Page 110 - Today’s Business Communication; A How-to Guide for the Modern Professional

WhY MUST I gIvE A MEMORABLE PRESENTATION? 99

Ten Great Ideas for Fantastic Presentations

1. Start with an outline.
• Write an outline of what you want to cover.
• Develop three to five major points you want your audience
to remember.
• Remember that less is more. So, don’t tell the audience too much.
• Don’t bore the audience.
• Give your presentation a strong beginning, middle, and end.
• Build slides from your outline.
• Avoid Microsoft templates. People have seen them to the point
of boredom. Same goes for Apple/Macintosh. (Note: This rule
may be violated if you work for an organization that requires all
presentations to follow a common format or template.)
2. Tell them one thing at a time.
• Cover only one main idea per slide.
• Limit sub points to three and show them as bullets.
• Use no animation to introduce the bullets or the topics.
• Introduce all bullets at the same time, unless you are very
skillful at using a remote, wireless mouse device for “click-
ing” through the bullets.
3. Display no paragraphs.
• Remember a picture is worth a thousand words.
• Remember paragraphs can get you arrested for murder:
murder by PowerPoint.
• Your slides are the illustrations for your presentation, not the
presentation itself.
4. Design for design’s sake is a mistake.
• Remember that simplicity is not boring.
• Use dark type on light backgrounds or white type on dark
backgrounds.
• Clip art, animated fades, swipes, flashing text, and other
gimmicks are annoying.
• Use sans-serif fonts such as Arial, Helvetica, or Calibri for
headlines.