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Have you ever attended a presentation where a set of PowerPoint slides was used that had such a small font that you could not read it? Did the presenter get lost in the clutter and end up reading the slides to the audience? I think we have all had that experience. The real question is whether or not your attention was focused or did you miss out on what may have been very valuable information because the slides were difficult to see and the speaker became confused by his own slides. There are simple rules that will enable anyone to be an effective creator of simple and powerful PowerPoint slides.

The art of creating a powerful PowerPoint presentations that reach your audience and communicate the information that you want to is a simple process. The questions that need to be addressed are how long is the presentation and what is the age of the target audience. It is assumed that the content of your presentation is of interest and that there is sufficient content to fill your time allocation. An easy way to remember the basic guideline is with the numbers 10 – 20 – 30.

The ten (10) is for the number of PowerPoint slides that are to be used in a twenty (20) minute presentation. the thirty (30) is the font size that is visible to most audiences without straining. When in doubt use a font size that is at least half of the age of your target audience. If you are going to speak at a rest home or some civic organizations it is sometimes best to go to a forty (40) point font.

For different times simply scale the 10 – 20 – 30 rule to accommodate your allocated time slot. For instance 15 – 30 – 30 works for a half our presentation and 25 – 50 – 30 is perfect for a 50 minute presentation. Be sure and choose a background that is pleasing to the eye and use bullet points that keep you on task during your presentation.

Many speaker and presenters find it a challenge to keep their audience riveted and absorbed in their presentations and talks. They worry about being able to maintain the right level of entertainment and information or building a rapport with their listeners. Whether you’re an online or off-line speaker, if you need to have tools and techniques to help break up your talk and retain audience attention, this article will provide you with quick and easy tips and techniques to leave them asking for more.

Most people have a concentration span of about 20 minutes before their mind begins to wander. The easiest and one of the most effective ways to break up your talk is to involve your audience. Interactive questioning, poll taking with a show of hands, getting them to repeat words or phrases or respond as a group, are great ways to draw in your listeners in an off-line setting.

If speaking in an online event such as a teleseminar or webinar, ask them to answer a poll or write a comment on the webinar platform or connect via a social media platform such as Facebook or Twitter and comment there.

You need to judge how often and to what degree you want to bring in the audience into the presentation – too many interruptions and you’ll break the flow of your talk or overrun your time. For the same reason, keep questions from the floor to the end as part of your usual Q&A slot – keep control of the interaction so that it enhances not detracts from the points you want to make.

Balance and judgement are also needed if you want to use props or comedy to engage with your audience. Inappropriate jokes or over-elaborate, vulgar or overly complex props are clearly out of the question. But gentle humour can build a rapport with your audience while suitable visual aids can highlight a point or concept to help them reach a better understanding more quickly.

If your audience can’t relate to what you’re saying, you’ll soon lose their support and interest. A key way to build a bond and keep your audience listening is to be relevant and genuine. People don’t want to be talked at – they want to feel that you’re sharing your knowledge as part of a common experience. Hearing about how you have dealt with your mistakes or difficulties, how you’ve overcome challenge and adversity is more interesting and relevant to them than hearing of unqualified success.

Keep this sense of sharing and intimacy through your body language and voice. Keep eye contact with people from all parts of the room; smile frequently which will again strengthen bonds and help your body to unwind. Make sure your body language is open and expressive – people respond to confidence, authority and someone who is relaxed and comfortable. For virtual events, show this warmth through your voice. Remember that your smile can be “heard” so keep smiling as you would if were onstage.

If the facilities are available, ask for a remote slide control so that you’re not tied to the computer to move along your PowerPoint slides. If they don’t have one, then break the routine by occasionally walking away from the computer to talk through a slide and then walking back to move the slide along. If the room size allows, you could move along the aisle space when you’re interacting with your audience, and then return to the stage area when you resume your talk.

Avoid Death-By-PowerPoint presentations. Don’t show over-wordy slides for every point you make in your speech. The audience should be listening to you, not reading long paragraphs on screen. Use the slides to emphasise and highlight only salient points and provide strong visual images that reinforce or explain a point quickly. New versions of PowerPoint allow you to easily embed videos and audio media – again judicious use can create a powerful impact for both online and offline events.

A speaker who clearly understands their topic and is passionate and enthused about it, is someone that an audience will respect and warm to. If they can see your obvious enthusiasm to share and connect with them, they will be only too eager to respond in kind. By offering content that is relevant, informative, addresses their issues and concerns, and which is tailored to their level, you’ll keep your audience interested in what you have to say.

We’ve all sat through those presentations where someone bored us to death with slide after slide of text, dated images or graphs crammed with information.

That’s why the phrase “Death by PowerPoint” was invented.

Many organisations have responded to this by banning the use of PowerPoint in any presentations. In some cases, they allow other programmes, such as Prezi, but some ban the use of visuals altogether.

Are they right to do this?

I can certainly sympathise. Most speakers I see use PowerPoint very badly. Their main crimes are:

• using slides as a crutch for themselves, in effect writing out their presentation on PowerPoint and using it as their notes
• writing PowerPoint slides which they intend to print off as handouts
• hiding behind the slides so the presentation becomes little more than a voiceover
• using the basic templates in PowerPoint to produce endless bullet point lists or repetitive slides with a heading and a tiny picture

This may be partly because of lack of time, or lack of expertise or just plain laziness.

Whatever the reason, the result is that thousands of people have to endure dreadful presentations and the whole dreary PowerPoint experience continues.

So I can see why some places might be tempted to just ban the whole thing. And I would be happy if one result of this was to force speakers to concentrate on keeping their audience’s attention by having great content and developing their delivery skills.

I’m all for developing a much higher standard of oratory amongst presenters!

But there are some problems with banning slides altogether.

Powerful visual aids can play a huge part in getting across key points with impact and helping an audience to listen, learn and remember.

Used well, visuals can:

• grab, and keep, attention
• explain a point more clearly than words
• form a strong emotional connection between the audience and the subject matter
• leave a lasting impression which fixes the point in the audience’s long term memory
• introduce humour in a relevant and appropriate way

Of course, the key point is that they do have to be used well. The way most slides are used, they do none of these things.

But that’s not the fault of the medium itself – it’s not really PowerPoint’s fault, it’s the fault of the speakers who use it.

And I have to say, it’s not just PowerPoint, I’ve seen people using other packages just as badly.

So perhaps banning PowerPoint isn’t the answer. Because banning visual aids cuts off what could be a massive asset for a presenter and a massive benefit for the audience.

The answer is to give people the training they need to use PowerPoint the way it should be used – so presenters can speak with more impact and audiences can be spared the “death by a thousand slides” which they have to endure at the moment.