Five PowerPoint Tips For You

PowerPoint is a wonderful that presenters can use to make their presentations more effective. Below are five tips you can apply when using PowerPoint in your presentation:

1. Make sure that the images you use stand out. They should be relevant which means they support your goal and the message your conveying to your audience. This way, they can easily remember the lesson you’re teaching even long after your presentation is done.
2. Go for simplicity. The more simple the slides, the better. Avoid using complicated graphs and charts as well as long texts.
3. Make sure that your audience knows the meaning of the acronyms and difficult terms you use.
4. Make sure your audience can resonate and relate well with your audience. Don’t just use general photos. If you are talking to a group of teachers, use photos of different schools they know or pictures of the campus where they teach.
5. Use high resolution for your photos.

These are just five PowerPoint tips. There are more where these came from. Please head to this link to find out more! 30 Helpful Tips for Using PowerPoint

 

Wanna Make Interactive Online Lessons? Try PowerPoint Mix!

Microsoft PowerPoint has a new add-on that is still in beta called PowerPoint Mix. It is a tool used to create interactive online lessons and below are the basic processes which are simple to follow:

1. Use PowerPoint Mix for creating slides and recording video and audio.
2. Use PowerPoint Mix for adding quizzes.
3. Use PowerPoint Mix for uploading the final result to the Mix website and for sharing it with anyone (e.g. your students).
4. Use PowerPoint Mix for getting statistics about the quiz scores and who viewed the Mix.

To find out how to do all this, please head to: Discover PowerPoint Mix for interactive online lessons

How to Customize the Ribbon in PowerPoint

In PowerPoint, do you find yourself using the same commands over and over? You can be more efficient in your work if you customize the interface in PowerPoint. So instead of finding commands that you use often and clicking them so many times, you can actually customize not only the Quick Access Toolbar (usually at the top left of your screen) but the entire ribbon as well.

Ellen Finkelstein describes how to do this in her blog post Customize the PowerPoint interface.

In her blog post, she details on how you ca customize the ribbon and use multiple configurations as well.

Head to her blog post now to find out more.

Collaborate Using Office Online

Last week, I’ve shared with you how to collaborate in PowerPoint presentations. This is part II – another way that you can make your collaboration. You can actually post your presentation on Office Online (which was previously called Office Web Apps). Though the online version of PowerPoint is lacking several features present in the desktop version, simple editing can still be done.

How do you use Office Online?

You just have to start your computer by first using the desktop version of PowerPoint and then you go to the online version.

Office Online will let editors do their edits simultaneously. This way, all concerned can work on the presentation all at the same time. You can see all the changes being made which will make presentation collaboration easier.

For more information about this, please head to: 2 ways to collaborate with others on your presentations-Part II

Use Transitions as Animations

Do you want to include animations in your presentations? Perhaps you can try adding cool animations that are easy to do. Then why not try using transitions! You might not thinks of them as animations but they actually are!

What are transitions? Transitions are animations used between slides — which in turn  introduce a new slide. I remember some presentations in the past that used this but most of the time, the presenter only used one or a few kinds of transitions. This time, PowerPoint 2010 and 2013 offer a lot of other advantages when using the new animations they have provided.

To leaen ore about thses transitions and when to use them in your slide, please head to this link: Animate with transitions for cool effects

How to Use a Remote for Your Presentation

Do you know how to start playing a video while using a remote when presenting?

For instance, there’s a video that must be played during your presentation but you want it done after a certain slide is displayed. This will serve as an explanation and a validation of a point on your slide. How do you do this?

Moreover, you have  a remote so you can click it and avoid walking over to your laptop just to play a video. This remote will have you click a ceryain slide but not a particular object on it. How do you do this?

Head to this link to know more about this technique: Start a video with a remote

Now Out: Master Presenter

There’s a new book out in the market called Master Presenter. It’s a collection of articles from presentation experts all over who have contributed to the Presentationxpert newsletter over the years.

Here, you will find a huge wealth of knowledge pertaining to numerous and valuable topics like design, messaging, PowerPoint techniques, persuasion, media,  delivery, and storytelling. If you’re into presentations, you’ll most likely recognize many of the names on the list.

This book is available on:

Kindle version

Paperback version

To know more about Master Presenter, please head to: New book, Master Presenter, collects lessons from the world’s top presentation experts

Sales Presentation Opener Mistakes

Sales presentations usually open the same way but that doesn’t mean it’s being done right. Below are 3 ways presenters usually practice to open their sales presentations which shouldn’t be the case:

1. Social chit-chat – This usually happens before the start of a presentation to build rapport with the participants but this is actually a waste of time.

2. Thanking the prospect – This actually puts you in a submissive position which is not good for your credibility.

3. Talking about your company – This is perhaps the worst mistake. Remember that your presentation is about and for the benefit of your audience.

The list goes on

To understand more about this, please head to: 3 Sales Presentation Openers to Avoid

Why are presentation handouts usually set aside and forgotten?

It has become a habit for most of us that right after attending an inspiring talk or seminar, we tend to promise ourselves to go back to the handouts given and refer to them every now and then. But what happens is, these handouts slowly find their way to our bookshelves and in time forgotten that they ever existed. Why is this so? Well, here are three reasons for this:

1. Information overload. When you’re taking the seminar, you digest the information over time, and it all makes sense. When looking back at the manual without context or story, it’s often difficult to remember what it all means.

2. Text, text, and more text. It’s sometimes difficult to be inspired to read a lot of dense, printed information without meaningful visuals.

3. U-G-L-Y… Ugly. Plain and simple, it’s just not fun to look at something that doesn’t look good.

Now that we know what makes these handouts inevitably forgotten, perhaps we can do something about it to make them more interesting such that the people who attended the seminar will refer to these things every so often.

To find out more about what can be done, please head to this post: 6 Top Tips for Creating Memorable Handouts & Manuals by Steve Cherches

Compare Options Using Balance SmartArt Layout

Have you ever tried comparing 2 options in your presentation? Say, you want to show the advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook or Twitter for your business. What kind of layout do you use? How do you easily show your audience the results of your research for example?

For PowerPoint users, you can try the Balance SmartArt layout. What’s interesting about it is It looks like a scale. What happens is, the side with the more number of items you put get to tilt on its side. This way, even by just looking at it for afar, you already know which option has better and more advantages.

To know more on how to create this SmartArt layout, head to: Compare options with the Balance SmartArt layout