Prezi to bring your presentations to life. With its unique platform, Prezi AI offers more than just visually appealing templates; it provides an immersive narrative experience, engaging your audience with a story-driven approach. By integrating Prezi AI , our platform’s capabilities are further enhanced, offering intelligent design suggestions and optimizing content layouts to ensure your presentations are not only beautiful but impactful. This integration is a perfect example of effective presentation techniques in action, using technology to create a more engaging presentation.

Interactive elements: transforming passive listening into active engagement

Prezi revolutionizes the way information is presented by incorporating interactive elements that invite audience participation. With Prezi AI, these features become even more accessible, suggesting ways to make your presentation more engaging through clickable areas, zoomable images, and dynamic visualizations. This level of interaction encourages exploration, making your message more memorable and transforming a standard presentation into an effective presentation.

Adding a personal touch in digital presentation with video

Prezi Video stands out by seamlessly integrating your content alongside your video feed, bridging the gap between traditional presentations and personal engagement. This feature is crucial for those looking to follow presentation tips that emphasize the importance of connecting with your audience on a more personal level. Prezi AI enhances this experience, ensuring your content is displayed in the most effective way possible, making your virtual presentations feel as though you’re directly conversing with your audience.

Mastering presentation artistry with Prezi

The journey to becoming a skilled presenter involves continuously refining your approach and embracing tools that elevate your ability to communicate effectively. Prezi, enriched with Prezi AI, is one such tool that transforms ordinary presentations into captivating experiences. By leveraging these advanced features, you can deliver presentations that are successful, memorable, and truly unforgettable, embodying the essence of tips for presentation mastery.

Whether you’re an experienced speaker or preparing for your first presentation, Prezi equips you with the tools to succeed. Engage your audience, tell compelling stories, and deliver your message with confidence and creativity. Following effective presentation tips and exploring how Prezi AI can transform your next presentation is a step towards mastering the art of impactful communication. Delve into the features and begin your journey to presentation mastery today.

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29 Killer Presentation Tips to Wow Your Audience

Written by: Chloe West

Looking for the top presentation tips to help you deliver an unforgettable slideshow?

When you’re preparing to give a presentation, you have one thing on your mind. You want your audience to really love what you’re saying.

There’s no worse feeling when you’re up on stage or at the front of the board meeting presenting your information than when you can visibly watch your viewers’ eyes glaze over, see them start to get bored and antsy, and notice they’re not all that invested in what you have to say.

Here's a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit preseentation templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more below:

Making sure your presentation wows your audience starts at the very beginning, right after you’ve been assigned or chosen your topic .

We want to help you make sure your audience is talking about your presentation for days (and even weeks or months) to come. So we’ve put together a list of presentation tips that cover the design, performance and overall reach of your slideshow.

To really knock the socks off your audience, be sure to check off each one of the tips below.

1 Focus on one idea per slide.

You don’t want to crowd too much information into one slide. If your slide design is cluttered and ugly, your audience is immediately going to zone out of your presentation and look elsewhere.

Instead, use one slide for each thought or idea.

Check out the way this slide from one of our presentation templates was designed.

It’s a testimonial slide that includes nothing but a couple of quotes from past customers.

Whether it’s a new section heading, an about slide, a team slide, etc., you want to keep the information you include on a single slide to a minimum.

There’s no need to try to cram your entire presentation or even a whole section of it onto one slide. Your slideshow will be much more visually appealing if you break your content up into multiple slides.

2 Use two or three fonts max.

Nothing clutters up a design like too many fonts. We recommend sticking to just two fonts throughout your entire presentation, and three at the most.

It's a good idea to find one larger, bold font for your headers and a separate sans serif font for the rest of your copy. But presentations often utilize an accent font like an italicized or serif font.

Take a look at the presentation slides below. There are two different fonts being used on these slides—a thin sans serif for the quotes and a serif for the names and locations.

Choose two or three fonts and use them throughout your presentation. Consistency is key, and you want to make sure your slides look cohesive and like they belong together.

3 Pay attention to visual hierarchy.

Visual hierarchy is a design strategy for organizing elements depending on importance. This goes for font sizes, icon size, contrast and any other visual element in your presentation.

This is an important presentation tip because you want your viewers to know exactly which part of the slide they should be looking at first, second, third and so on.

It’s all about focusing on what can grab the user’s attention first, whether it’s larger font, more space between elements or creating deliberate alignment.

You can learn more about visual hierarchy and how to use it in your next presentation by watching this video.

4 Keep it to less than six lines of text.

Your slide shouldn’t be a huge wall of text. That’s what your speaking is for. Instead, be sure to keep it to less than six lines of text at a maximum. Ideally, you’ll have even less.

The content included on your slide should be limited to your main talking points (or a single point, if you really want to keep your slides minimalistic), and your voice should do the rest.

And if you’re not giving this presentation live?

You can always record your audio over your slides. Visme’s presentation maker allows users to record their own audio right in the design dashboard to create stand alone presentations and webinars.

The presentation slides below are a great example of limiting text. There’s a quick snippet of text, and the rest of the content as well as the speaker’s voice will add any context the viewer needs.

Like we mentioned in point one, don’t try to fit your entire presentation on a single slide. Let your voice do the talking and your slide include the most pertinent information.

Don’t bore your audience with a slide filled with words. Visuals are just as important.

5 Don’t use bullet points.

Here's another one of our “don’t use too much text” presentation tips. Bullet points have plagued presentations for years. But if you want yours to stand out, it’s best to stay away from them.

There are so many other more engaging and visually appealing ways to design your presentation slides. Bullets just aren’t one of them.

Consider this slide template layout below. The icon blocks help to differentiate the different points in a unique way so that you don’t have to revert to overused bullet points.

Customize this presentation template and make it your own!

• Add your own text, images, colors and more
• Add interactive buttons and animations
• Customize anything to fit your design and content needs

And to help you get even more creative with your slide layouts, Visme’s presentation themes offer hundreds of different options to choose from.

6 Create strong contrast.

In your audience, you might have people sitting in the back of the room, relatively far away from your screen. To make sure they can still see your presentation slides , you need to create strong contrast.

This means your text should easily stand out against your background. If you have a dark background, all of your text and design elements should be light in contrast, and vice versa.

Check out this slide from one of our presentation templates . The white and yellow easily pop against the dark background, giving this slide great contrast.

When putting this presentation tip to practice, make sure that your text and other elements are easy to see and don’t blend into your background, even from the back of the room.

7 Stick to two or three colors.

Just like you should use no more than two or three fonts throughout your presentation, the same goes for colors. Don't forget, there's such a thing as too much of a good thing.

We love color, but trying to fit too many colors in a single presentation can easily backfire.

When you start to get four, five, six colors into a presentation, it can start to look messy and like the slides don’t actually match or go together in the same slideshow.

A good presentation tip is to choose a color scheme with up to three different colors, or consider a monochromatic scheme of a single hue, similar to this presentation slide.

The use of different shades of blue/grey help tie the slide together and give it a cohesive color scheme.

Finding a color scheme for your presentation doesn’t have to be the hardest part of your entire design. Choose from a basic scheme like cool or warm colors, match your colors to your topic or incorporate your company colors into your presentation to communicate your brand values and identity.

8 Add audio and video.

One great way to create an interactive presentation is by adding audio and video elements to your slides. This helps you take a break from talking and can give your presentation another dimension. This is especially helpful when you're creating a pitch deck or case study presentation .

Using Visme, you can easily embed videos into your presentation slides, upload audio files, choose audio clips from our free library and even record your own audio over your slides.

Hey executives! Looking to cut design costs?

• Spend less time on presentations and more time strategizing
• Ensure your brand looks and feels visually consistent across all your organization's documents
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9 Stick to one image per slide.

You’re probably finding a theme here. When it comes to fonts, colors, images and other design elements, you don’t want to go crazy. Simple is almost always better.

And when it comes to images and photographs, it’s best to incorporate just one in each slide. There are several different ways to use these images, like as a background, an accent photo or with a color overlay.

This presentation slide is a great example of how to use a single photo to add a little something to your slide so it’s not just text, graphics or charts.

While there are reasons and ways to use multiple images tastefully, a good rule of thumb is to stick to just one main image as a background or accent.

10 Use high-quality graphics.

You don’t want any of the photos, graphics or icons in your presentation to be low-resolution or blurry. Always use high-quality vector graphics that look great no matter how big or small they are.

Icons and graphics can be an effective way to visually represent your words and context and further help your audience understand what you’re saying.

Here’s a sample presentation slide from one of our templates. Each of these graphics are high-quality, represent different words and help to tell more of a story.

Visme’s library includes thousands of free vector icons, shapes and graphics in different styles for users to incorporate into their presentation slides.

11 Use data visualization.

Data visualization can include anything from charts and graphs to radials and icon charts.

It’s essentially taking numbers and statistics and showcasing them in a visual form so that it's easier for your audience to understand at a glance.

This presentation slide template below includes an attractive vertical bar graph illustrating the company’s revenue and funding over the years.

12 Make it interactive.

We talked briefly about how adding audio and video to your presentation slides can help make it interactive, but there are many more ways to do just that.

In fact, we’ve written a blog post with 17 different ways to make your presentation interactive. Some of these have to do with your performance, but we’re talking about design right now.

Adding in links to your presentation, whether it’s between slides or even between elements in a single slide, is a great way to create a unique slideshow that your audience will love.

Watch this quick video to learn more about linking your slides together to create a non-linear presentation.

You can also put together an interactive quiz by linking elements in a single slide to appear on your click and so much more.

13 Keep transitions and animations consistent.

When adding transitions and animations to your slides and design elements, it can be easy to get excited about all of your options and go overboard.

But it’s important to keep all transitions and animations consistent within your presentation or it can easily overwhelm your audience. In fact, we recommend sticking to a single transition and animation type throughout your entire slideshow.

You also don’t have to animate every single one of your elements. Let some of them stay static while other, more important elements are animated on the screen.

