how to make a convincing powerpoint presentation

How to Make a Persuasive Presentation (+ Examples)

See persuasive presentation examples that show you how to make highly engaging, effective, and converting presentations with persuasive writing and design.

Dominika Krukowska

7 minute read

Short answer

How to make a presentation persuasive?

If you want to make a presentation persuasive, you need to:

Start with a strong hook

Show relevance on the get-go, make it clear who you cannot help, demonstrate value early, showcase your authority, assume your audience’s voice, tell a story, use the rule of three, use the power of repetition, personalize your presentation, tell them what to do next, if your presentation doesn’t persuade, you’re just wasting your time.

Crafting a presentation can be a lot of work. And there's nothing more frustrating than feeling like your message just didn't land, despite all the effort you put in.

The hard truth is that even the most beautifully designed presentation slide can fail to persuade.

What is a message good for if it doesn’t hit home and doesn’t drive action?

Unless you’re satisfied with simply getting in front of an audience, you probably want to bring some sort of transformation to people’s lives , no?

Well, your message is not gonna go past the exit door if it’s not persuasive.

Stick with me for a few minutes and you’ll learn how to write and design persuasive presentations.

Let’s look at some real-life examples that delivered great results, and I’ll even throw in a few templates to get you a good start.

Let’s dive in!

What makes a presentation persuasive?

Let's dive straight into the heart of what makes a presentation truly persuasive. Each element plays a crucial role in ensuring your message not only reaches your audience but deeply resonates with them.

11 weopons of of persuasive presentations:

1) Credibility

People need to believe you in order to agree with you. Just as you'd trust a friend's recommendation, your audience needs to trust what you're sharing.

It's about authenticity and integrity and ensuring they feel you're genuine and have their best interests at heart.

2) Authority

People respect authority figures. Flaunt your credentials subtly. If you're an expert, let it show - use slides that highlight your expertise and experience in the field.

3) Social Proof

People follow the crowd. Include in your presentation testimonials, user statistics, and stories of people like your audience who took you on your offer and experienced success. If everyone's using your product, it must be good, right?

4) Familiarity

If you or your topic are familiar then you’re intuitively less threatening and therefore acceptable. It's that warm feeling that makes you feel at home and among friends.

When your audience sees their own experiences and challenges reflected in your content, it creates an instant bond. It's like recognizing a familiar face in a crowd.

Incorporate names, places, and topics familiar to your audience into your presentation to get into their inner circle.

We say 'yes' to people we like. Be likable. Smile, make jokes, and show enthusiasm. If they like you, they'll like what you're selling. Use humor and storytelling to make yourself more relatable.

When making a reading presentation, include a personal video of you in a casual environment talking directly to your audience as you would a colleague you like and feel comfortable with.

To make people like you want to align your presentation with the 7-38-55 rule which guides you on what contributes to likability.

According to the rule:

“Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking”

So make sure to write what you feel and feel what you say. Or otherwise learn acting.

6) Reciprocity

People feel obliged to return favors. To use this to your advantage start a physical presentation with a small handout. To make it easy use a QR code slide (you can use a free QR code generator )to give your audience a digital handout.

If you’re creating a digital reading presentation you can offer a coupon with a small taste of what you offer (like a short consultancy, a free audit, studio design time, or a small taste of your product).

Do this and they'll feel like you've given them something, and they'll pay closer attention and be more inclined to 'return the favor.'

7) Relevance

People listen intently when you’re talking about them. Ever heard someone talk about a topic you were concerned about, and your ears perked up? It got your attention like a 3-year-old seeing a chocolate cake, didn’t it?

Tailor your message to your audience's current needs or challenges to ensure they feel you're speaking directly to them.

8) Memorability

People make decisions based on what they remember. You will only ever persuade people of something they remember you said.

To make your presentation memorable give it substance - show what you offer in images or videos, provide concrete examples of your key concepts in action, and tell detailed stories about you, your team, your solution, and the audience you serve.

9) Consistency

Once people commit, they like to stay consistent. Get your audience to agree with you early on.

Maybe ask them to raise their hand if they've ever experienced a problem that you solve. Maybe tell them a story of someone in their situation and ask if it resonates with them.

In reading presentations, use rhetorical questions or interactive slides to get early commitments.

10) Scarcity

Limited availability increases appeal. Create a sense of urgency. Maybe offer a limited number of seats in an event.

Maybe offer a discount for the first 100 subscribers. Maybe tell them they can schedule a meeting with you for 2 weeks before you leave for another destination.

For a reading presentation use a countdown timer or "limited seats available" to create this sense of urgency.

11) Feasibility

The harder a thing is to do the less likely people will do it. Whatever you decide to ask from your audience, keep it simple to do.

Ask for small concessions rather than big commitments. You only need them to take the first step, and then you’ve got a relationship going, which positions you to ask for the next step, and the next after that, till you reach your goal.

Note: Reciprocity, Consistency, Social Proof, Liking, Authority, and Scarcity were taken from Robert Cialdini’s seminal book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Here’s a summary of the book.

How to write your presentation persuasively?

Writing persuasively is all about connecting with your audience on a deeper level. With these techniques in your toolkit, you're all set to craft presentations that not only inform but inspire and motivate.

Beginnings matter. Think of your opening as the first impression. You want to grab your audience's attention right from the get-go.

Whether it's a surprising fact, a thought-provoking question, or a relatable story, make sure it's something that makes your audience lean in and think, "Tell me more!"

Here's a presentation that hooks people in right from the start:

Don’t beat around the bush. Get to the point fast. Give your audience a quick overview of what you have in store for them and how you can change their life for the better.

Make sure to be clear about who you are talking to. Define your target audience the way they would describe themselves and let them know you are speaking to them on a topic they care about.

Don’t take a one-shoe-fits-all approach. You can’t serve everyone well. Do everyone a favor and tell them who your message, solution, or advice (or whatever it is you offer) is not meant for.

They won’t resent it. They will appreciate it, and it will lend you integrity, credibility, and persuasive power.

Don’t let people guess what you can do for them. Introduce the value you offer as soon as you can. Give your value shape and concrete detail.

If it’s a product - show it in action, if it’s an intangible prize like money - show them what they can do with it, and if it’s an emotional outcome - tell them the story of someone you’ve helped.

Most of us get our information through authority figures. If you demonstrate your authority your words will encounter less skepticism and less push-back.

Show what you or your team have achieved in your field, and show some acknowledgment of your achievements by established and well-known authorities, whether people or organizations.

Just be very careful not to come off as boastful or cocky, unless these traits resonate with your target audience (yes, I am talking about you - sales crowd).

Talk to your audience in their own words, use the phrases they use, and tell stories and allegories that appeal to them and fit into their life.

Do the research. Hang out where they hang out, physically or on the web, listen and read what they say and who they say it to.

I know you’ve heard this one too many times before, so let me be clear: tell stories, plural. Short anecdotes or examples that give substance to what you’re talking about.

Fill your little stories with details about who did something where, when, what, and why. Make it mostly familiar but at the same time a bit surprising and unexpected.

If it’s too outlandish it’s not credible, and if it’s too familiar it's not interesting.

There's something satisfying about things that come in threes. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", "of the people, by the people, for the people"... you get the point.

This is called the rule of tree . Simply put it means grouping your points or ideas in threes which makes your message more rhythmic, elegant, and sticky.

Repetition can be a powerful tool to emphasize your key points. Just think about Martin Luther King Jr's " I have a dream ".

By repeating key phrases, you not only drive your message home but also give it a predictable structure that lets your audience unconsciously chant the words with you .

Everyone loves feeling special. Tailor your content to resonate with your particular audience. Whether it's addressing their unique challenges or using examples they can relate to, personalization builds a deeper connection and rapport.

In this case, personalize more thoroughly. Use their name, and their specific details, like their company, city, product, or (if you met each other) where you met.

Just don’t overdo it and cross into creep-land. Keep any personalization unmistakably within the context of your presentation. (Unless you’re selling a bed, don’t reference how beautiful they look when they sleep 😜).

Here's an example of a personalized sales pitch presentation:

Note: Notice the dynamic variables they’ve added in their Storydoc deck. WiseStamp actually shows a ready-made email signature with the prospect’s name, image, and company logo in it. They personalized their product demo! How crazy is that?

Check out their full deck here.

Finish strong! After sharing your insights, guide your audience on what to do next. Whether it's trying out a new tool, adopting a mindset, or simply reflecting on what they've learned, a clear call to action gives direction and purpose.

Here's what it should look like:

How to design a presentation for persuasion?

While words are the heart of your presentation, design is its soul. A well-designed presentation not only captivates but also amplifies your message.

Let's dive into the world of persuasive design and uncover the secrets that make a presentation truly stand out:

Visual hook

First impressions count. Start with a captivating visual that immediately grabs attention. This could be a bold graphic, a striking image, or even an intriguing layout. It's like the cover of a book; it invites the audience to delve deeper.

