Finally look professional using Powerpoint, Slides and Keynote.

Finally look professional using Powerpoint, Slides and Keynote:

Do you want to look professional using PowerPoint when you are giving your next presentation? Here are the tips every public speaker must know!

• Place your computer screen in front of you, maybe next to the projector. This will enable you to look at the next point on the computer screen while facing your audience.

• Buy a wireless presenter that will allow you to scroll to the next slide when you are a distance away from the computer. No more excuses for walking in front of the projector light.

• To get the audience’s attention, black out the screen by either pressing the letter “B” on the keyboard or the “blackout button” on the wireless presenter. This is especially helpful when it comes to sales.

• Stick with a background theme. If you are unsure of what colour to use, keep the background white.

• Avoid light colours such as pink, yellow, orange, etc., that strain your audience’s eyes. Rather use strong colours such as blue, black and dark red.

• Use the 5×5 rule. No more than 5 words in a line and no more than 5 bullet points on a slide. Too much information will compel your audience to
  read ahead and they will not listen to what you have to say.

• A picture is worth a thousand words. Include pictures and give your own interpretation to drive your point home. Pictures stimulate the brain and improve audience interest.

• Use a maximum of two fonts. One for headers and another for bullet points. Too many fonts make the slides look messy. Keep the fonts easy to read i.e. Arial and Lucida Sans.

• Avoid using Italics and underlining to emphasise words. Standardise your presentation by using bold to accentuate words.

• If you are going to include animation in your slides, keep it professional and to a minimum. Animation can quickly reduce your credibility. You need to bear in mind that it takes time to compile a PowerPoint presentation. By spending all your time designing fancy slides you will neglect your speech preparation. Tip: write your speech and make all necessary adjustments before you plan your slides. Extract only keywords from your speech and put those into bullet points.

• Do not forget to disable your screen saver. You don’t want your personal photos to fly across the screen while you are talking. 

• Test your PowerPoint slides. A company invited me to speak at one of their team leader’s meetings. They informed me that there was a projector and laptop already set up. I could plug in my memory stick with my PowerPoint presentation. I did not take my laptop with me and when I plugged in my memory stick, the slides looked different to what I had designed. The reason was that the company’s laptop was running an older version of PowerPoint and Windows than what I had designed my PowerPoint slides on. If you do not want this to happen to you we suggest you take your laptop along for a backup or send the coordinator the PowerPoint slides in advance and ask them to test the slides.