14 Be energetic.

Your audience can feel your energy, and if you’re standing up at the front of the room and speaking through each slide with an unenthusiastic and monotone voice, they’re going to quickly lose interest.

You’re on the stage, and you need to command their attention. Practice this presentation tip by being energetic. Move around the front of the room or use hand motions.

It's also a good idea to drink water or fresh juice before your presentation to energize yourself. Don't forget to keep a water bottle with you during your presentation!

Learn how to use your voice to entertain your audience through your presentation. Vocal delivery matters , so practice beforehand and get comfortable changing intonation based on your content.

15 Tell a story.

When you’re able to tell a story that resonates with your audience and grabs their attention, you’ve got them wrapped around your finger for the rest of your talk.

There are many different storytelling techniques that can make your presentation stand out. Think about how you can incorporate one or two of these while putting together your content.

16 Use strong structure.

The structure of your presentation is important. It helps give your story and your presentation depth.

There are many different ways to structure your presentation based on its messaging, and you want to make sure that the one you choose makes sense for your topic.

Learn about seven potential methods for structuring your next presentation in the video below.

17 Know your audience.

Understand who is going to be in your audience—how many people, what their backgrounds are, who else will be speaking at the event that they’d be interested to see and more.

If you’re giving a presentation at a conference or networking event, you should be able to speak with the organizers to get answers to all of these questions. Once you really know your audience, you’ll be able to determine what they want to learn and how you should present the information.

18 Make eye contact.

Another presentation tip to remember while in front of your audience is to make eye contact. It exudes confidence when you’re able to look directly at the people you’re speaking with.

It can also help to persuade them to your point of view and keep your audience focused on you and what you’re saying to them.

Maintaining good eye contact with your presentation audience can even help you to speak more slowly and clearly so they can follow along more easily.

Making eye contact can be nerve-wracking for some presenters, so make sure you keep some tips in your back pocket , like holding eye contact for just four to five seconds, looking at people’s heads or making eye contact during your most critical lines.

19 Be funny.

Want to keep your audience engaged and help them fall in love with your presentation?

Make them laugh!

Incorporating humor into a presentation is always a great way to pass the time and make your information that much more interesting.

You don’t want to force it, because that can make things awkward for all parties involved, so make sure you plan some lighthearted humor that you can easily pull off.

Also ensure the jokes you tell are actually relevant to your content. You don’t want to start off by making your audience laugh and immediately jump into, “Now let’s talk about [entirely different topic]!” That will turn them off faster than if you didn’t use any humor at all.

Avoid controversial topics and sarcasm, and try testing out a few jokes before delivering them during your presentation.

20 Use your hands.

Standing still and straight as a board throughout the duration of your presentation will seem pretty off-putting to your audience.

Even if you don’t necessarily feel confident, you want to create the illusion of confidence, and moving around the stage and using your hands to emphasize your words is a great way to fake it until you make it.

21 Summarize.

Taking time throughout your presentation to summarize what you’ve said so far is a great way to help your audience fully understand the material and remember it for the future.

Create a summary slide after every main point and/or at the end of your presentation to conclude.

You can use a slide like the example below to share your summary or key takeaways for each section.

22 Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

While you don’t want to sound like you’ve just memorized your lines and are badly reading off a script, you do want to be completely comfortable with your material and the way you want to deliver your message.

And you get to that point by continuously rehearsing, re-reading your note cards and scrolling through your presentation slides to ensure you know what to say when and more.

You want your presentation to be a success , and you do that by being fully prepared and rehearsing plenty.

23 Don’t go over time.

Not only is rehearsing good for knowing your material, but it can also help make sure you don’t start rambling and lose track of time.

If you’re worried about going over on your time, there are apps that can help notify you of how much time you have left and help guide you through your presentation.

When you’re presenting at an event with lots of speakers, you want to make sure you’re being respectful to both the attendees and the presenters by not commandeering the show. Stick to your allotted time, and make sure you’re staying under each time you rehearse.

24 Embed your presentation.

After you’ve designed and given your presentation, what next? It’s over?

You’ve invested all of this time into creating an awesome piece of content, and you should continue to use it to your advantage. There are ways to still reach a broader audience after you’ve given your speech.

When you create a presentation in Visme, you can publish it online and easily embed it on your website.

This way, you can create a webpage or a blog surrounding your recent presentation and let people who weren’t able to see you present live still learn about your content.

Visme provides an embed code that makes it easy to share presentations online and seamlessly include all of your transitions, animations and interactivity.

Check out this example of an embedded Visme presentation below.

While there are many different ways to embed a presentation on a website, Visme’s embed is one of the most seamless and visually appealing, with no ugly outlines and slide changer messing with the design on your page. It’s also responsive and able to adapt to different screens.

25 Create a public link.

Visme also allows you to publish your presentation online so that you can get a public link to share with your audience. You can grab that link and share your content on social media, in email newsletters or even as a link in your email signature.

Plus, if you publish a presentation—or any design you create with Visme—publicly, you have access to analytics so you can view how each of your creations perform with your audience.

You’ll be able to look at how many total views your presentation received, how many people viewed the complete presentation and more.

26 Upload to SlideShare.

SlideShare is an online platform owned by LinkedIn that allows users to upload presentations.

The platform has millions of presentations, as well as powerful search features and categories, which makes it a great way to get your content found.

Create an account with SlideShare and link it to your LinkedIn account so you can easily share your presentation with your connections.

27 Regularly update and adapt.

Even if your presentation was created on an evergreen topic, information is always changing or being discovered. To keep your presentation relevant, make sure you regularly update and adapt your content to be current and accurate.

You can also include an area in the footer of your first or last slide with the creation date alongside the last date of update so your audience knows it’s being revisited often with updated information.

28 Turn it into a webinar.

Visme allows users to record audio directly in the app to add another dimension to a presentation, or even to turn it into a webinar .

Converting your presentation into a webinar can give you a way to connect with your audience on another level, and you can even have people sign up on your website to view it as a way to gather email addresses.

29 Turn it into a lead magnet.

While your webinar can also be considered a lead magnet, we’re covering something slightly different here. You don’t even have to worry about recording audio over your slides or making any changes.

Instead, you can require people to enter an email address directly in Visme before being able to view your content and generate new leads through there without setting up any other processes.

All you have to do is click Share in the top bar of your presentation maker, go to Advanced Settings, click the Social/Engagement tab and toggle Requires registration to On.

This will require your viewers to input their name and email address before they’re able to access the content. You can go into your Visme dashboard to download your form results and import them into your email software or CRM.

Get started with these presentation tips.

Ready to create a presentation that will wow your audience? Take all of these tips and use them to create a beautiful and memorable slideshow.

Try out one of our premade presentation templates and sign up for a free Visme account to create, present and promote your next presentation.

Did you find these presentation tips helpful? We'd love to know. Let us know your questions, thoughts and suggestions in the comments section below.

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About the Author

Chloe West is the content marketing manager at Visme. Her experience in digital marketing includes everything from social media, blogging, email marketing to graphic design, strategy creation and implementation, and more. During her spare time, she enjoys exploring her home city of Charleston with her son.

• PRESENTATION SKILLS

Top Tips for Effective Presentations

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Presentation Skills:

• A - Z List of Presentation Skills
• General Presentation Skills
• What is a Presentation?
• Preparing for a Presentation
• Organising the Material
• Writing Your Presentation
• Deciding the Presentation Method
• Managing your Presentation Notes
• Working with Visual Aids
• Presenting Data
• Managing the Event
• Coping with Presentation Nerves
• Dealing with Questions
• How to Build Presentations Like a Consultant
• 7 Qualities of Good Speakers That Can Help You Be More Successful
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How can you make a good presentation even more effective?

This page draws on published advice from expert presenters around the world, which will help to take your presentations from merely ‘good’ to ‘great’.

By bringing together advice from a wide range of people, the aim is to cover a whole range of areas.

Whether you are an experienced presenter, or just starting out, there should be ideas here to help you to improve.

1. Show your Passion and Connect with your Audience

It’s hard to be relaxed and be yourself when you’re nervous.

But time and again, the great presenters say that the most important thing is to connect with your audience, and the best way to do that is to let your passion for the subject shine through.

Be honest with the audience about what is important to you and why it matters.

Be enthusiastic and honest, and the audience will respond.

2. Focus on your Audience’s Needs

Your presentation needs to be built around what your audience is going to get out of the presentation.

As you prepare the presentation, you always need to bear in mind what the audience needs and wants to know, not what you can tell them.

While you’re giving the presentation, you also need to remain focused on your audience’s response, and react to that.

You need to make it easy for your audience to understand and respond.

3. Keep it Simple: Concentrate on your Core Message

When planning your presentation, you should always keep in mind the question:

What is the key message (or three key points) for my audience to take away?

You should be able to communicate that key message very briefly.

Some experts recommend a 30-second ‘elevator summary’, others that you can write it on the back of a business card, or say it in no more than 15 words.

Whichever rule you choose, the important thing is to keep your core message focused and brief.

And if what you are planning to say doesn’t contribute to that core message, don’t say it.

4. Smile and Make Eye Contact with your Audience

This sounds very easy, but a surprisingly large number of presenters fail to do it.

If you smile and make eye contact, you are building rapport , which helps the audience to connect with you and your subject. It also helps you to feel less nervous, because you are talking to individuals, not to a great mass of unknown people.

To help you with this, make sure that you don’t turn down all the lights so that only the slide screen is visible. Your audience needs to see you as well as your slides.

5. Start Strongly

The beginning of your presentation is crucial. You need to grab your audience’s attention and hold it.

They will give you a few minutes’ grace in which to entertain them, before they start to switch off if you’re dull. So don’t waste that on explaining who you are. Start by entertaining them.

Try a story (see tip 7 below), or an attention-grabbing (but useful) image on a slide.

6. Remember the 10-20-30 Rule for Slideshows

This is a tip from Guy Kawasaki of Apple. He suggests that slideshows should:

• Contain no more than 10 slides;
• Last no more than 20 minutes; and
• Use a font size of no less than 30 point.