Here's a great example of a presentation with a visual hook:

Social proof

As humans, we often look to others to validate our choices. Dr. Robert Cialdini defines social proof as people doing what they observe others doing. It's the idea that if other people are doing it, it must be good.

In the context of your presentation, this could mean showcasing testimonials, endorsements, or even user reviews. It's a nod to the audience that others have been here and found value.

Here's an example of a social proof slide:

Recognized people and places

Including familiar faces or landmarks can be a game-changer. When your audience sees someone they recognize or a place they relate to, it builds an instant connection and trust. It's like seeing a friend in a crowd; it feels familiar and safe.

Original visuals lend you credibility and status. They show that you put in the effort. They show that you can afford to invest in your content and that you’re not some shmo working from his mom’s basement.

Quality original visuals

Stock photos have their place, but nothing beats original, high-quality visuals. Whether it's custom graphics, original photographs, or tailored illustrations, unique visuals make your presentation memorable and authentic.

Here's a great example of a presentation with high-quality visuals:

Emotion-driven imagery

Think about those commercials that tug at your heartstrings or make you laugh. They stay with you, right? Using images that evoke emotions can make your message resonate more deeply with your audience.

Consistency

Just like a catchy jingle in a commercial, maintaining a consistent design theme throughout your presentation creates a rhythm and flow. It ensures your audience remains hooked and can easily follow along.

Here's a great example of a visually cohesive presentation:

End with a call to action

After taking your audience on a journey, guide them on the next steps. Whether it's trying a new product, exploring a concept further, or simply reflecting on the insights shared, a clear call to action gives direction.

More importantly, make your call-to-action super easy to act on. Make it something they can do immediately with as little friction as possible.

Note: In Storydoc, there’s a handy little design feature that lets you embed your calendar app direction into your presentation. This way whenever you share it, your reader can simply access your calendar and set a meeting.

Here's an example of a calendar slide:

Persuasive presentation templates

When it comes to persuasive presentations, having a structure that's been tried and tested can be a game-changer.

We built our persuasive presentation templates based on insights from more than 100,000 presentation sessions and the world of neuroscience. They’re all designed with storytelling in mind and tested to look flawless on every device.

It's like having a seasoned presenter whispering tips in your ear, guiding your content to truly resonate.

Pick a template from our library and use it to create your presentation.

Hi, I'm Dominika, Content Specialist at Storydoc. As a creative professional with experience in fashion, I'm here to show you how to amplify your brand message through the power of storytelling and eye-catching visuals.

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How to Give a Persuasive Presentation [+ Examples]

Published: December 29, 2020

A presentation aimed at persuading an audience to take a specific action can be the most difficult type to deliver, even if you’re not shy of public speaking.

Creating a presentation that effectively achieves your objective requires time, lots of practice, and most importantly, a focused message.

With the right approach, you can create a presentation that leaves a skeptical audience enthusiastic to get on board with your project.

In this post, we'll cover the basics of building a persuasive presentation. Let's dive in.

What is a persuasive presentation?

In its most basic form, a persuasive presentation features a speaker who tries to influence an audience to accept certain positions and engage in actions in support of them. A good persuasive presentation uses a mixture of facts, logic, and empathy to help an audience see an issue from a perspective they previously discounted or hadn’t considered.

How to Plan a Persuasive Presentation

Want to make a persuasive presentation that connects with your audience? Follow these steps to win friends and influence people within your audience.

1. Decide on a single ask.

The key to convincing your audience is to first identify the singular point you want to make. A good persuasive presentation will focus on one specific and easy-to-understand proposition. Even if that point is part of a broader initiative, it ideally needs to be presented as something your audience can say "yes" or "no" to easily.

A message that isn’t well-defined or which covers too much can cause the audience to lose interest or reject it outright. A more focused topic can also help your delivery sound more confident, which (for better or worse) is an important factor in convincing people.

2. Focus on fewer (but more relevant ) facts.

Remember: You are (in the vast majority of cases) not the target audience for your presentation. To make your presentation a success, you’ll need to know who your audience is so you can shape your message to resonate with them.

When crafting your messaging, put yourself in your audience's headspace and attempt to deeply understand their position, needs, and concerns. Focus on arguments and facts that speak specifically to your audience's unique position.

As we wrote in our post on How to Present a Compelling Argument When You're Not Naturally Persuasive , "just because a fact technically lends support to your claim doesn't mean it will sway your audience. The best evidence needs to not only support your claim but also have a connection to your audience."

What are the target audience's pain points that you can use to make a connection between their needs and your goals? Focus on those aspects, and cut any excess information. Fewer relevant facts are always more impactful than an abundance of unfocused pieces of evidence.

3. Build a narrative around your evidence.

If you want to persuade someone of something, it’s not enough to win their brain -- you need their heart in it, too. Try to make an emotional connection with your audience throughout your presentation to better sell them on the facts you’re presenting. Your audience is human, after all, so some emotional tug will go a long way to shaking up how they view the issue you’re talking about. A little bit of emotion could be just what your audience needs to make your facts “click.”

The easiest way to incorporate an emotional pull into your presentation is through the use of narrative elements. As we wrote in our guide to crafting pitch decks , "When our brains are given a story instead of a list of information, things change -- big time. Stories engage more parts of our brains, including our sensory cortex, which is responsible for processing visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli. If you want to keep people engaged during a presentation, tell them a story."

4. Confidence matters.

Practice makes perfect (it's a cliche because it's true, sorry!), and this is especially true for presentation delivery. Rehearse your presentation several times before you give it to your audience so you can develop a natural flow and move from each section without stopping.

Remember, you're not giving a speech here, so you don't want your delivery to come across like you're reading fully off of cue cards. Use tools like notes and cue cards as ways to keep you on track, not as scripts.

Finally, if you can, try to practice your presentation in front of another human. Getting a trusted co-worker to give you feedback in advance can help strengthen your delivery and identify areas you might need to change or bulk up.

5. Prepare for common objections.

The last thing you want to say when someone in your audience expresses a concern or an outright objection during your presentation's question section is “umm, let me get back to you on that.”

Carefully research the subject of your presentation to make the best case possible for it -- but also prepare in advance for common objections or questions you know your stakeholders are going to ask. The stronger your command of the facts -- and the more prepared you are to proactively address concerns -- the more convincing your presentation will be. When you appear confident fielding any rebuttals during a question and answer session after your presentation, it can go a long way towards making your case seem more convincing.

Persuasive Presentation Outline

Like any writing project, you’ll want to create an outline for your presentation, which can act as both a prompt and a framework. With an outline, you’ll have an easier time organizing your thoughts and creating the actual content you will present. While you can adjust the outline to your needs, your presentation will most likely follow this basic framework.

I. Introduction

Every persuasive presentation needs an introduction that gets the listener’s attention, identifies a problem, and relates it to them.

• The Hook: Just like a catchy song, your presentation needs a good hook to draw the listener in. Think of an unusual fact, anecdote, or framing that can grab the listener’s attention. Choose something that also establishes your credibility on the issue.
• The Tie: Tie your hook back to your audience to garner buy-in from your audience, as this issue impacts them personally.
• The Thesis: This is where you state the position to which you are trying to persuade your audience and forms the focal point for your presentation.

II. The Body

The body forms the bulk of your presentation and can be roughly divided into two parts. In the first half, you will build your case, and in the second you will address potential rebuttals.

• Your Case: This is where you will present supporting points for your argument and the evidence you’ve gathered through research. This will likely have several different subsections in which you present the relevant evidence for each supporting point.
• Rebuttals: Consider potential rebuttals to your case and address them individually with supporting evidence for your counterarguments.
• Benefits: Outline the benefits of the audience adopting your position. Use smooth, conversational transitions to get to these.
• Drawbacks: Outline what drawbacks of the audience rejecting your position. Be sure to remain conversational and avoid alarmism.

III. Conclusion

In your conclusion, you will wrap up your argument, summarize your key points, and relate them back to the decisions your audience makes.

• Transition: Write a transition that emphasizes the key point you are trying to make.
• Summary: Summarize your arguments, their benefits, and the key pieces of evidence supporting your position.
• Tie-back: Tie back your summary to the actions of your audience and how their decisions will impact the subject of your presentation.
• Final word: Try to end on a last emotional thought that can inspire your audience to adopt your position and act in support of it.

IV. Citations

Include a section at the end of your presentation with citations for your sources. This will make independent fact-checking easier for your audience and will make your overall presentation more persuasive.

Persuasive Presentation Examples

Check out some of these examples of persuasive presentations to get inspiration for your own. Seeing how someone else made their presentation could help you create one that strikes home with your audience. While the structure of your presentation is entirely up to you, here are some outlines that are typically used for different subjects.

