12 Most Pleasant Ways To Avoid Death By PowerPoint

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It is estimated that there are 350 PowerPoint presentations every second. Think back to the last time you viewed a PowerPoint — was it engaging or did you feel as if banging your head against the wall would be more preferable than enduring the rest of the presentation? As a presenter, there are many ways to spice up your PowerPoint presentation to help your audience avoid death by PowerPoint
Getting people to show up to the presentation can be the biggest challenge. The best way to do this is to form a reputation for being a dynamic presenter. If you don’t have that reputation, the best way to get it is to incorporate these 12 tips!

1. Engaging title and description

If you are not the keynote speaker you will likely have to persuade people at the conference to attend your presentation. The easiest way to do this, aside from begging and leveraging personal favors, is to have an engaging and attention-grabbing title and description in the program.

2. Get personal

Personal stories are interesting and show how your topic is relevant to you and to people in your field. Consider sharing personal experiences and stories during your presentation.

3. Connect with social media

Live tweet during your presentation and schedule it ahead of time with HootSuite. Include your Twitter handle and a hashtag on the first and last slide. Inject three tweetable moments into your presentation and make sharing easy for the audience.

4. Leverage photos

Images are interesting and can say more than a few bullet points on a page. Get creative — consider including comics, memes, wuzzles or photos you took yourself.

5. Poll the audience in real time

Use SMS Poll to ask your audience any multiple-choice questions in real time via text message. You set up the question and answer choices in advance. Then you can add it to any slide in your PowerPoint. Note: you will need internet during the presentation for this to work.

6. Animations and transitions

This one is a toss up — different people have a different take on this. Keep your audience in mind when making this choice. If you include these do not use too many of them. Stay classy.

7. Get specific

If you are directing your audience online don’t just reference a website, show them a screenshot so they know where to go.

8. 10 tips in 10 minutes

Grab the audience’s attention by doing a 10 tips in 10 minutes section. Have an audience member set a timer. This is a great way to get attention by doing something out of the ordinary.

9. Connect your vision to figures of prominence

A good way to do this is through quotes. Consider making a Pinterest-like photo via PicMonkey.

10. Get the audience involved

Breakout into small discussion groups, provide handouts or include fill-in-the-blank PowerPoint
slides.

11. Inject some humor into the presentation

Humor gets people interested. Be careful — humor is normally at the expense of a group or individual. Consider making fun of neutral topics such as yourself, the weather or even think about poking fun at the typical cookie-cutter PowerPoints.

12. Have some give away items related to the topic

Everyone likes leaving a presentation with free swag. Don’t worry — everyone who attends does not need a prize. Just bring a few and give them away! If you can get prizes related to your topic then you get bonus points.
What is the most interesting thing you have seen someone do while giving a PowerPoint presentation? What else should be added to this list?

Featured image courtesy of stock_xchng.

Photo illustration work: Paul Biedermann, re:DESIGN