This last is particularly important as it stops you trying to put too much information on any one slide. This whole approach avoids the dreaded ‘Death by PowerPoint’.

As a general rule, slides should be the sideshow to you, the presenter. A good set of slides should be no use without the presenter, and they should definitely contain less, rather than more, information, expressed simply.

If you need to provide more information, create a bespoke handout and give it out after your presentation.

7. Tell Stories

Human beings are programmed to respond to stories.

Stories help us to pay attention, and also to remember things. If you can use stories in your presentation, your audience is more likely to engage and to remember your points afterwards. It is a good idea to start with a story, but there is a wider point too: you need your presentation to act like a story.

Think about what story you are trying to tell your audience, and create your presentation to tell it.

Finding The Story Behind Your Presentation

To effectively tell a story, focus on using at least one of the two most basic storytelling mechanics in your presentation:

Focusing On Characters – People have stories; things, data, and objects do not. So ask yourself “who” is directly involved in your topic that you can use as the focal point of your story.

For example, instead of talking about cars (your company’s products), you could focus on specific characters like:

• The drivers the car is intended for – people looking for speed and adventure
• The engineers who went out of their way to design the most cost-effective car imaginable

A Changing Dynamic – A story needs something to change along the way. So ask yourself “What is not as it should be?” and answer with what you are going to do about it (or what you did about it).

For example…

• Did hazardous road conditions inspire you to build a rugged, all-terrain jeep that any family could afford?
• Did a complicated and confusing food labelling system lead you to establish a colour-coded nutritional index so that anybody could easily understand it?

To see 15 more actionable storytelling tips, see Nuts & Bolts Speed Training’s post on Storytelling Tips .

8. Use your Voice Effectively

The spoken word is actually a pretty inefficient means of communication, because it uses only one of your audience’s five senses. That’s why presenters tend to use visual aids, too. But you can help to make the spoken word better by using your voice effectively.

Varying the speed at which you talk, and emphasising changes in pitch and tone all help to make your voice more interesting and hold your audience’s attention.

For more about this, see our page on Effective Speaking .

9. Use your Body Too

It has been estimated that more than three quarters of communication is non-verbal.

That means that as well as your tone of voice, your body language is crucial to getting your message across. Make sure that you are giving the right messages: body language to avoid includes crossed arms, hands held behind your back or in your pockets, and pacing the stage.

Make your gestures open and confident, and move naturally around the stage, and among the audience too, if possible.

10. Relax, Breathe and Enjoy

If you find presenting difficult, it can be hard to be calm and relaxed about doing it.

One option is to start by concentrating on your breathing. Slow it down, and make sure that you’re breathing fully. Make sure that you continue to pause for breath occasionally during your presentation too.

For more ideas, see our page on Coping with Presentation Nerves .

If you can bring yourself to relax, you will almost certainly present better. If you can actually start to enjoy yourself, your audience will respond to that, and engage better. Your presentations will improve exponentially, and so will your confidence. It’s well worth a try.

Improve your Presentation Skills

Follow our guide to boost your presentation skills learning about preparation, delivery, questions and all other aspects of giving effective presentations.

Start with: What is a Presentation?

Continue to: How to Give a Speech Self Presentation

See also: Five Ways You Can Do Visual Marketing on a Budget Can Presentation Science Improve Your Presentation? Typography – It’s All About the Message in Your Slides

10 tips for a killer presentation (that won’t bore your audience)

You need to give a presentation. And, ideally, you need to do so without boring your audience to tears. That can be more challenging than you think.

One study indicates that a whopping 79% of individuals admit to finding presentations boring. Other research shares that 41% of U.S. employees would rather do their taxes or visit the dentist than endure another slideshow. With that in mind, crafting an engaging presentation that grabs, and holds, the audience’s attention is a must.

Think it’s impossible? Here’s the good news: It’s not.

We’ve pulled together ten need-to-know tips for a presentation that won’t make your audience wish they were watching paint dry.

1. Start with a bang

A strong presentation starts with a strong opening. When we speak, we have 60 seconds on average to capture people’s attention – which means the beginning of your presentation carries some serious weight.

Skip the boilerplate “Today, I’m going to talk to you about…” and challenge yourself to think of something more creative. From a story to a demonstration, there are plenty more compelling ways to begin your presentation than simply stating the obvious.

Need some inspiration to get those creative juices flowing? Check out this opening from Toastmasters World Champion, Darren LaCroix . He hooks his audience right from the start:

Read more: How to choose the best format for your presentation

2. Make your visual aids visual

This seems obvious. But, it’s far too easy to fall into the trap of filling your presentation slides with heavy blocks of text.

Remember, the goal isn’t for the audience to read the information off of your slides. You want them focused on you and what you’re saying – then you can occasionally direct their attention to a visual that’s displayed on the screen when necessary.

Some of you may be thinking: “Oh, but I can use plenty of text as long as it’s well organized with bullet points.” That’s not necessarily the case. Take Steve Jobs, for example. He was an incredibly engaging presenter – yet he never used a single bullet point . Instead, he relied on displaying carefully chosen words and phrases with plenty of impactful imagery.

It’s a strategy worth replicating, particularly when you consider the  Picture Superiority Effect – which states we learn and retain information better when it’s presented in pictures.

When creating your presentation slides, keep Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule in mind:

• You should use no more than 10 slides
• Your slides should take no longer than 20 minutes to get through
• Your font size shouldn’t go below 30-point font

And, yes, we know we just used bullets ourselves. They have their time and place.

3. Involve your audience

One surefire way to engage your audience: Rather than speaking at them, involve them in your presentation.

People don’t have the option to sit back and halfheartedly listen to your content when you actively involve them in what’s happening through things like:

• Surveys and questions
• Smaller group discussions
• Demonstrations

There are plenty more ideas you can use to make your audience members a part of the action. Just check out this TED Talk from musician Bobby McFerrin , where he uses the audience to explain the pentatonic scale and how our brains are wired.

You likely won’t have your audience singing. But, the point remains the same: Involving your audience members is sure to hold their attention far better than just rambling on in front of them.

4. Keep it short

There’s a common theme that you’ve likely noticed with all TED Talks: They’re incredibly short.

When research states that people can only focus on one subject for a finite amount of time (typically right around 10 minutes at the very most), TED decided that they would keep their own presentations under 18 minutes.

No presenter – it doesn’t matter who – is allowed to go past that 18-minute mark.

We know that feels like almost no time at all. And, there will likely be instances when you need to fill a longer presentation slot. At those times? It’s even more important to use strategies to involve your audience and split your presentation into different parts – like an opening, a small group discussion, and then a closing.

That structure and frequent changing of gears can help to hold their attention longer.

5. Rehearse (but don’t over-rehearse)

Practice makes perfect. And, that’s true – you definitely don’t want to fly by the seat of your pants when giving an important presentation.

But heed this warning: You don’t want to over-rehearse either. That can make you appear far too stiff and formal, which will only lose the focus and engagement of your audience.

Don’t read from any notecards. Instead, move around the stage, show passion and enthusiasm, and look different audience members in the eye. That’s far more compelling than watching someone white-knuckle the sides of a podium.

Look to professor Randy Pausch’s presentation at Carnegie Mellon for an example. While there’s a podium onstage, he still moves around to make it feel as if he’s having a more casual conversation with his audience:

6. Be clear on your core message

You have limited speaking time, so make sure you can answer this question definitely: What’s the message you’re trying to get across? Perhaps you’re a famous author and you want to tell them your biggest secret to finishing a novel. Or maybe you’re a marketing executive who wants to explain your top three tips to reaching a target audience.

Whoever you are, create your entire presentation — every sentence, every story — around that core message. Each minute is valuable, so you don’t want to waste any time on irrelevant content. For each part of your presentation, ask yourself, “Does this help me clearly and effectively communicate my lesson? Does it add substance, or does it add fluff?”

Take this example from Heidi Heikenfeld . From the very start, you know that she’s going to speak about the gender gap among portfolio managers in the investment community. She talks about what this gender gap means, why we should challenge it, and ties in some of her personal experiences as one of the few women in this career space. Every moment relates back to the core message: There’s a gender gap in this industry, and we need to do something about it.

7. Avoid sounding monotone

Your thoughtfully crafted presentation won’t matter one bit if you don’t keep the audience engaged. And keeping them engaged is difficult if you speak in a flat, dull voice the entire time. You might as well be a white noise machine, lulling your listeners into a deep, dark sleep.

“People who speak in a monotone voice or with inappropriate expression in their voices are perceived as untrustworthy, boring, or even shifty,” says Susan Ward , a small business expert and owner of a consulting firm.

When you practice, don’t just focus on memorization. Practice infusing your words with passion for the topic. You should be as animated as you’d be if you were telling a good friend about the dream vacation you just went on.

Here, James Veitch tells a story about a conversation he had with someone who sent him spam mail. As he winds his way through different parts of the story (such as the scam artist sending him gold — how fun!), his voice varies in intensity and volume.

8. Structure it like a story

There’s a reason why storytelling is so powerful. Stories are based on a simple structure that allows people to see the message clearly.

Your entire presentation doesn’t need to be one story (though it can be). Instead, you could start with a personal anecdote that helps introduce the topic and the problem. Either way, the most important thing is that your presentation follows this simple story arc: beginning, middle, and end.

Graham Shaw , for instance, begins by asking the audience, “Who thinks they can draw?” Turns out, most people in attendance think they can’t, and Shaw wants to prove them wrong. So he spends the middle portion of his talk — the bulk of the time — doing so. He has them grab a pen and some paper (a great example of audience involvement) and walks them through drawing a few cartoons, step by step.

And voilà everyone successfully drew the images. Sure, they probably won’t be featured in an art museum any time soon, but that’s not the point. Shaw wraps it up with the real point: that our lack of belief in ourselves is getting in our own way.