Introducing a Concept

One common type of persuasive presentation is one that introduces a new concept to an audience and tries to get them to accept it. This presentation introduces audience members to the dangers of secondhand smoke and encourages them to take steps to avoid it. Persuasive presentations can also be a good format to introduce marco issues, such as this presentation on the benefits of renewable energy .

Changing Personal Habits

Want to change the personal habits of your audience? Check out this presentation on how to adopt healthy eating habits . Or this presentation which encourages the audience to get more exercise in their daily lives.

Making a Commitment to an Action

Is your goal to get your audience to commit to a specific action? This presentation encouraging audience memes to become organ donors could provide inspiration. Trying to make a big sale? Check out this presentation outline that can encourage someone to buy a home .

Remember: You Can Do This

Anyone can craft a persuasive presentation once they know the basic framework for creating one. Once you get the process down, you’ll be in a better position to bring in sales, attract donors or funding, and even advance your career. The skills you learn can also benefit you in other areas of your personal and professional life as you know how to make a case and influence people toward it.

Don't forget to share this post!

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60 Effective PowerPoint Presentation Tips & Tricks (Giant List)

Here's a PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks guide that takes you through how to make a good PowerPoint presentation.

The best PowerPoint presentations shouldn’t be remembered. Instead, they should fall into the background to support you and the message you’re trying to get across.

Unlike good PowerPoint presentations , bad PowerPoint presentations are a distraction. You may remember them, but not in a good way.

You’ve seen them before. They might have millions of lines of text. Or a disjointed flow to the slides. Even worse, some slides feature ugly photos and poor design that detract from the message you’re trying to get across. That can even hurt your credibility as a professional or speaker.

This article will take you from finding your initial topic to learning how to make a great PowerPoint presentation. Our guide covers everything in between so that you learn how to present a PowerPoint like a pro.

These Microsoft PowerPoint presentation tips and guidelines are organized into sections. So cut straight to the advice you need and come back when you’re ready for the next steps.

Guide to Making Great Presentations (Free eBook Download)

Also, download our Free eBook: The Complete Guide to Making Great Presentations . It’s the deepest resource for learning effective presentation skills for a PPT.

This eBook covers the complete presentation process. It takes the PowerPoint tips and tricks you learn in this article further. Learn how to write your presentation, design it like a pro, and prepare it to present powerfully. It’s another great source for presentation design tips.

Master PowerPoint (Free Course): 15 Essential Tips

This article is full of helpful tips so you can build a powerful presentation. You can also find more PowerPoint tips in this video lesson:

To learn even more about how to make a PowerPoint look good, review the huge list of tips below.

What Makes a PowerPoint Presentation Effective?

Knowing how to use PowerPoint and work within it quickly is helpful. But more important is making a good presentation that hits all your goals. A great PowerPoint presentation is:

• Prepared to Win . Research, plan, and prepare your presentation professionally. It helps you deliver an effective message to your target audience.
• Designed Correctly . Your visual points should stand out without overwhelming your audience. A good PowerPoint visual shouldn’t complicate your message.
• Practiced to Perfection . Rehearse your timing and delivery so that your points land as practiced with a live audience.
• Delivered With Poise . Present with a relaxed inner calm and confident outward projection. Give your audience warmth, excitement, and energy.
• Free From Mistakes . Avoid typos, cheesy clip art, and mistakes like reading directly from your slides.

Consider this your all-inclusive guide to how to make a good presentation. We’ll look at preparing your presentation and explore how to design it in PowerPoint. Plus, we’ll cover how to practice and nail your delivery successfully come presentation time.

We’ll also address what not to do in these tips for PowerPoint presentations—so you can sidestep any big mistakes. Now let’s dig into these tips for effective PowerPoint presentations.

Killer Presentation Preparation Tips to Get Started Right

Before even opening PowerPoint, start by addressing these things. These Microsoft PowerPoint tips and tricks will ensure that you’re prepared for your presentation:

1. Know Your Stuff

Your presentation isn’t about your slides alone. It’s about the message you want to get across. Before filling in stats, facts and figures, think about the narrative that’ll be discussed, why, and in what order.

2. Write It Out

Start in a Word or Google doc, and storyboard or script the entire presentation. This will give you an idea of how the information presented will flow and how viewers will see it in sequence. Learn the complete writing process .

3. Highlight What’s Most Important

A presentation covers the most crucial pieces only. Whatever you’ve been working on that led to this—a paper, a work project, a new product design—doesn’t need to be shared in its entirety. Pick key points and put the rest in an “Appendix” to refer to during the Q&A session at the end.

4. Know Your Audience

How you talk to a room full of medical professionals should be different from the way you address a room full of young entrepreneurs. Everything, in fact, is different: your topic selection, the language you use, the examples you give to illustrate points. The little bits of humor you include should be tailored specifically with your target audience in mind.

Understand your audience’s needs to create a successful PowerPoint presentation. Customize your content to meet their specific requirements.

5. Rehearse! (Yes, Already)

It’s never too early to get used to the rhythm of your presentation and take note of points you want to emphasize. While saying it out loud, you’ll start to develop a “feel” for the material. You’ll notice that some things work well, while others don’t and might need to be worked around.

6. Rewrite After You Rehearse

As you’re rehearsing your presentation, you’re bound to stumble over sections that don’t quite flow naturally. Instead of reworking your delivery, it might be time to consider the content and rewrite the areas that served as stumbling blocks.

“Editing is hard. ‘It’s good enough,’ is a phrase wannabes use. Leaders take editing seriously.” – Anthony Trendl

The most important part of creating a great presentation is the writing stage. The second most important stage is rewriting.

7. Share With a Friend

If the stakes are high for your presentation, it’s never too early to get feedback from those that you trust. Here’s an article that helps you collaborate as a team on a PowerPoint presentation. Get PowerPoint design tips from those that you trust when you collaborate.

Simple Tips to Design Your PowerPoint Presentation Better

Second only to you (the information you bring and how you present it) is your PowerPoint slides. If not designed well, a PowerPoint can be disengaging or distracting (regardless of the content quality). Here are some presentation design tips to make sure this doesn’t happen to you:

8. Keep Your Slides Simple

This is one of the most important PowerPoint presentation tips to follow when designing your slides. Keep in mind that less is more (effective.) A cluttered slide is distracting. It causes confusion for an audience: Which part of the slide should I focus on? Should I read the slide or pay attention to the presenter?

A simple, visually appealing slide will engage your audience, keeping them on track with your main points. Here’s an example of a simple slide that serves its purpose perfectly:

Minimalist slide templates like Nook can help you resist the urge to clutter your slides.

9. Limit Words on Your Slides

Piggybacking on the last point, less is more effective. If possible, avoid bullets altogether. Otherwise cut them to just a few simple words. The audience should be listening, not reading.

10. Use High-Quality Photos and Graphics

One of the most important tips for quality PowerPoint presentations is to use high-quality photos and graphics.

Earlier in this tutorial, you saw Envato Elements, an all-you-can-download service with PPT tips inside of templates. Those pre-built designs are a beginner’s best friend. They’re even better when paired with Elements’ unlimited library of stock photos .

People are more likely to take you seriously if your presentation is visually appealing. Users view attractive design as more usable. Similarly, they’ll view a more attractive PowerPoint as more effective.

11. Use Accurate and Relevant Charts and Graphs

Charts and graphs can also be distracting if they’re not used right. Make sure your information design is simple and clean so that the audience doesn’t spend the entire time trying to decipher what your X axis says. Learn more about PPT data presentation .

12. Use High-Quality, Fresh Templates

Have you seen the old PowerPoint template that looks like worn paper and uses ink splashes? Yeah, so has your audience. Templates can be distracting if they’re too basic or if the design feels dated. You need one with great design options.

Costs are always a concern. But when you use Envato Elements, you’ve got everything you need to create a great PowerPoint presentation . That’s thanks to the incredible all-you-can-download subscription package.

The best PowerPoint tips and tricks can hardly compare to the value of using a template while building your presentation.

On Envato Elements, there are thousands of PowerPoint design templates that are ready to use. Instead of designing a presentation from scratch, start with a template! Just add your specifics to the placeholders.

Templates like Galaxi are impressively designed and waiting for your slide specifics.

The best PowerPoint design tips save you time. And there’s no tip more powerful than this one: use a pre-built template . It helps you master how to present a PowerPoint without spending all your time in the app.

13. Choose Appropriate Fonts

Fonts are an important part of engaging your audience. Fonts and typography choices have a subconscious effect on viewers. They can characterize your company’s presentation and brand either positively or negatively. Make sure that you’re choosing fonts that are professional and modern.

14. Choose Color Well

Like font choice, colors cause specific subconscious reactions from viewers. Choosing an outdated color combination for your presentation will render it ineffective.

