Seven Major Mistakes to Avoid in Your Next Slide Presentation
Savvy Communication Matters More Today than Ever
Around the world today, the stakes have never been higher for business, technical, scientific, social, philanthropic, and academic endeavors. We’re all looking for better ways to inform our audiences and inspire them to act!
That’s why today’s theme continues the thread of an earlier newsletter edition on how to design powerful presentations that communicate in a compelling manner.
Whenever we are planning to deliver a presentation in front of a live audience, we might choose to create a slide show to amplify our message. One of the tools most commonly used for this purpose is Microsoft® PowerPoint®. Yet as much as we struggle to finesse our presentations, they don’t always produce the desired effects. Our audiences may not “get” our important points, or they might not do what we intend as a result, such as:
- Accept our proposals
- Buy our products or services
- Follow our recommendations
- Approve funding for our projects
- Give us a good academic grade
- Vote in favor of our candidate
What we need is a workable and repeatable formula for creating outstanding presentations that can capture attention, impart ideas, and spark the audience actions we seek.
For these reasons, I hope you enjoy today’s features, including “Seven Major Mistakes to Avoid in Your Next Electronic Slide Presentation.” And please join the conversation by leaving your comments below!
May 29th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Wonderful article, Adele, your seven points are right on target!
I’ve been reading Presentation Zen and I love it. Now I look at my presentations of a year ago and wonder, “what was I thinking?”
Looking forward to seeing your presentation in June!
May 29th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Hello, Bissy! Thank you so kindly, and I’m very glad these points seemed relevant. As an admirer of your presentations, I’d like to acknowledge the challenge we face when our subject matter focuses on words and the use of language. In those special cases (which I’ve dealt with before, too), just in terms of slide composition, it’s difficult to avoid presenting text on each slide. There are a few tricks for working with text to have it appear more pictorial. But I think you’ve done an outstanding job with this tricky task. Thanks again, and see you soon!
Adele