9. Don’t be afraid to admit you’re nervous

“I’m going to start by saying… I’m nervous,” Tracee Ellis Ross — actor, director, Golden Globe winner, and more — says. Those are the first words out of her mouth as she gets up on stage at Glamour Magazine’s Women of the Year Summit . “I’ve been writing this speech in between trying to live my life and do a job. And I care what I say, so bear with me.”

It may seem taboo to admit you’re nervous. Aren’t you supposed to fake it until you make it? , you might be thinking. I disagree. Yes, you should prepare — a lot. Yes, you should practice a decent amount. Yes, you want to avoid “um”-ing your way through it.

But this isn’t about that. This is about the fact that, despite how ready you are, despite how much you believe in your message, you still might be nervous. Ross admitting this doesn’t invalidate what she’s saying. It makes her more relatable to the audience. And in this instance, it’s especially powerful — sometimes it’s hard to relate to someone who’s been on TV and won a shiny golden statue in front of thousands of people.

Being honest, confessing that you’re human, too, helps break down that barrier between you and the audience, making it that much easier for your message to not only be heard, but positively received.

10. Tie everything together at the end

You’ve put a lot of time and effort into deciding on a strong core method and building your presentation around it. When you get to the end, it’s time to tie it all up in a bow.

Remind your listeners why they came to hear you speak today. Reference things you talked about and how they relate to the overall message. List the key takeaways and any possible calls to action; now that they’ve got all this great information, what should they do with it?

This is the last thing your audience will hear. It’s the last chance to drive home the point you were trying to make and keep it fresh in their minds even after you leave the stage.

In his speech about what contributes to company success, Bill Gross outlines five different factors, touching on each separately. At the end, he brings them all back together again and provides his insight on which factors he believes matter the most. This says to the audience, “Here are the five things we just mentioned, in case you forgot. And going forward, here are the ones I think you should prioritize.”

Ready to engage your audience? You’ve sat through your own fair share of boring presentations, and you’d rather not be one of them. Fortunately, you don’t have to be. Put these ten key tips to work, and you’re sure to educate and engage your entire audience – yes, even those typical back-row nappers.

Related articles

How to Study Powerpoints (4 Quick Tips)

Powerpoint presentations. They’re long, they’re (sometimes) complicated and they’re not usually fun.

How to study powerpoints best?

Pre-study them first. Ask active questions about the information on the slides. Make quick (but short) flashcards from the key concepts.

Med school leans on powerpoint presentations a lot!

For students wondering how best to deal with them, this article is for you.

You’ll learn:

• Useful ways to make passive slide reading more active
• How can you save time having to cover the material in multiple passes
• The tips I used to survive heavy powerpoint content

Having spent the last four years in powerpoint hell, I’ve come up with a few ideas!

Let’s get started.

How To Study Powerpoints

1. pre-study powerpoints.

One of the most effective ways to prepare for lectures and increase your chances of staying awake is to pre-study them beforehand.

Doing this helps you contextualize information better. As you’ve already seen the start and end points, you know exactly where the presentation is going.

Here’s how you can best do this:

• Skim over the slides for a quick first pass (don’t worry about understanding at this stage)
• Why is this information relevant to X?
• What is meant by X or Y terms?
• Why is understanding this beneficial?
• Listen actively in the lecture and try to pick out the answers to these questions
• If anything remains unanswered ask for clarifications at the end

Of course you don’t have to only do this in lectures either.

If you choose not to go to lectures (don’t worry, many med students don’t) , you can switch point three (listening) to reading instead.

The main point is that you try and answer the questions during a deeper second pass. 

This is similar to a couple of tips shared by med student redditors in my article; How To Study In Med School: Reddit’s 26 Best Tips .

2. Actively Review Slides: Ask Questions

Reading or listening to powerpoint presentations is very passive. I know when I first started med school I was surprised by just how dull and ineffective this mode of learning could be.

That’s why I’m a big champion of evidence-based study strategies like active recall! 

You can apply active recall to powerpoints by writing questions instead of notes on the slides. Then you can finish up by collecting these questions and putting them into a spreadsheet or something similar. And finally periodically quiz yourself on the answers.

This is probably best done with note-taking apps like Notability or OneNote.

If you use a tablet or iPad in med school , you can import the slides and write these questions directly beneath them. 

Janice Studies has a really good guide on digital note taking in this video…

I did a lot of this in the preclinical years of study!

3. Turn Lecture Slides Directly Into Flashcards

Another great way to get more active when studying powerpoints or slides is to convert them directly into flashcards. 

There are lots of ways to do this but my preferred method is using digital flashcard apps like anki . 

A few things to be aware of:

• Set a target number of flashcards per lecture (don’t turn every bullet point into a flashcard – that’s just overkill – aim for something like 2 cards per slide)
• Check if there are any pre-made decks that cover the major points already (helps if you’ve pre-studied the slides first)
• Use cloze (fill-in-the-gap) formats or the image occlusion add-on to make your cards faster to recall (don’t jam a load of endless facts on them)

This last point is why I love zanki so much. Check out my article: What Is The Best Anki Deck For Step 1 to learn more about that.

This video from Prerak Juthani is very similar to how I’d recommend doing it…

Having your powerpoints converted this way will ensure you memorize them effectively.

Just remember to keep up with the reviews !

4. Summarize In Your Own Words

Summarizing the information on slides into your own words is a powerful technique that can help you understand and recall the information better. 

Here are a few ways of doing this effectively:

• Condense the information : force yourself to select the most high yield information that’s worth memorizing.
• Once put into your own words, try recalling it without help : you could use concept maps on whiteboards to help here. Whenever you get stuck go back to your summary, review and repeat the process.
• Teach someone else the concept : explain it to a friend, colleague or say aloud without a reference guide to prove you’ve really understood it. 

Each of these are strong active recall strategies that can help turn passive powerpoint learning into something great.

Bonus: Forget The Powerpoints

This last tip is something a little extra.

Perhaps it’s best to forget the powerpoints completely.

Why not pick up a high-yield review book instead?

I decided to do this after my first year in med school and I never looked back. Using UFAPS and resources like Boards and Beyond to learn the material during the first pass, I saved a lot of time and effort and my grades weren’t impacted either. 

Note : If you’re not a med student, just Google “best review books for X”. X being your topic of study!

Just remember to skim the lectures before major exams though to make sure you cover the details your school’s internal exams love to test on.

Powerpoints are many professor’s best friend. Instead of getting bogged down with them, work out how to use them to your advantage.

Hopefully the tips above can help show you how.

If you liked this article, you might find the following articles useful:

• How To Study Medicine Effectively (Quick Hints & Tips)

Image Credit: @xteemu at Unsplash

Born and raised in the UK, Will went into medicine late (31) after a career in journalism. He’s into football (soccer), learned Spanish after 5 years in Spain, and has had his work published all over the web. Read more .

Poster Presentations: Tips and Tricks

By  Carolyn Trietsch

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Carolyn Trietsch recently defended her Ph.D. in entomology at Penn State. You can view her website or follow her on Twitter @carolyntrietsch .

Poster presentations are a staple of academic conferences. They’re a valuable way to share research visually, and it pays to know how to design one well . The good news is, we seem to be living in a time of a new poster renaissance!

There’s been a lot of recent debate about how to create better posters , with Ph.D. student Mike Morrison leading the charge for designing more visually appealing posters that state results clearly .

Here are some other ideas for how you can take your poster presentation to the next level.

Encourage Written Audience Feedback

Poster sessions may only last for an hour or two, but your poster may be displayed for much longer than that. How do you engage and interact with your audience when you’re not there?

Put Post-it notes and pens next to your poster, with a sign encouraging visitors to write down their questions or comments.

You can even add a space directly to your poster for audience comments. When my adviser and I wrote a code of ethics for insect collectors, we wanted to hear what others in our field had to say about it. We split our poster into two halves, with the code of ethics on one half and an empty space for audience comments on the other half (see image above). We presented our poster at that year’s Entomological Society of America meeting in Denver and received many helpful comments from other researchers on how we could improve our code and turn it into a useful classroom resource.

Beyond the QR Code: Videos, Augmented Reality and More

A QR code is a great addition to a poster; you can create a code to link to your website, publications or whatever you want, and anyone who scans the code will be able to instantly access it.

You can take this further with augmented reality apps like HP Reveal (formerly Aurasma) and DAQRI . Using apps like these, you can link pictures on your poster to videos so that when viewers scan them with their phones, it will bring your poster to life with sound and moving images.

Another way to engage your audience when you’re not standing at your poster is to create handouts. For our poster on insect collecting, we printed out pocket-size versions of the code of ethics we had drafted.

I’ve also seen some researchers print out postcard-size versions of their poster so that attendees could take a copy of the poster with them. Many researchers will also leave business cards in a pocket or folder at the bottom of their poster so that researchers can get in touch with them.

Giving Permission (or not) for Photography and Social Media

When you’re presenting your research publicly, there’s a good chance that someone is going to take a picture of it. Make it clear to your audience members whether they are allowed to take pictures of your poster and share on social media (or not) by including “no photography/social media” or “photography/social media allowed” (see the social media guidelines here for examples).

In the future, conferences might provide these icons as stickers that presenters could add to their posters, but until then, it’s best to either print these as fliers to display around your poster or add the icons directly to your poster.

Printing on Fabric

Printing and transporting paper posters can be cumbersome, especially if you’re traveling by plane. One way to avoid the hassle is by printing your poster on fabric -- t his way, you can fold your poster up and pack it in your bag rather than having to lug a poster tube around the airport or conference hall. It’s also much harder to rip fabric than paper, so there’s less worry when hanging up and taking down your poster.

Printing on fabric can be expensive, so this might be a better option for posters you will display multiple times. But it can be worth the money if you don’t have to purchase a poster tube or pay extra airline fees for bringing it on the plane.

Proactive Printing: Plan Ahead!

Whether you print on fabric or paper, try to print your poster ahead of time in case there are any problems. I had a few colleagues print a poster at the conference hall to save time, only to end up with a poster that was a quarter of the size. Unfortunately, they didn’t have time to reprint the poster and had to present the miniature version.