Below is an example of the Popsicle PowerPoint template , which has a modern presentation color choice:

The Popsicle PowerPoint template highlights how harmonized color palettes can create beautiful slides.

15. Clean + Simple Formatting Makes All the Difference!

We’ve got a full tutorial on how to make a good presentation slide . Give it a read through and review the accompanying video. Just remember, less is more. The focus is you and your message , not your slides.

16. Make Sure All Objects Are Aligned

A simple way to create a well-designed presentation is to make sure all items on a slide are intentionally aligned. To do this, hold down Shift and select all the objects you want to include. Then choose Arrange in the options bar and apply Alignment Type .

17. Limit Punctuation

This isn’t the place for exclamation points. Emphasize your points (while speaking). Don’t enlist punctuation to do this for you. (Leave these at home!!!)

18. Avoid Over-Formatting Your Points

This PowerPoint presentation tip is simple. There’s no need to have every word of every bullet point capitalized, or to have all your bullet points in title case. If possible, drop bullets altogether. Again, the simpler, the better!

Limit your text formatting, including reducing the use of bullets, underline, and other effects. Compare the before example on the left to the revised version on the right.

19. Combine Information With Graphics in PowerPoint

One of the most powerful presentation skills for PPT is using infographics. With the right type of visuals, slides come to life and reduce the text in favor of graphics.

Infographics help combine information with graphics. It’s easier to explain complex ideas when you use visual formats that are intuitive.

Practice Presentation Tips: Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse!

Delivery is probably more important than the actual content. Here’s how to become more aware of your own unique ticks, and how to present like a polished pro:

20. I’ll Say It Again, Rehearse!

Just do it. Again and again. Experiment with pauses, gestures, and body language. Practice around one hour for every minute of your speech.

21. Practice With a Timer

Consistency is key to an effective PowerPoint presentation. The timing should be similar (ideally the same) each time you rehearse. This one will especially pay off when it’s time to present in front of your audience.

22. Slow It Down

Many of the best speakers today intentionally speak slowly. You’ll have the chance to emphasize, appear more thoughtful, and make your information easier to digest.

23. Pause More Often

Like the prior tip, pausing more often allows your main points to be emphasized and gives time for information to sink in. You need to let key points breathe a little before rushing into the next section.

24. Record Yourself

Use your phone’s voice recorder. Assess and critique yourself. Consider:

• Are your pauses too short or too long?
• Are you speaking slowly enough? Too slow?
• When you’re nervous, does your voice get high like the mice in Cinderella?

It’s always weird to hear your own voice recorded; don’t stress it. Use this as a time to adjust.

25. Choose Three Focal Points in the Room

If you stare at the same spot (or even creepier, the same person) the entire time, your presentation will be ineffective (and awkward.) People will be distracted by you, wondering what you’re staring at.

Try this: pick three points in the room (typically: left, center, right). Take time to direct your delivery toward each physical focal point in the room. Also, focus on the center when making your primary points.

26. Vary Your Sentence Length

This makes you sound more interesting, and it’s easier for your audience to follow. Think short and punchy. Or go long and complex for dramatic effect.

27. Modulate!

Don’t speak in monotone for your whole presentation. Be conscious of raising and lowering your voice tone. Otherwise, people will tune you out, and you’ll come across like the teacher in Charlie Brown.

28. Practice in Front of a Mirror

What you look like is as important as how you sound. Pretend you’re having a normal conversation, and allow your hands to move with your speech to emphasize your points. Just don’t get carried away! (I’m thinking Brene Brown or President Obama , not your Aunt Jamie after a few gin and tonics.)

29. Use “Present Mode” When Rehearsing

When you finally are ready to hit the Present button in PowerPoint, make sure you use the Present Mode option. This allows you (and only you) to view extra notes about each slide—just in case you forget something!

30. Practice With New Audiences

If possible, try doing a few real live test runs as a webinar or even at a local Toastmasters organization to get some feedback from a live audience.

31. Engage the Audience by Asking Questions

There’s no reason that a presentation should be one-sided. Why not invert the format and ask your audience a question?

To learn how to create a slide that kicks off a Q&A, use this article . These PowerPoint design tips help you create an engaging and exciting discussion.

Helpful Tips to Step Up and Deliver Come Presentation Time

When the actual day arrives, there are only a few last PowerPoint presentation tips and guidelines to keep in mind:

32. Take a Deep Breath

Deep breathing is proven to relieve stress. It’s simple, and it’ll help you remain calm and in the moment, even up to the last minute before starting.

33. Lighten Up Your Mood

Tell yourself a joke or watch a funny video clip. Do this before the presentation, of course. Research concludes that happy people are more productive. More productive is more focused and able to perform better.

34. Remind Yourself to Take It Slow

When we’re stressed or nervous (or both), we tend to speak faster. Consciously, take yet another deep breath and remind yourself to take it slow!

35. Read the Room

Every presentation room has a temperature. It’s your job as a speaker to gauge it and tailor your presentation to it.

Here’s a great example. Layoffs are coming at a company, and you’re asked to speak to an audience. Even if the audience isn’t personally affected by the actions, you’ve got to consider the morale of the workforce.

Skilled speakers have a knack for reading the energy of the room and adjusting their presentation on the fly.

The last thing that group will want to hear is how strong the economy is and why the company is the best place to work. That doesn’t mean that you’ve got to align to their uncertainty, but don’t go too far against the grain while presenting.

Robert Kennedy III is a master of bringing energy and aligning a speech to the audience. Here’s his advice for adjusting:

“It can be hard to wake up a “dead” crowd but go for it. Most of all, don’t take their energy personally. Focus on serving them with every bit of your fiber then leave empty.”

36. Fake It ‘Til You Make It!

Go forward with confidence. If you act confident, you’ll start to feel more confident. Move slowly with grace, speak clearly, smile, wear something nice. You’ll appear confident to all attendees (no matter how you feel internally).

PowerPoint Presentation Tips and Tricks to Help Avoid Mistakes (What Not to Do)

Most importantly, focus on what you can do to make your presentation better. There are a few important things not to do that we’ve got to address. Here are a handful of PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks to help you avoid missteps.

37. Stop With the Sound Effects

Sound effects are distracting and outdated. In most cases, avoid them. Add audio or music to your presentation to inject interest or highlight an important point, but it’s something to take extra care with. If you insert audio, then make sure your use really connects with your audience and has a fresh approach. Otherwise, it’s best to leave it out.

38. Don’t Use Flashy Slide Transitions

Again, this is distracting and outdated. Use transitions and subtle animations in your PowerPoint presentation. But you need to take care and do it right .

39. Beware of Clip Art

This PowerPoint presentation tip shouldn’t even have to be said. But please, please don’t use clip art. Use professional graphics instead.

40. Don’t Be Afraid to Be Afraid

The fear of public speaking is a real one. Many beginners think that if they’re feeling nervous that a presentation won’t go well or succeed. That might lead them to cancel the presentation.

Here’s a tip from expert Sandra Zimmer, who leads The Self-Expression Center on conquering your fears before you take the stage:

“Get out of your head and into your body. I do this through a grounding exercise that really works to calm nerves and bring you present in the moment.”

If you think that public speaking fears aren’t normal, you might never give your award-winning presentation. So don’t be afraid to be afraid, and acknowledge it’s part of the process!

41. Don’t Read Directly During Your PowerPoint Presentation

If you spend your entire presentation looking at the screen or your note cards, you’re sure to lose your audience’s attention. They’ll disengage from what you’re saying, and your presentation will fall flat.

Reading from your paper or screen also makes it look like you’re not prepared. Many people do it, but no one should. As a general rule, only present something you know well and have, at least mostly, memorized the main points of.

42. Don’t Miss Out on PowerPoint Customizations

Many new PowerPoint users often make significant mistakes when using Envato Elements designs.

The best way to see how to make a good presentation PPT is to start with designs from others. That means using a template, but that doesn’t mean you can’t customize them!

Don’t forget that PowerPoint templates are infinitely customizable. Think of them as guides with built-in presentation design tips.

To see more presentation tips that show you what not to do, make sure to check out our guide .

Work in PowerPoint More Effectively (Tips & Tricks to Level Up Your PPT Skills)

These PowerPoint tips will help you get the most out of the application to level up your next presentation. Let’s dive in.

43. Use the Visual Guides

When you’re designing your next PowerPoint presentation, it helps to create a sense of visual rhythm. Slides that have objects aligned and centered are more likely to resonate with an audience.

44. Use a Few Animations (Tastefully)

Animations in effective PowerPoint presentations are a slippery slope. We’ve all sat through presentations where there were so many objects in motion that it was easy to lose focus on the key ideas in the presentation.

But that’s why animations get an unfairly bad reputation. Use animations to create motion and hold an audience’s attention. Use them sparingly and on key elements on your slide, and you’ll capture that attention properly.

45. Stage Key Content With Animations

You just learned that animations should avoid being distracting. But there’s an important principle to using animations properly. It’s called staging content.

Staging content means that the content appears step by step. There’s nothing worse than overwhelming an audience with all your content at once. But when you stage content, bring it on step by step.

Take it from presentation pro Suzannah Baum :

“If you’re sharing a slide with lots of different points on it, using the animation to reveal those points one at a time is a way to keep the presenter’s content flowing smoothly.”

For more animation presentation tips and tricks, follow our guide .

46. Add a Video to Your PowerPoint

When you’re sharing a big idea in your presentation, it helps to share your perspective from a few different angles. Adding a video to supplement your content can do just that. Luckily, it’s easy to add and embed a YouTube video in your next PowerPoint presentation.

47. Add Charts & Graphs

Charts and graphs can help you tell stories with data. It’s easy for an audience to zone out when you throw a big data table or set of statistics at them.

instead, convert those to charts and graphs. Try out our tutorial to learn how to edit those graphs.

48. Build Your Own Infographics With SmartArt

Earlier in this tutorial, we gave you one of my favorite PowerPoint design tips: use infographic templates.

Here’s another. One of my favorite PowerPoint features is SmartArt, which allows you to build infographics right inside the app.

You don’t have to use another graphic design app like Photoshop or Illustrator to add visuals. Instead, try out SmartArt to help you build graphics that are easy to update.

49. Use Presenter View

Remember that when you use the PowerPoint, you’ re the presentation. The slides are just there to reinforce what you’ve got to say and support your speaking points.

That’s why I always recommend using Presenter view. More often than not, you’re going to have several displays. Presenter view shows your content on your screen, while your presentation is displayed on another screen.

50. Track Your PowerPoint Changes

One of my favorite PowerPoint design tips is to collaborate. Those who know you best will suggest compelling changes that are sure to help you succeed.

As you start collaborating on your presentation, it helps to keep track of proposed and included PowerPoint changes. Use this article to track changes made by others.

10 More Advanced PowerPoint Tips & Tricks

Really need to wow an audience with a good PowerPoint presentation? Give these tips a try to make an unforgettable impression:

51. Engage With an Interactive Quiz

A good PowerPoint presentation gets your audience involved. One of the best PowerPoint tricks is to do that with a quiz. By engaging audiences, a quiz makes your slides memorable.

By adding trivia, you’ll see how to present a PowerPoint in a way that people will love. Channel your inner game-show host today. MIDTEST is a  good PowerPoint presentation  with quiz slides.

52. Illustrate With Custom Image Masks

One of the top PowerPoint tips is to illustrate your slides. But you can go beyond simple, rectangular images on each slide.

The Burte template is full of  PowerPoint tricks , including custom image masks. Image masks shape photos into unique works of art. And thanks to premium templates, you can style photos just like this. Masks overlay your photos onto geometric shapes, instantly elevating your style.

53. Print Handouts With Extra Notes

Wonder how to give a good presentation PPT that audiences will remember? Give them a piece of it to take home.

PowerPoint makes it easy to print handouts with room for notes on the page. This way, audiences can keep copies of your slides, along with their own notes. This is the perfect way to ensure everyone engages with and retains your content.

54. Make Bulk Edits With Master Slides

When you think about how to present a PowerPoint, consider your branding. That means keeping your logo front and center in the eyes of an audience. But if you’re working with a lengthy slide deck, this could seem daunting.

That’s where master slides come in. They’re common in premium layouts, and they’re a leading example of presentation skills for PPT. Master slides let you make bulk edits fast.

55. Shrink File Sizes for Sharing

Many of the top presentation tips involve making your slides more accessible. Often, that involves sharing them with audiences online.

You’ll often find that email clients and cloud services limit the size of files that you share. This can be a problem with large PPT slide decks. But there are a few quick steps you can take to reduce PPT file size. Cut graphics, scale down photos, and more.

56. Map Processes With Flowcharts

As you consider how to do a good PowerPoint presentation, think of ease of understanding. After all, you’re trying to explain something to your audience.

The  Flowcharts in Infographics  template seamlessly illustrates ideas and processes. A flowchart maps out a process in a visual way. Instead of resorting to endless narration, try a quick illustration like this. It saves you time and effort, and your audience is sure to thank you.

57. Use Brand-Specific Colors

Using presentation skills for PPT helps form an association between your message and branding. There’s no better way to do that than with your brand colors.

PowerPoint makes it easy to change color themes, adding your brand colors and logo to each slide. This is one of the top PowerPoint tricks for marketing presentations.

58. Build Social Media Posts in PPT

A good PowerPoint presentation doesn’t have to be shared through a projector. Use the app and templates to build amazing illustrations to use anywhere.

A template like Soffee helps you learn how to present a PowerPoint easily with a pre-built design.

Try using PowerPoint to create social media posts. It helps you engage with your audience, with no need to design custom layouts from scratch.

59. Be Industry-Specific

One of the top presentation tips in 2024 is to be industry-specific. That means avoiding generic layouts and choosing something more customized.

This offers two key advantages. First, you save time by having layouts built for you. Second, you gain design inspiration for your specific topic. Themed templates are truly the best of both worlds.

The Medical and Health template is a good PowerPoint presentation with a set theme.

60. Design for Online (Virtual) Sharing

Last but not least in our list of PowerPoint tips comes virtual presenting. More and more often, slides will be shared with online audiences around the globe.

Why not design your slides for that very purpose? And then learn how to share flawlessly with a global team? It’s one of the top presentation tips for 2024. Embrace it today.

More Great PowerPoint Tutorial Resources

We’ve built a resource for Microsoft PowerPoint that you’re sure to want to try. It includes countless PowerPoint tips and tricks. It’s called How to Use PowerPoint (Ultimate Tutorial Guide) and has all the PowerPoint design tips you need.

Discover More Top PowerPoint Template Designs From Envato Elements for 2024

You’ve just seen our favorite powerful PowerPoint presentation tips and guidelines to help you improve your speaking. We’ve also mentioned Envato Elements, an incredible all-you-can-download source for top PowerPoint designs .

Here are five of the best PowerPoint templates that you can use to create your best presentation yet:

1. Galaxi PowerPoint Template

Blast off to success with the help of this PowerPoint template! Think of the pre-built slide designs as pro PowerPoint design tips. They’re built by professional graphic designers. All the popular and modern slide styles that are perfect for your next presentation. Use Galaxi’s five styles and 30 designs to create a great presentation.

2. Masmax PowerPoint Template

We selected templates for this article that match the PowerPoint tips and tricks provided. Masmax fits the bill perfectly across its 234 unique slide designs. These slide designs are sure to align with the latest in design expectations.

3. STYLE Multipurpose PowerPoint Template V50

Style is subjective, but we can all agree that this template is stunning! The light and airy slide designs are built with fashion-focused designs in mind. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not perfect for most presentations. When learning to present a PowerPoint, remember that templates can be customized to suit your purpose.

4. Peachme Creative PowerPoint Template

Peachme has image-focused slides with splashy designs. The slides are colorful and perfect for a modern presentation. Don’t worry about remembering all the PowerPoint design tips because they’re included in the pre-built slides. Use Peachme’s designs for your presentation today.

5. Buizi Office Building Rent PowerPoint Template

Buizi markets itself as a real estate focused template. It’s ideal for that purpose because of the minimal, image-focused slide designs. But that also makes it a perfect choice for presentations in many fields.

We’ve just scratched the surface of PowerPoint design tips with these five options. Here are many more, bundled inside of the best roundups on Envato Tuts+:

How to Build a Good PowerPoint Presentation Quickly (In 2024)

You’ve already seen effective presentation skills PPT techniques. But you may be wondering exactly how to do a good PowerPoint presentation. It only takes a few clicks. Let’s learn how in just five steps.

For this mini-tutorial, we’ll use the Enjoy PowerPoint Template from Envato Elements. You’ll see that it’s a beautiful template that helps you learn how to present a PowerPoint by giving you every object and layout you need.

Let’s get started:

1. Choose Your Slides

As you can see, a template like Enjoy has dozens of unique slides inside. The key to how to give a good presentation PPT is to choose only the slides that you need.

One of the best PowerPoint tricks is to start by selecting slides you wish to use from your template.

In PowerPoint, scroll through the sidebar on the left to view different slide layouts. Right-click and choose Delete to remove unwanted designs. Plus, you can click and drag slide thumbnails to reorder them in the deck.

2. Add Text

Consider how to do a good PowerPoint presentation without investing a ton of time. That’s where premium templates come in.

One of our top presentation tips when working with a PPT is to lean on the pre-built text boxes for your content.

To add custom text, simply click and select the contents of any text box on your slide. Then, type in your own words. Repeat as needed throughout your slide deck.