Some print shops can only print up to a certain size and will have larger posters printed at a central location or third party and shipped to you. This can take more time, so plan ahead -- make sure your print shop can handle larger jobs, and print your poster early so you can deal with any mishaps that arise.

Also, don’t forget to plan how you will hang your poster. Bring extra pushpins and/or Velcro. Even if you don’t need it in the end, there’s sure to be someone else there who will -- and be sure to help out your neighbors!

Sharing Your Poster After the Conference

You don’t have to stop sharing your poster just because the conference is over. You can publish your poster online in an open-access data repository like figshare , which gives your poster a unique digital object identifier (DOI) that you can use to cite your work. You can also upload your poster to your institutional repository (Penn State uses ScholarSphere ) or websites like ResearchGate so you can continue to share it with the research community after the conference is over.

As for your physical poster, don’t just throw it in the trash after the conference. If you have any bare walls in your lab or office space, old posters make great decorations and conversation starters. Many departments will also display posters to show what their students are accomplishing, so if the walls in your building are looking empty, talk to your department head and see what you can do about it.

In addition to the ideas above, there is one place you should always share your poster after the conference -- on your CV. This is valuable public speaking experience that you should not overlook, especially after all the time and effort you spent designing your poster and presenting your research. Don’t ever sell yourself short.

Do you have any other ideas for how to take poster presentations to the next level and make them pop? What was the best poster presentation you ever saw? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

A special thanks to Shelby Kilpatrick for her insightful comments and contributions to this post.

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17 PowerPoint Presentation Tips From Pro Presenters [+ Templates]

Published: April 26, 2024

PowerPoint presentations can be professional, attractive, and really help your audience remember your message.

If you don’t have much experience, that’s okay — I’m going to arm you with PowerPoint design tips from pro presenters, the steps you need to build an engaging deck, and templates to help you nail great slide design.

Download Now

Buckle up for a variety of step-by-step explanations as well as tips and tricks to help you start mastering this program. There are additional resources woven in, and you’ll find expert perspectives from other HubSpotters along the way.

Table of Contents

How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation

Powerpoint presentation tips.

Microsoft PowerPoint is like a test of basic professional skills, and each PowerPoint is basically a presentation made of multiple slides.

Successful PowerPoints depend on three main factors: your command of PowerPoint's design tools, your attention to presentation processes, and being consistent with your style.

Keep those in mind as we jump into PowerPoint's capabilities.

Getting Started

1. open powerpoint and click ‘new.’.

A page with templates will usually open automatically, but if not, go to the top left pane of your screen and click New . If you’ve already created a presentation, select Open and then double-click the icon to open the existing file.

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Creating PowerPoint Slides

3. insert a slide..

Insert a new slide by clicking on the Home tab and then the New Slide button. Consider what content you want to put on the slide, including heading, text, and imagery.

• Finally, PowerPoint Live is a new tool that enables you to do more seamless presentations during video calls and may be a better overall match for doing presentations remotely. Check out this video:

11. Try Using GIFs.

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15. Embed multimedia.

PowerPoint allows you to either link to video/audio files externally or to embed the media directly in your presentation. For PCs, two great reasons for embedding are:

• Embedding allows you to play media directly in your presentation. It will look much more professional than switching between windows.
• Embedding also means that the file stays within the PowerPoint presentation, so it should play normally without extra work (except on a Mac).

If you use PowerPoint for Mac it gets a bit complicated, but it can be done:

• Always bring the video and/or audio file with you in the same folder as the PowerPoint presentation.
• Only insert video or audio files once the presentation and the containing folder have been saved on a portable drive in their permanent folder.
• If the presentation will be played on a Windows computer, then Mac users need to make sure their multimedia files are in WMV format.
• Consider using the same operating system for designing and presenting, no matter what.

16. Bring your own hardware.

Between operating systems, PowerPoint is still a bit jumpy. Even between differing PPT versions, things can change. The easiest fix? Just bring along your own laptop when you're presenting.

The next easiest fix is to upload your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides as a backup option — just make sure there is a good internet connection and a browser available where you plan to present.

Google Slides is a cloud-based presentation software that will show up the same way on all operating systems.

To import your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides:

• Navigate to slides.google.com . Make sure you’re signed in to a Google account (preferably your own).
• Under Start a new presentation , click the empty box with a plus sign. This will open up a blank presentation.
• Go to File , then Import slides .
• A dialog box will come up. Tap Upload.
• Click Select a file from your device .
• Select your presentation and click Open .
• Select the slides you’d like to import. If you want to import all of them, click All in the upper right-hand corner of the dialog box.
• Click Import slides.

When I tested this out, Google Slides imported everything perfectly, including a shape whose points I had manipulated. This is a good backup option to have if you’ll be presenting across different operating systems.

17. Use Presenter View.

In most presentation situations, there will be both a presenter’s screen and the main projected display for your presentation.

PowerPoint has a great tool called Presenter View, which can be found in the Slide Show tab of PowerPoint. Included in the Presenter View is an area for notes, a timer/clock, and a presentation display.

For many presenters, this tool can help unify their spoken presentation and their visual aid. You never want to make the PowerPoint seem like a stack of notes that you’re reading off of.

Use the Presenter View option to help create a more natural presentation.

Pro Tip: At the start of the presentation, you should also hit CTRL + H to make the cursor disappear. Hitting the “A” key will bring it back if you need it.

Your Next Great PowerPoint Presentation Starts Here

Now that you have these style, design, and presentation tips under your belt, you should feel confident to create your PowerPoint presentation.

But if you can explore other resources to make sure your content hits the mark. After all, you need a strong presentation to land your point and make an impression.

With several templates to choose from — both in PowerPoint and available for free download — you can swiftly be on your way to creating presentations that wow your audiences.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in September 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Bad Presentation At Work | Best 5 Tips To Avoid Disastrous Experience in 2024

Jane Ng • 29 July, 2024 • 11 min read

I gave a bad presentation at work . I am finding it hard to face people in my office now. How should I get over it? - This is an evergreen topic on popular forums like Quora or Reddit. Most of us working people seem to have problems with presentations and do not know how to overcome this pain. 

Hey! Don't worry; AhaSlides would be more than happy to help you by giving common mistakes everyone might face & how to fix them.

Table of Contents

• #1 - "Can I refuse to do a presentation at work?"
• #2 - Why Do We Have To Present Despite So Many Embarrassing Experiences?
• #3 - The Most Common Mistakes In A Bad Presentation And How To Fix It?
• #4 - 5 Ways to Recover From Bad Presentation
• #5 - Use an Interactive Presentation Software To Make Your Dream Speech Come True
• #6 - How AhaSlides can help you!
• #7 - Conclusion
• Frequently Asked Questions

More Funs with AhaSlides

• Ultimate Guide to Interactive Presentation
• Zoom presentation tips
• Icebreaker Games to avoid bad presentation at work!
• What is glossophobia?
• How to conclude presentation?

Start in seconds.

Get free templates for your next interactive presentation. Sign up for free and take what you want from the template library!

So, let's get started!

' Can I Refuse To Do A Presentation At Work? '

This question must be on the minds of people who fear public speaking . 

This fear can happen due to fear of failure, audience, high stakes, and being the centre of attention. Thus, when faced with a presentation, many people experience the classic fight-or-flight response such as heart palpitations, tremors, sweating, nausea, shortness of breath, dizziness, and resulting presentation problem that makes the "a sad memory" such as:

• You turn your presentation into a lullaby that makes everyone yawn, roll their eyes, or keep checking their phones to see when you're done. The phrase " Death by PowerPoint ” was coined for that reason.
• Your mind goes blank. No matter how many times you practice, just being on the stage makes you forget everything that needs to be said. You start standing still or drunk with nonsense. Make the presentation end with shame.
• You are running out of time. This could result from not timing your rehearsal first or technical problems. Whatever the reason, you end up making a bad presentation that makes the audience not understand what you are trying to convey.

Why Do Present Despite So Many Embarrassing Experiences?

The answer is that presentations bring many benefits and are essential for product launching, marketing strategy, company trend reports, and many more.

• Product Presentation: Product presentations are a great opportunity to showcase your newly built or renovated feature products to the world. The purpose of this presentation is built around the introduction/improvement of your product to suit your users best or share about a new product with potential investors. You can take Apple's iPhone launch as a typical example. 

• Marketing Presentation: No matter how quality your products or services are, they still require a proper marketing strategy to be known and be able to sell to your intended audience. So marketing presentations will come into play to the board of directors or other shareholders. They will decide if those strategies are feasible or not.
• Data Presentation: Once in the business, you will have to familiarize yourself with the numbers and reports that come from every department, like revenue reports, monthly/quarterly data reports, growth reports, etc. Therefore, to present data visually, easy to understand, and to remember with the leadership and related departments, you need to have a data presentation.

So if you don't improve your presentation skills and still make one or more bad presentations, you will soon be out of business. Watch out!

Common Presentation Mistakes In A Bad Presentation And How To Fix It

What makes a bad presentation? Here are 4 common mistakes that even professional speakers can make & tips to fix:

Mistake 1: No preparation

• Great speakers always prepare. They know the topic to talk about, have an outline of the content, design impressive slides, and carefully study the key issues they want to present. Many people only prepare their presentation material 1-2 days or even hours before the presentation. This bad habit leads to the audience only hearing vaguely and not understanding what is happening. Since then, bad presentations have been born.
• Tips: To optimize audience perception and get the results you want after your presentation, practice speaking out loud at least once before standing on stage.

Mistake 2: Too much content

• Too much information is one of bad presentation examples. With the first presentations, you inevitably get greedy, cram too much content at once and include tons of videos, charts, and images. However, when all these types of content are used up, the presentation will become lengthy, with too many unnecessary slides. As a result, you will have to spend time reading the letters and numbers on the slide and skipping the audience.
• Tips: Outline the highlights you want to convey to your audience. And remember that the fewer words, the better. Because if a slide is too long, you will lose the audience by lacking connection and convincing. You can apply The 10 20 30 Rule . 