3. Customize Fonts

With text selected, it’s easy to customize fonts on each slide. Find the Font section on PowerPoint’s Home tab. From there, you’ve got a variety of dropdown options.

Another of our top tips for presentation tricks is to use a custom font setting in your template.

Click to change the font, font size, and more. You can also use the buttons on the left to add bolds, italics, and more.

Need more custom font styles? As an Envato Elements subscriber, you’ve got instant access to thousands of custom fonts . Use them in your presentation with ease.

4. Insert Images

Slides like this one contain an image placeholder. That’s another advantage found only with premium templates. These make adding images a breeze.

Add images to your PPTX template for more visually interesting slides.

To get started, find an image file stored on your computer. Then, drag and drop it over the placeholder. PowerPoint will import it, sized and scaled for a perfect fit.

5. Change Colors

One of the top effective presentation skills is changing shape colors. This helps you control the look and feel of each slide.

With a shape selected, find the Shape Format tab on PowerPoint’s ribbon. Then, click on the Shape Fill dropdown. You’ll see a color chooser menu appear. Click on any thumbnail to apply it to the shape or browse through the Gradient and Texture options.

Start Putting These PowerPoint Presentation Tips & Tricks Into Use Today!

Learning to write, design, and present a PowerPoint presentation is an invaluable skill, no matter where you use it. If you’re a good communicator of important messages, you’ll never go hungry.

Luckily, improving PowerPoint presentations isn’t as hard as it seems. Follow these tips for PowerPoint presentations to design and deliver with greater confidence.

Remember: Less is more (effective) . Use PowerPoint presentation templates for better design and more effective visual impact. And you can customize a PPT template quickly , with the right workflow.

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Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Presentations > How to Deliver a Persuasive Presentation

How to Deliver a Persuasive Presentation

A persuasive presentation can make or break the purpose of your project. If your presentation is successful, you’ll be able to convince your clients and investors to join your endeavors.

Know Your Audience

Before you design your presentation deck, conduct research on your audience. Research the roles and positions they hold at their organizations. Learn about each audience member on a personal level so that you know what they’re passionate about. If you know what they value, you can lightly touch on these topics in your persuasive presentation to engage each audience member individually.

Tell your story with captivating presentations

Powerpoint empowers you to develop well-designed content across all your devices

Make the First 30 Seconds Count

First impressions are everything. Start your presentation off strong to get your audience excited about the rest of the presentation. Don’t waste the beginning of your presentation discussing your agenda. Give a brief introduction of who you are and go right into discussing your big ideas. You might also have one strong headline to state at the start of your presentation, and your audience can absorb and internalize it. Project confidence in the first 30 seconds of your presentation to show your audience that you’re an expert in what you’re presenting.

Incorporate Visual Aids

Visual aids are engaging ways to summarize complex ideas in your presentations. Your audience probably won’t remember a slide filled with text, but a colorful image or well-organized chart can leave a lasting impression. Use visual aids like tables, charts, and infographics to summarize data and major talking points. Label everything on the visual aids to ensure your audience can follow along.

Memorize & Practice Your Presentation

Memorizing your main talking points can help you present in a natural and more connected way. If you read off a card or sheet of paper, it can distract your audience and prevent you from building trust and rapport with them. You don’t have to remember your presentation word for word, but you should be able to deliver it without reading from a script. Practice your presentation repeatedly until you feel confident in presenting it.

Engage Your Audience

Your audience should feel like you’re speaking with them instead of speaking at them. Engage your audience in a conversation that helps them retain the information you’re presenting. You’ve already researched what they’re passionate about, so relate your main topics to their values. Ask them questions about things that matter to them and explain how the purpose of your presentation can benefit those things. Engaging your audience keeps them entertained and interested in your presentation from start to finish.

Emphasize the Call-to-Action

One of the final slides in your deck should talk about what next steps the audience should take. Pose a question or a statement that tells them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. If they can use the topics you’ve discussed to take the next steps, emphasize that. Persuade them by letting them know how they can use the information you’ve given them in the presentation.

Finish Strong

You should end your presentation as strong and as confident as you began it. Use strong closing statements that summarize the purpose of your presentation and the ways the audience can benefit from the talking points. Make eye contact with each of your audience members to create one final connection. Thank them for their time and leave time for them to ask you any questions.

Ask for Feedback from Your Peers

Once your persuasive presentation is over, reach out to your coworkers and peers who might’ve caught glimpses of it. Ask them for feedback on what they thought you did well and on any parts you can improve. Take notes on their feedback and refer to the notes when preparing for your next presentation.

A persuasive presentation not only convinces the audience to take next steps, but it also educates them on the main topic. Your audience should feel more knowledgeable about the topic and about how your goods or services can help them by the end of your presentation.

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Blog Beginner Guides How To Make a Good Presentation [A Complete Guide]

How To Make a Good Presentation [A Complete Guide]

Written by: Krystle Wong Jul 20, 2023

A top-notch presentation possesses the power to drive action. From winning stakeholders over and conveying a powerful message to securing funding — your secret weapon lies within the realm of creating an effective presentation .  

Being an excellent presenter isn’t confined to the boardroom. Whether you’re delivering a presentation at work, pursuing an academic career, involved in a non-profit organization or even a student, nailing the presentation game is a game-changer.

In this article, I’ll cover the top qualities of compelling presentations and walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to give a good presentation. Here’s a little tip to kick things off: for a headstart, check out Venngage’s collection of free presentation templates . They are fully customizable, and the best part is you don’t need professional design skills to make them shine!

These valuable presentation tips cater to individuals from diverse professional backgrounds, encompassing business professionals, sales and marketing teams, educators, trainers, students, researchers, non-profit organizations, public speakers and presenters. 

No matter your field or role, these tips for presenting will equip you with the skills to deliver effective presentations that leave a lasting impression on any audience.

Click to jump ahead:

What are the 10 qualities of a good presentation?

Step-by-step guide on how to prepare an effective presentation, 9 effective techniques to deliver a memorable presentation, faqs on making a good presentation, how to create a presentation with venngage in 5 steps.

When it comes to giving an engaging presentation that leaves a lasting impression, it’s not just about the content — it’s also about how you deliver it. Wondering what makes a good presentation? Well, the best presentations I’ve seen consistently exhibit these 10 qualities:

1. Clear structure

No one likes to get lost in a maze of information. Organize your thoughts into a logical flow, complete with an introduction, main points and a solid conclusion. A structured presentation helps your audience follow along effortlessly, leaving them with a sense of satisfaction at the end.

Regardless of your presentation style , a quality presentation starts with a clear roadmap. Browse through Venngage’s template library and select a presentation template that aligns with your content and presentation goals. Here’s a good presentation example template with a logical layout that includes sections for the introduction, main points, supporting information and a conclusion: 

2. Engaging opening

Hook your audience right from the start with an attention-grabbing statement, a fascinating question or maybe even a captivating anecdote. Set the stage for a killer presentation!

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

3. Relevant content

Make sure your content aligns with their interests and needs. Your audience is there for a reason, and that’s to get valuable insights. Avoid fluff and get straight to the point, your audience will be genuinely excited.

4. Effective visual aids

Picture this: a slide with walls of text and tiny charts, yawn! Visual aids should be just that—aiding your presentation. Opt for clear and visually appealing slides, engaging images and informative charts that add value and help reinforce your message.

With Venngage, visualizing data takes no effort at all. You can import data from CSV or Google Sheets seamlessly and create stunning charts, graphs and icon stories effortlessly to showcase your data in a captivating and impactful way.

5. Clear and concise communication

Keep your language simple, and avoid jargon or complicated terms. Communicate your ideas clearly, so your audience can easily grasp and retain the information being conveyed. This can prevent confusion and enhance the overall effectiveness of the message. 

6. Engaging delivery

Spice up your presentation with a sprinkle of enthusiasm! Maintain eye contact, use expressive gestures and vary your tone of voice to keep your audience glued to the edge of their seats. A touch of charisma goes a long way!

7. Interaction and audience engagement

Turn your presentation into an interactive experience — encourage questions, foster discussions and maybe even throw in a fun activity. Engaged audiences are more likely to remember and embrace your message.

Transform your slides into an interactive presentation with Venngage’s dynamic features like pop-ups, clickable icons and animated elements. Engage your audience with interactive content that lets them explore and interact with your presentation for a truly immersive experience.

8. Effective storytelling

Who doesn’t love a good story? Weaving relevant anecdotes, case studies or even a personal story into your presentation can captivate your audience and create a lasting impact. Stories build connections and make your message memorable.

A great presentation background is also essential as it sets the tone, creates visual interest and reinforces your message. Enhance the overall aesthetics of your presentation with these 15 presentation background examples and captivate your audience’s attention.