Mistake 3: No eye contact

• Have you ever witnessed a presentation where the speaker spends all of his time looking at his notes, the screen, the floor, or even the ceiling? How does this make you feel? That is one of examples of bad presentations. Looking someone in the eye helps establish a personal connection; even one look can draw an audience. If your audience is small, try to make eye contact with each individual at least once.
• Tips: To make a visual connection, eye gestures directed at each person must last at least 2 to 3 seconds or long enough to say a full sentence/paragraph. Effective eye contact is the most important nonverbal skill in a speaker's "toolbox".

Mistake 4: Discrete presentation

• Although we spend most of our day talking to each other, speaking to an audience is a difficult skill and one that we need to practice regularly. If anxiety causes you to rush your presentation, your audience may miss important points.
• Tips: Stabilize your mind by taking deep breaths to prevent confusion. If you start talking nonsense, it will take some time for you to settle down. Take a deep breath, and pronounce each word clearly as you focus on slowing down.

Keys Takeaways

It takes a lot of practice and effort to get a good presentation. But your presentation will be much better if you avoid common pitfalls. So here are the keys:

• Joint presentation mistakes include not preparing properly, providing inappropriate content, and speaking poorly.
• Check the location and familiarize yourself with the device first to avoid possible problems.
• Keep your presentation clear and concise, and use appropriate visual aids.
• Make sure you mention terms that are in line with your audience's understanding so that your presentation avoids confusion.

But this part is just a way to deal with the technical aspects, prepare for a good presentation and help you to avoid " Death by PowerPoint ". 

As for those who have lived with disaster experiences of a bad presentation, the next section is your mental recovery.

5 Ways To Recover From A Bad Presentation

To help you through the nightmare named a bad presentation, please do the methods given below: 

• Accept disappointment: It's not always a good idea to "think positively" because feeling uncomfortable is normal . Accepting disappointment will allow you to let it go more quickly and move on. Give yourself time to endure the sadness and get up to the fight.
• Practice self-compassion: Don't treat yourself in too harsh ways. For example, “I am a loser. No one wants to work with me anymore." Don't talk to yourself like that. Don't let yourself lower your self-worth. Talk to yourself like you would speak to your best friend.
• It doesn't mean anything about you: A lousy presentation doesn't mean you're a disaster or not qualified for the job. There will be factors you can control or not, but whether it's the presentation's content or the technical problem, your presentation disaster means nothing about who you are.
• Use failure as a motivation: A lousy presentation is an opportunity to figure out why it went wrong and to improve on the next production. You can learn more about how to avoid common mistakes that cause bad speeches here .

Use Interactive Presentation Software To Make Your Dream Speech Come True

Using Interactive Presentation Software has excellent benefits and can turn your bad presentation into a great one. It:

• Increase audience engagement, allowing them to connect with you and the purpose of your presentation.
• Improve retention. 68% of people say it's easier to remember information when the presentation is interactive .

AhaSlides features are cloud-based - interactive presentation software that allows you to organize fun, interactive presentations for all your needs, with quizzes , Q&A app , word clouds , brainstorming slides, etc. 

Audiences can join the presentation from their phones and interact directly with the display with lots of attractive interactive options.

Learn more at AhaSlides' template library !  

How AhaSlides for Business Works for You

Team meetings.

Create exciting virtual team meetings with AhaSlides. Engage your team with a live survey for instant feedback on how things are going with your business, any concerns the group may have, and any new ideas that colleagues think of. This not only creates opportunities for new ideas but makes your team feel listened to and cared for.

🎊 Host Host Free Live Q&A with AhaSlides

Team Building Sessions

Even virtually, you can create meaningful team building activities to get your team participating and working better with each other. 

An online quiz can be a great way to have everyone involved, or use our spinner wheel feature for an icebreaker game such as Never Have I Ever . These team-building exercises can be used as a social activity or during work hours as a break to get the team re-energised.

Project Kickoff

Get your team prepared with a well-organised kickoff meeting for your next project. Introduce everyone to the project and get them settled with popular ice-breakers. Use live polls and Q&As to efficiently compile everyone's ideas and opinions, leading to a practical goal-creation strategy. Then, assign all your tasks and get started.

You can also use AhaSlides business to check in periodically to see how everyone is getting on and if you’re all on the same page.

Sales Proposal/Pitch Deck

Create unique and bespoke sales proposals with eye-catching business presentations. Include your branding and edit to suit your audience. Make sure your pitch gets noticed with amazing features such as polling, Q&A and brainstorming, then complete the captivation with highly visual slides.

Brainstorming Ideas

Use good old-fashioned brainstorming , with a modern twist to get ideas flowing. Start with an icebreaker or game to get your team energised and their brains active. The closer the group feels to each other, the more likely they are to share their ideas.

In Conclusion

Remember, public speaking is a performance. So, to avoid bad presentations at work, you must prepare and practice many times to make it perfect. Don't lose confidence in yourself because of a bad representation for once. Follow AhaSlides articles to learn more about this topic!

Frequently Asked Questions:

What is a bad presentation.

A bad presentation fails to convey effectively its vital message to listeners and leaves an uncomfortable impression. It is confusing, unprofessional, less engaging, and don’t attract audience’s attention.

What are the effects of a bad or poor presentation?

The audience might find it challenging to understand the presenter’s points. Besides, they may feel that it is only a waste of time when listening to a bad presentation, which leads to frustration and disappointment.

A writer who wants to create practical and valuable content for the audience

Tips to Engage with Polls & Trivia

More from AhaSlides

• Social Media Marketing

Reddit Marketing Strategies for Those Who Don’t Have Time for Reddit Marketing

Reddit is one of the most vibrant communities on the Internet and a powerful source of attention. A positive Reddit mention can mean thousands of visits to your website or your product.

Your audience may be there. Opportunities certainly exist there.

Should you be there, too?

It’s a tricky question to answer because one of the first rules for marketing on Reddit — one of the first rules for marketing on any social media site, really — is that you have to be genuinely engaged and committed to the communities you’re part of.

But there’s good news. You can gain so much from the awesome people at Reddit whether or not you have the time to fully dive in. Yes, there are marketing tactics to drive meaningful traffic. But there are also a handful of other ways to benefit by learning from the community, engaging with the community, and building a thoughtful Reddit strategy.

We’ll talk about it all in this post. Come along!

About Reddit Marketing

Reddit is one of the most vibrant communities on the Internet. And one of the largest, with over 300 million active users.

To put that in perspective, that’s more than …

Yet when you hear about strategies for marketing to social networks, you rarely hear about Reddit.

This isn’t to disparage all the great guides that people have written about Reddit marketing. They’re really good! These guides have some great tips in them, which we’ll do our best to condense into the most actionable takeaways that you can put to good use today.

So why does Reddit fly under-the-radar when it comes to social media marketing options?

Well, one of the key things to note about Reddit is that it’s not exactly welcoming to organic, native promotion. Reddit wants authentic contributions — which of course makes sense. That’s how the best social networks thrive!

This ethos is really well-captured in this phrase from Reddit’s community guidelines:

It’s perfectly fine to be a redditor with a website, it’s not okay to be a website with a reddit account.

Hmm, well, all of us brands and businesses are definitely websites. What are we to do?

One great thing about Reddit is that, while its guidelines are protective, they’re not meant to be exclusionary. There are ways for marketers to make use of Reddit in many ways, whether you’re interested in becoming a redditor or not, and whether you’re looking for organic or paid. Even if you don’t have time for full-scale Reddit marketing, there are ways you can gain from the Reddit community.

Reddit Marketing Strategies

1. use reddit as a customer research tool to find the latest trends.

We believe this strategy can work for all marketers — whether you’re a redditor or not, and even if you only have small pockets of time to commit.

The great thing about this tip is that it doesn’t require you to devote yourself to becoming a seasoned Reddit contributor. Anyone can use Reddit for research, right now. It only takes a few minutes, and there’s a ton to gain for your marketing.

The premise is simple:

You can gain marketing insight by using Reddit as a research tool to see what people are talking about and what’s trending right now.

Step one: Find the subreddits that are relevant to your brand or business.

This will come in handy for the Reddit strategies we mention later on, too.

There are a couple different ways to search for subreddits. You can go straight to Reddit and search for the topics that you’re interested in. The search results will show you a list of suggested communities to join as well as a list of the most popular content related to your search term.

Another way to find subreddits is on a subreddit itself. The subreddit “find-a-reddit” is a place for people to ask questions about certain topics and then the community responds with ideas of subreddits to join.

Also, there are some great third-party options for subreddit searches. too.

One of the best is Redditlist which aggregates the most popular subreddits and lets you search for keywords. Also, Redditlist gives you some neat data on the subreddits, like how many subscribers it has and how fast it’s growing.

Generally, the larger the subreddit, the faster you’ll be able to gain research insights. And of course, when you get into advertising potential, the larger the subreddit, the larger the audience.

O nce you’ve found your “people” on Reddit, the next steps for researching are totally up to you.

You can go the super manual way and just navigate to each of the subreddits directly and browse them. If you go this route, I’d recommend setting up a regular reminder to visit things daily or weekly, depending on the volume of the subreddit.

And another way that works really well if you’re doing research or content at scale is to plug your subreddits into a content aggregator like Feedly . We do this for social media content on our Buffer feeds. This will pull in all of the subreddit threads directly into Feedly where you can browse them cleanly all at once. We’ve gained a lot of insights into social media trends by following Reddit conversations over the past months.

The one thing missing from the Feedly approach is going to be the upvotes and rankings for content. You won’t see this in Feedly. So what you can do instead is sort the content using Feedly’s popularity option , which scores posts according to their popularity on Feedly and other platforms.

Then just like that, you’ve built your research engine. You can use it for things like:

• Hearing what questions people are asking
• Noticing what topics are getting the most attention
• Keeping an eye on upcoming trends and competitor products, and
• Catching news stories you might have otherwise missed

While we’re on the topic of research, let’s go to our Reddit strategy number two, which you can also put to use whether you’re a redditor or not.

2. Use Reddit to get ideas on how to write catchy headlines

One factor into why content does well on Reddit — other than the quality of the content itself — is how something is framed or worded in the title. Redditors make great use of this space to show off what their post is about. Marketers can learn a lot from this!

You can observe the copywriting on Reddit to see what kind of styles are resonating with people and getting upvoted. Anything at the top of your chosen subreddits will be good to see. You can also go to the Reddit homepage or the subreddit “all” and check out the most popular posts across all of Reddit.

Then you can use these writing insights to feed back into your blog post headlines and email subject lines, just like that!

3. Connect with people on Reddit who want to engage with your brand

Though Reddit might not want marketers in their midst, the topics do occasionally shift to products … maybe even your product. A good social media practice is to be present with your customers and audience wherever they are, which means lending a listening ear to Reddit.

You can do this with a manual search, keeping tabs on any brand mentions that happen to come in. You can also look into some social support tools that have this functionality built in.

When you’re choosing to respond, be sure you understand the context of the conversation you’re jumping into, then feel free to jump in and be helpful. There’s a fear with marketing on Reddit that the backlash for bad marketing can be swift and severe. But If you approach your conversations with authenticity, then you should be in good shape.

4. Get more traffic from Reddit (the right way)

W hen people talk about Reddit marketing, they’re often thinking of ways to get traffic from Reddit to their website. If you’re interested in using Reddit for referral traffic, then let’s start with some of the advice we mentioned earlier …

First and foremost, you must be an authentic contributor to the Reddit community.

There’s no way around this. If you want to drive organic traffic from Reddit, then you can’t just show up and promote your stuff. You have to genuinely take part in the community.

The only other shortcut to Reddit traffic is through advertising, which we’ll get to in a minute. But for organic referral traffic from Reddit, it all starts with you getting involved.

And once you’re involved, here are the next steps to follow.

1. Find your ideal subreddits.

Again, you can do this by searching Reddit or by using a tool like Redditlist.

2. Understand the Reddit demographics

On the macro scale, Reddit’s primary demographic is males between the ages of 25 and 44.  The overwhelming majority of users come from the U.S., in particular San Francisco and Seattle.

But that’s by far not the only crowd that’s on there.

Especially with Reddit’s subreddit system, you can find huge pockets of engaged communities that are specific to your niche.

So when it comes to your Reddit traffic strategy, you can take a couple of different swings:

• You can swing for the fences and aim to reach the front page of Reddit, where everyone can see your content.
• Or, you can target specific niches on subreddits. These will have lower reach than the 330 million users we talked about earlier, but they do have significant sizes: Many subreddits boast 100,000 and more users.

Here are a couple more things to keep in mind if you’re looking to get traffic from Reddit.

5. Earn karma points by giving value to the community

Karma points function as a scorecard for Reddit users and are earned every time you share links and comments. These links and comments can be upvoted or downvoted, which corresponds to the rising and falling of your karma.

To be successful on Reddit, you need to build up your karma points. At least a few hundred points are needed to show that you’re serious about taking part in the communities. Some subreddits even require a minimum amount of karma before you can post.

Karma points don’t necessarily affect the virality of your content, but they are a good signal to your fellow redditors of whether you’re on Reddit to genuinely be involved or whether you’re just there to self-promote. When you’re building up karma points, there are a couple of workflows that can help …

• Get involved in popular subreddits like today-I-learned and Ask-Reddit . These are some easy, breezy places to get started with commenting.
• And when you’re link sharing, you can build Reddit into your usual content workflow and share to Reddit anytime you would share to Twitter and Facebook, too.

Ok, now when it comes time to post your content to Reddit, here are some ways to make sure it gets as much traction as possible.

6. Reverse-engineer the popular headlines of your subreddit

Like many things on social, one of the key aspects will be the title. The same goes for Reddit threads.

Look at the structure of how these titles are created. Notice what gets upvoted and what doesn’t. Then you can take these insights and put them back into the title that you write.

On the Grow and Convert blog, they talk about a couple of headline formulas that work really well on Reddit.

The first is …

Need [x]? Here’s [y]

For example, you could say: Tensed shoulders? Try these few stretches (very work-friendly!)

And the second headline formula is …

[specific time before] I [did something]. I will now [explain to you/share even more detail/teach you how/explain what happened].

And an example of this is: 3 months ago I posted the exact process on how I made $150,000 selling T-shirts on Amazon. I will now explain the exact steps you can take to earn your first $1,000,000 selling on Amazon via the Shopify integration with ZERO inventory.

The Foundation blog also did a study on Reddit titles, and they found some general rules to follow.

• Posts with titles between 60 and 80 characters got the most upvotes .
• Posts with titles that were longer than 120 characters or shorter than 20 characters fared the worst.

And their overall advice probably sounds familiar: The best approach to ensure that you’re writing a title is to review the top 15-20 posts within a subreddit.

The research really pays off!

Additionally, it’s worthwhile to pay attention to some of the trends on Reddit. For instance, the most frequently used phrase in titles is “if you have …” which is very similar to the “need this? try this” formula that we mentioned a moment ago.

And another favorite topic of redditors is year-end lists or year-ahead posts. Some of the most common numbers in titles are years like 2018 and 2019.

So if you authentically engage with the community and write good content with titles that resonate, then you stand a great chance of succeeding on Reddit. One last tip we’ll mention is about promoting your content on Reddit … in addition to posting on your chosen subreddit, you can also

7. Cross-post to other subreddits to make sure it’s seen by as many people as possible.

When you do this, you can click the “cross post” button at the bottom of your original thread to cross-post it to any other subreddit. One thing to note: You’ll want to use this strategy wisely and not be overly promotional with every post you share.

8. Use Reddit paid ads to place your content

Reddit advertising is in its early stages compared to other social sites, so there’s still room here to get good returns.

Reddit advertising works on a cost-per-click basis. You can optimize your campaigns for reach, video views, traffic, and conversions. The video views are especially great because videos are one of the most engaging types of content on Reddit.

For targeting, you can choose to show your ad to all of Reddit or you can focus on certain subreddits.

There’s a neat case study on how the search engine DuckDuckGo found really stellar success with Reddit advertising .

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PowerPoint Makeovers: The Reddit Pitch Deck

Can you remember a time when there was no Reddit? It’s hard to imagine in 2021… it would have been hard to imagine in 2011. When Reddit hit the scene as the front page of the internet in 2005, who could have known it would grow to become a zeitgeist of our time?

Founded by college buddies Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, Reddit was part of the now-legendary Y-Combinator program’s first class of startups. The pair of University of Virginia students envisioned an online bulletin board where users could post videos, text and links to other websites… sound familiar?

Thanks to that all-important Y Combinator seed funding, Reddit launched with a blast and within just about a year, the growing website was purchased by Conde Nast , publisher of major brands such as Vogue, GQ and Wired. Growth steadily continued, and Reddit reached 1 billion page views per month by early 2011, which it doubled by the next year. From there, the popularity only continued to increase exponentially.

Of course, no company rides the wave of incredible growth without funding, and Reddit – operating independently from Conde Nast since 2011 – was no exception. In 2014, Reddit raised a pivotal $50 million in funding thanks to a round led by former Y Combinator president Sam Altman. Other key players in the funding round , however, included names such as Jared Leto, Joshua Kushner and Snoop Dogg.

More than 52 million Redditors now have access to over 100,000 communities at their fingertips, including popular topics ranging from “gadgets” and “television” to the practical “build a PC” and “personal finance.”  In August 2021, Reddit was valued at $9.6 billion . To get there, however, Reddit’s founders started with a pitch.

We took a look at the pitch deck Reddit used for that all-important 2014 funding round, and we have to say it reminds us a lot of the company itself: quirky, fun and memorable. You can’t argue that kittens and unicorns make a strong impression… but was it the most professional impression? If you’re Reddit, you can probably get away with extra quirkiness, but not every company is looking to attract investors like Snoop Dogg.

So, we decided to redesign the pitch deck and give it the Beautiful.ai treatment. We think our version is just as fun, but our design is more cohesive, and it includes better branding. We let our AI take care of the structure, making sure every slide was constructed using professional-level principles of good design any time content is added. 

What do you think? Do you like our PowerPoint makeover ? Is our redesigned Reddit pitch deck , “beautiful?” 

It’s easy to spend hours tweaking every design detail in a traditional PowerPoint presentation. Are the margins all the same? Are elements consistent? Is the color scheme cohesive? Instead, save tons of time using Beautiful.ai by preselecting a custom theme and automatically applying style options like typography and color palettes to each slide.

We set the theme of our Reddit pitch deck makeover by selecting the brand’s colors, and we polished off our deck by adding the company’s logo to the footer of every slide. To customize our pitch deck template , just change the colors and logo to match your own.

Slide 1: Reddit Title

Don’t get us wrong. Reddit’s original 2014 pitch deck opened with an eye-catching and memorable image of a kitten riding a unicorn. How can you top that? We gave the title slide a more professional and branded twist with our Headline slide template , complete with the company logo pulled from our vast, searchable library of photos, icons and logos.

Slides 2-4: Reddit by the Numbers

Reddit’s 2014 pitch deck featured a few slides that highlighted Reddit’s achievements to date. While we admire a line chart superimposed over a curious kitty cat staring into space, we decided to stick with a more simple, branded approach. We selected our Line Chart Smart Slide template , and simply input the same data from Reddit’s original graph. Voila! Artificial intelligence transformed the figures into a vivid infographic in the pre-set color scheme. We brought the slide to life by animating it with just a couple of clicks.

Reddit’s pitch deck featured other slides featuring a hodgepodge of statistics, such as the company’s total monthly visitors and pageviews. Plenty of solid information, but the slides were… busy. We took a less cluttered and more organized approach and chose two of the facts to feature on their own Headline slide templates . The simple presentation will grab attention and create emphasis. Once you have your audience’s attention, you can verbally highlight the other statistics.