9. Well-timed pacing

Pace your presentation thoughtfully with well-designed presentation slides, neither rushing through nor dragging it out. Respect your audience’s time and ensure you cover all the essential points without losing their interest.

10. Strong conclusion

Last impressions linger! Summarize your main points and leave your audience with a clear takeaway. End your presentation with a bang , a call to action or an inspiring thought that resonates long after the conclusion.

In-person presentations aside, acing a virtual presentation is of paramount importance in today’s digital world. Check out this guide to learn how you can adapt your in-person presentations into virtual presentations . 

Preparing an effective presentation starts with laying a strong foundation that goes beyond just creating slides and notes. One of the quickest and best ways to make a presentation would be with the help of a good presentation software . 

Otherwise, let me walk you to how to prepare for a presentation step by step and unlock the secrets of crafting a professional presentation that sets you apart.

1. Understand the audience and their needs

Before you dive into preparing your masterpiece, take a moment to get to know your target audience. Tailor your presentation to meet their needs and expectations , and you’ll have them hooked from the start!

2. Conduct thorough research on the topic

Time to hit the books (or the internet)! Don’t skimp on the research with your presentation materials — dive deep into the subject matter and gather valuable insights . The more you know, the more confident you’ll feel in delivering your presentation.

3. Organize the content with a clear structure

No one wants to stumble through a chaotic mess of information. Outline your presentation with a clear and logical flow. Start with a captivating introduction, follow up with main points that build on each other and wrap it up with a powerful conclusion that leaves a lasting impression.

Delivering an effective business presentation hinges on captivating your audience, and Venngage’s professionally designed business presentation templates are tailor-made for this purpose. With thoughtfully structured layouts, these templates enhance your message’s clarity and coherence, ensuring a memorable and engaging experience for your audience members.

Don’t want to build your presentation layout from scratch? pick from these 5 foolproof presentation layout ideas that won’t go wrong. 

4. Develop visually appealing and supportive visual aids

Spice up your presentation with eye-catching visuals! Create slides that complement your message, not overshadow it. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean you need to overload your slides with text.

Well-chosen designs create a cohesive and professional look, capturing your audience’s attention and enhancing the overall effectiveness of your message. Here’s a list of carefully curated PowerPoint presentation templates and great background graphics that will significantly influence the visual appeal and engagement of your presentation.

5. Practice, practice and practice

Practice makes perfect — rehearse your presentation and arrive early to your presentation to help overcome stage fright. Familiarity with your material will boost your presentation skills and help you handle curveballs with ease.

6. Seek feedback and make necessary adjustments

Don’t be afraid to ask for help and seek feedback from friends and colleagues. Constructive criticism can help you identify blind spots and fine-tune your presentation to perfection.

With Venngage’s real-time collaboration feature , receiving feedback and editing your presentation is a seamless process. Group members can access and work on the presentation simultaneously and edit content side by side in real-time. Changes will be reflected immediately to the entire team, promoting seamless teamwork.

7. Prepare for potential technical or logistical issues

Prepare for the unexpected by checking your equipment, internet connection and any other potential hiccups. If you’re worried that you’ll miss out on any important points, you could always have note cards prepared. Remember to remain focused and rehearse potential answers to anticipated questions.

8. Fine-tune and polish your presentation

As the big day approaches, give your presentation one last shine. Review your talking points, practice how to present a presentation and make any final tweaks. Deep breaths — you’re on the brink of delivering a successful presentation!

In competitive environments, persuasive presentations set individuals and organizations apart. To brush up on your presentation skills, read these guides on how to make a persuasive presentation and tips to presenting effectively . 

Whether you’re an experienced presenter or a novice, the right techniques will let your presentation skills soar to new heights!

From public speaking hacks to interactive elements and storytelling prowess, these 9 effective presentation techniques will empower you to leave a lasting impression on your audience and make your presentations unforgettable.

1. Confidence and positive body language

Positive body language instantly captivates your audience, making them believe in your message as much as you do. Strengthen your stage presence and own that stage like it’s your second home! Stand tall, shoulders back and exude confidence. 

2. Eye contact with the audience

Break down that invisible barrier and connect with your audience through their eyes. Maintaining eye contact when giving a presentation builds trust and shows that you’re present and engaged with them.

3. Effective use of hand gestures and movement

A little movement goes a long way! Emphasize key points with purposeful gestures and don’t be afraid to walk around the stage. Your energy will be contagious!

4. Utilize storytelling techniques

Weave the magic of storytelling into your presentation. Share relatable anecdotes, inspiring success stories or even personal experiences that tug at the heartstrings of your audience. Adjust your pitch, pace and volume to match the emotions and intensity of the story. Varying your speaking voice adds depth and enhances your stage presence.

5. Incorporate multimedia elements

Spice up your presentation with a dash of visual pizzazz! Use slides, images and video clips to add depth and clarity to your message. Just remember, less is more—don’t overwhelm them with information overload. 

Turn your presentations into an interactive party! Involve your audience with questions, polls or group activities. When they actively participate, they become invested in your presentation’s success. Bring your design to life with animated elements. Venngage allows you to apply animations to icons, images and text to create dynamic and engaging visual content.

6. Utilize humor strategically

Laughter is the best medicine—and a fantastic presentation enhancer! A well-placed joke or lighthearted moment can break the ice and create a warm atmosphere , making your audience more receptive to your message.

7. Practice active listening and respond to feedback

Be attentive to your audience’s reactions and feedback. If they have questions or concerns, address them with genuine interest and respect. Your responsiveness builds rapport and shows that you genuinely care about their experience.

8. Apply the 10-20-30 rule

Apply the 10-20-30 presentation rule and keep it short, sweet and impactful! Stick to ten slides, deliver your presentation within 20 minutes and use a 30-point font to ensure clarity and focus. Less is more, and your audience will thank you for it!

9. Implement the 5-5-5 rule

Simplicity is key. Limit each slide to five bullet points, with only five words per bullet point and allow each slide to remain visible for about five seconds. This rule keeps your presentation concise and prevents information overload.

Simple presentations are more engaging because they are easier to follow. Summarize your presentations and keep them simple with Venngage’s gallery of simple presentation templates and ensure that your message is delivered effectively across your audience.

1. How to start a presentation?

To kick off your presentation effectively, begin with an attention-grabbing statement or a powerful quote. Introduce yourself, establish credibility and clearly state the purpose and relevance of your presentation.

2. How to end a presentation?

For a strong conclusion, summarize your talking points and key takeaways. End with a compelling call to action or a thought-provoking question and remember to thank your audience and invite any final questions or interactions.

3. How to make a presentation interactive?

To make your presentation interactive, encourage questions and discussion throughout your talk. Utilize multimedia elements like videos or images and consider including polls, quizzes or group activities to actively involve your audience.

In need of inspiration for your next presentation? I’ve got your back! Pick from these 120+ presentation ideas, topics and examples to get started. 

Creating a stunning presentation with Venngage is a breeze with our user-friendly drag-and-drop editor and professionally designed templates for all your communication needs. 

Here’s how to make a presentation in just 5 simple steps with the help of Venngage:

Step 1: Sign up for Venngage for free using your email, Gmail or Facebook account or simply log in to access your account. 

Step 2: Pick a design from our selection of free presentation templates (they’re all created by our expert in-house designers).

Step 3: Make the template your own by customizing it to fit your content and branding. With Venngage’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can easily modify text, change colors and adjust the layout to create a unique and eye-catching design.

Step 4: Elevate your presentation by incorporating captivating visuals. You can upload your images or choose from Venngage’s vast library of high-quality photos, icons and illustrations. 

Step 5: Upgrade to a premium or business account to export your presentation in PDF and print it for in-person presentations or share it digitally for free!

By following these five simple steps, you’ll have a professionally designed and visually engaging presentation ready in no time. With Venngage’s user-friendly platform, your presentation is sure to make a lasting impression. So, let your creativity flow and get ready to shine in your next presentation!

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7 Steps to Creating Persuasive PowerPoint Slides

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• 3 minute read

People often ask me how to create persuasive slides for everything from strategic presentations to boardroom briefings to pitch packs .

It’s true that PowerPoint has become so common place in today’s workplace, it’s a basic skill we all are required to learn.  For many, writing slides can feel like hard work. But it doesn’t have to be.

I view PowerPoint as a canvas to create good communications.  Whether using paper-and-pen or slides, I would use exactly the same process.

Try it yourself. Forget about the clipart images and fancy animations. Start instead with a blank A4 page, just turn it to landscape.

Everyone has their own process for creating compelling communications. In this post I share my process for going from an idea to polished materials suitable for everything from boardroom briefings to business plans.

1. Consider The Audience for Your Slides

The first thing I do is consider the audience. Is the audience made up of executives? Are they marketers or analysts? Different audiences like different styles of presentations. An Executive might like an Outcome listed at the top of a slide. An Analytical person might like to understand the Process that was used to create the materials. Considering our audience is important to how we layout content on a slide.