Slide 5: AdAge Quote

We love a good quote. Reddit’s 2014 pitch deck featured a brag-worthy statement from AdAge , marveling that the website had become, “mainstream media.” The quote was obviously important to Reddit – and effective – so we kept it in our redesigned slide deck using our Quotes Smart Slide template . Our custom color palette and typography were automatically applied to the slide, and we added a free stock photo from our image library for some extra pizzazz.

Slides 6-7: Engagement

We wanted to include some more newsworthy facts from Reddit’s pitch deck, but we decided to present them in a more engaging and organized format. We chose our Arrow Bars Smart Slide template to present five facts, and we animated the infographic to keep our audience engaged.

We added additional Reddit statistics to our Team Members Smart Slide template . Normally used to introduce people, the format was perfect for describing details of three popular subreddits.

Slide 8-9: Ad Opportunities

The next slides in Reddit’s 2014 pitch deck were more cluttered examples. We presented the company’s all-important advertising opportunities using our Headline slide template : short, sweet and to the point. We easily sourced an engaging stock photo from our free image library, and, of course, the colors automatically adjusted to match Reddit’s brand. We further recounted Reddit’s stated engagement opportunities for brands using our Photo Grid Smart Slide templates .

Slide 11: Relevant, Reliable, Real

Reddit closed its 2014 pitch deck with a powerful statement . Reddit wanted potential investors to know it was relevant, reliable and real. While we compliment the company again on its creative use of kittens, we chose to highlight the statement using our Headline slide template along with a colorful community of Redditors. The slide was a breeze to create thanks to our preselected theme.

Slide 12: Contact Us

Any good pitch is going to leave potential investors with the company’s contact details, and we had just the slide template to do the job. We recreated Reddit’s final slide using our Contact Us Smart Slide template . The Beautiful.ai template provides fields to input information like name, address, phone number and email address, then our AI perfectly positions the information using the principles of great design . 

So, what did you think of our PowerPoint makeover ? Did we improve upon the Reddit pitch deck, or did you miss the kittens? Either way, was our design, “beautiful?”

Samantha Pratt Lile

Samantha is an independent journalist, editor, blogger and content manager. Examples of her published work can be found at sites including the Huffington Post, Thrive Global, and Buzzfeed.

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11 Tips to Make an Effective Research Presentation

Home » Presenting Your Research » 11 Tips to Make an Effective Research Presentation

The purpose of a presentation is to tell your audience a story. To achieve this goal, the person giving the presentation must place themselves in the shoes of their listeners and determine what they need to know to understand the story. Telling a great story is more important than any embellishments or technology you use to do it. Below are 11 tips for giving an effective research presentation.

1. Decide what your most important messages are, tailored to your specific audience.

Research can be messy, and so can the results of research. Your audience does not usually need to know every tiny detail about your work or results. Try to narrow down your findings to two or three of the most important takeaways that would resonate with the people in attendance. These takeaways are the messages of your presentation.

2. Start at the beginning and keep it simple.

Now that you have your messages, think about how you got to that point. What question did you ask that led you to do this research, and why did you ask it? Tell your audience this information, just enough of it for them to understand why the story is important and why you’re telling it. Use language that is tailored to the level of understanding of your audience.

3. Tell them how you addressed your question.

This part of any presentation usually involves the greatest risk of being dull. Tell your audience how you address your question, but don’t overwhelm them with detail they don’t need. Tell them what they need to know to get a basic idea of how you got your results.

4. Tell them your most important findings.

Again, do not overwhelm your listeners with noisy data or too much information. Give them a streamlined version of your results, using as your guide what you might include in an abstract of the work.

5.  Give them the payoff—your main messages.

Link your results to the main or most important conclusions from your work. Make sure that the results you talk about directly connect with these final messages.

6. Hint at where you’re going next.

If appropriate, you can also tell your audience the new questions that your findings open up, leaving them a little intrigued about where things will go next.

7. Do not go over your time.

No one wants to listen to anyone talk longer than they are supposed to talk. If you’ve been given a 10-minute limit for your presentation, do not take more than 10 minutes. Your best bet is to practice it beforehand, timing yourself, to make sure that you have the right pace to stay within limits. Don’t make it too short, either, although that is almost never a problem.

8. Think about questions people might ask.

If a question-and-answer session is to follow your presentation, go through your talk and put yourself again in your audience’s shoes. What questions would you have if you were listening to this research presentation? Try to anticipate what people might ask and how you’ll answer. If you have friends or family you can use for practice, encourage them to ask questions so you can gain experience answering them.

9. Do not overwhelm with too much text, busy images, tables, or charts.

Having too much text on a slide or busy, illegible images is a major fault of many academic research presentations. Consider the people in your audience and what they’ll be able to see from where they sit. Keep text limited and plain and figures simple and clear. Explain each image that you show, including axis labels and their meaning, and don’t just assume your audience will understand with a quick glance. Also, you do not need to use the tricks that some digital software allows for slides to fade in or out or advance automatically. In fact, you should avoid the latter entirely.

10. Do not read text word for word.

If you are using some form of presentation that involves slides or words on a screen, do not read these words verbatim. Your best approach is to use short phrases in the slides and then add your own expansion as you talk. That way, your audience sees an important, brief phrase and hears you add context around it. Listening to someone read a slide packed with text while reading along with them is mind numbing.

11. Engage with your audience.

If you are comfortable, you can always present your research in a way that invites audience engagement, asking questions as you go that anticipate a slide you are about to show, a result you are about to introduce, or a conclusion you will present.

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Essential Google Slides Tips

Google Slides is cloud-based presentation software that has gained a lot of popularity among business professionals. However, earlier, it was being used by millions of people worldwide, mainly for academic purposes.

Google Slides allows us to make compelling presentations quickly and easily right from our browser or application. You can effortlessly draft your next presentation using  Google Slide Templates without having to install third-party programs. It can also assist you in collaborating with your teammates and collaborating on a PowerPoint presentation.

Despite the fact that a large number of employees have signed up to Google Slides, few appear to be taking advantage of its extensive feature set. Continue reading to know about some of the tips and tactics that even the most devoted users are unaware of. Then, look into the strategies below to overcome mediocrity and become great at using Google Slides, and if you fell like you need a refresher on Google Slides features, check our guide .

1. Use the Master Slides Tool for modifications:

If you don’t have enough spare time, you should try to use the master slides tool to change a group of slides at once rather than doing them individually. This tool is particularly useful if you want to change your entire PowerPoint presentation to reflect a specific theme or style, as it saves you the time and effort of altering each slide separately.

2. Merge Other Formats together:

It’s not necessary that all of your colleagues would switch to Google Slides because you are making use of it. So no worries, if you’re using PowerPoint to create a business presentation with someone else. Fortunately, you can read and edit your PowerPoint documents in Google Slides very easily without having to convert them to a Google file. To get started with it, all you need to do is open Google Slides in your Chrome browser and install the Chrome extension of “Office Editing” for Sheets , Docs , and Slides.

3. Take advantage of image masking:

You can modify the form of an attached image in Google Slides as it provides a variety of image masking options that can be utilized very easily. This option is especially very beneficial if boxy, sharp photos don’t compliment your presentation’s entire theme.

4. Add a drop shadow to the text:

The aesthetics are important if you want your presentation to stand out among others. To make this happen, you can consider inserting a drop shadow. This is one approach to bring attention to important text. By doing so, a tiny shadow is created, duplicating the content. You have the full authority to adjust the color of the text or reduce the opacity of an image as per your preference. Once you are done modifying, you can drop it right onto the original one. Content headers, in particular, benefit greatly from this.

5. Bookmark Key Text:

Having a Large presentation would necessitate a lot of scrolling to locate in particular exactly what you are searching for. So don’t squander all of that time. Rather, it would be great if you utilized the program’s bookmarking feature in your presentation. With the help of it you can quickly zoom to different spots or passages within your PowerPoint presentation.

6. Undo changes:

No issues if you have made any recent big modifications but unfortunately, that do not get along with your vibe, you are always free to go back to a prior version. Google Slides keeps a comprehensive revision history that allows you to examine all past document changes and enables you to go back to the original if in need. Moreover, it also keeps a record of who has made the changes so that you can view what changes are made and by whom. 

7. Do a dictation for each slide:

Do you get tired of inputting text boxes repeatedly? If yes, then Google Slides is your way to go since it has a “Voice Typing” feature that can be used to dictate the text into new presentation slides. In addition, the functionality even recognizes punctuation commands, ensuring that each slide is exactly as you want it to be. It is giving you the best quality work.  

8. Incorporate Into Your Website:

You can very easily integrate your company presentation onto your web page if you think your target audience would be interested. However, remember that each website’s method is a little different. You would need to research before you attempt to do it. In case you are using WordPress, you can find thorough instructions for embedding your Google Slides presentation in here .

9. Project Using Chromecast or AirPlay:

Going fully wireless to give a presentation will turn heads and will make your life much easier. However, you must ensure that you know how to project directly through your mobile onto a compatible television if you have access to your Google Drive. Moreover, you should also be able to use Chromecast to project your Google Slides presentation if you have an Android smartphone. This will give your audience a good impression of you making your grounds good.

10. Establish a Shared Folder:

Last but not the least, you can easily upload company stock pictures to your Google Drive if you have to share your piece of information with multiple team members. Shared access would help to prepare your Google Slides presentations well on behalf of your organization. All you need to do is, create a new folder on Google Drive and share it with your colleagues if you want to have access to the photographs. Your entire staff can then quickly drag and drop company logos and stock photos into presentations without bothering anyone.

Conclusion:

We hope that this article might have added to your knowledge. These are just a few pointers that can get you started easily. However, Google Slides offers dozens of other unique features that can help you leverage your presentation. So research a little and give it a try yourself; you’ll see the difference.

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