2. Think About the Subject

The slide subject gives us directions for the type of information to include on the slide. If the slide is about changing Mobile Technology, we could use images of Mobile Phones. If it’s about Industry Change, we could show how different companies have been affected by the change. If it’s about an area of Market Growth (or decline), this could be shown with a graph. If the subject for the slide is a Process that was used, a flow chart might be useful.  Thinking about the material can provide directions for what to include in our slide.

3. Consider Horizontal and Vertical Information

We read both horizontally (across the page) and vertically (down the page). As a result, I like to give slides both a horizontal and vertical flow. A horizontal flow is often useful for sequential understanding of information or categories. Vertical flow is good for adding layers or additional dimensions to the topics.

4. Start Simple by Sketching the Slide

Once I’ve thought about the first 3 points, I sketch the slide. I try not to add too much information to any one area. I seek a balance with the information that is laid out on the page. I edit. Then I edit again. Providing visual balance to what ends up on the page gives clarity to the message. Sometimes to get to this balance, just remove whatever adds confusion. Sketchnoting and visual thinking can definitely help the slide development process.

5. Evaluate the Message

From the sketch, we can consider the main message that is communicated. If there are too many messages that distract from the main message, we can think about simplifying the slide even more.  Often at this stage I write and re-write the slide’s headline. I test whether the information on the page supports the headline. If it doesn’t, I remove what isn’t needed.  This pattern of adjustment gets us closer to communicating a clear message.

6. Create a Draft of the Slide

Up until now I haven’t touched PowerPoint.  PowerPoint will not hide bad communication (though often it’s used to do so). That’s why it’s a good idea to avoid the animations, the clip art, and the layout until this point. Now is the only time – once I’ve crafted the message, balanced out the content, thought seriously about what I want to convey – that I start a PowerPoint draft.

7. Polish the Slide

This is where we can add refinements to the slide.  Here I swap images in and out. I play with fonts. I adjust the final elements to give the communication polish. Then voila, all done!

Here’s an example based on the sketch above.

I know this can seems like an involved process.  After practice it becomes second nature.  The whole thing , from start to end, can take as little as 30 minutes. And it can be worth it.

You can use one great slide over and over again to convey a strong message.  And there’s no real price we can put on having people and teams aligned toward a simple picture.

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I'm a business designer and strategist with 20 years experience in digital, across marketing, e-commerce, online sales, and mobile apps. Companies I've worked for include Australia Post, Coles, ANZ and GlaxoSmithKline. I'm also a graduate and previous sessional lecturer of Strategic Foresight at Swinburne University. My writing has appeared on Inc.com, Huff Post and in books via Amazon.

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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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PowerPoint 'Gold': How to Create Powerful and Persuasive Slides

Want to use PowerPoint with maximum impact and persuasiveness? Here are two simple yet powerful techniques you need to know!

Did you ever think about the amazing paradox concerning how presenters use PowerPoint?

PowerPoint is primarily a  visual tool. Yet most speakers fill their slides with verbal content. Doesn't make much sense, does it?

Are you guilty of giving lackluster PowerPoint presentations? If so, it's time you gave yourself a break! Learn how to tell your story, engage and persuade listeners, create strong slides . . . and even use PowerPoint's "secret weapon." Discover the art of effective visual performance. Download my free cheat sheet, "5 Rules for Succeeding with PowerPoint" .

Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs: How to Use Images in PowerPoint

A side-by-side comparison I saw recently made the above point beautifully. On one side was Bill Gates using PowerPoint, with a slide behind him showing four or five bullet points. In other words, a "typical" PowerPoint slide. On the other side of the screen was Steve Jobs. He was standing center stage, and behind him was . . . an image. No bullet points, sentences, or busy graphs. Just a single image of an iPhone.

Guess which presentation was more arresting visually. 

PowerPoint and Language: Be Careful! 

There's a reason speakers create PowerPoint slides filled with words: these speakers are simply more comfortable with language than visual designs. That's not a surprise, since we've all spent thousands of classroom hours learning how to read and write, and little or none of that time learning the graphic arts.

But given the stubborn fact that PowerPoint is a visual tool, we'd all be better presenters if we thought and created more along visual lines. Even if you don't learn to do so, though, you can certainly create more effective slides using language. In fact, there are two critically important ways you  must use language effectively when presenting with PowerPoint, regardless of how talented you are in creating visually engaging presentations.

Use them, and you''ll become recognized as a powerful presenter who knows how to speak persuasively . Here they are:

1. Use Title Slides for More Impact in Your PowerPoint Presentations

Did you ever watch a silent movie? If you have, you realize how important title slides are to helping viwers understand what's happening on the screen. Deprived of the ability to be heard speaking, silent movie actors became masters at using physical expression to display emotion, intention, and motive. In fact, if you want to understand how body language works with audiences, watch some silent films and learn from the real pros.

Speaking of increasing your influence through body language, learn the secrets of using movement and gestures effectively in any situation. Download my essential cheat sheet ,  "5 Secrets of Powerful Body Language."

But physicality isn't everything. And so silent movies used title slides to inform movie-goers concerning what was taking place in the story. Here are some title slides from the 1923 silent classic,  The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring the great Lon Chaney:

"Notre Dame, the Cathedral Church of Paris [image of church]: A spiritual haven in a brutal age . . . a sanctuary where the persecuted could find protection."

"Esmeralda, a child of mystery . . . whom Clopin bought from gypsies and raised as his own."

"Our day is coming, when we'll bow our heads to no man!"

Like silent-movie fans, audiences in business presentations also have to absorb large amounts of information. Instead of showing slide after slide filled with bullet points, employ the second tool for using language effectively in PowerPoint decks: effective slide headings. In just a few words, you can alert the audience to what is coming next, so they'll primed to place this information in its proper context and to remember it afterwards.

2. Effective Slide Headings in PowerPoint Will Help You Accomplish Your Purpose

If you currently use slides with that display headings such as Agenda, Introduction, Thank You, and Any Questions?, you're wasting a golden opportunitie to persuade listeners and advance your story as you speak.

Headings like those above are boring and achieve nothing. Audiences have seen them a thousand times; and besides, what is their purpose? We can clearly see from the content of a slide that it shows an agenda. And the word "Introduction" is equally obvious (and in this case, probably unnecessary). 

Instead, start the process of informing, persuading, inspiring, or activating the audience right away, by using the heading on the slide itself to help get your message across.  For instance, instead of the word "Agenda," my slide in a recent public speaking training I conducted read:  

Your Path to More Dynamic Presentation Skills

What the slide actually showed was  an agenda. But I intended that slide to help persuade the workshop attendees that the day-long training that had just started would be worth their time. A slide headed "Agenda" would, I think, have had less chance of doing that, instead starting the workshop off blandly.

So rather than a slide that reads "Introduction," ask yourself what you actually want to introduce and how you're going to launch the first part of your talk. That is, get listeners on the right wavelength immediately. For instance, one of my recent slides along these lines read:

5 Ways to Speak as a Leader

That one introduced the approach I was going to take with the material that followed. Another slide read:

Find a Physical Expression for the Words You Are Saying

since it introduced a section on using body language in public speaking.

The Language that You Use in PowerPoint Should Further Your Purpose

As always when you use PowerPoint, the story you tell, and your passion and skill in telling it are critical to your success. As part of that process, why not use the two simple tools above to enrich your talk and, far more important, use verbal content to further your purpose?  

Thank you. Any questions? (Imagine you just heard me saying those last two words, instead of seeing them, lonely and a little forlorn, on a plain PowerPoint slide.)

You should follow me on Twitter  here .

Tags: persuasive speaking , PowerPoint skills , PowerPoint secrets , effective PowerPoint techniques , PowerPoint , The Genard Method , Dr. Gary Genard

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• 7 steps to building a compelling PowerPoint presentation
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7 min read — by Amos Wong

How many times have you sat through a PowerPoint presentation that raised more questions than it answered? For instance, just look at the image shown above. Or how often have you seen slides so packed with information that you can’t even read them before the presenter has moved onto the next slide? If you have been in such situations, this blog is for you.

Avoiding these problems isn’t as simple as it seems when you’re creating a presentation from scratch and have a lot of information to present. The trick is to break it down into manageable pieces, starting with the broad overview and then circling in on the details. To help you do it, this article examines a 7-step process for building a compelling PowerPoint presentation, including how to structure it, lay out slides and create charts that support your message.

Learn more about how to build a better slide deck with our free eBook on PowerPoint best practices

1. Determine your presentation type

The first step in building your PowerPoint presentation is determining which type of presentation you’re giving. This helps clarify your overarching goal, while also influencing how you structure your slides.

Presentations typically fall under one or more of the following categories representing a continuum from light to heavy content:

• Key message presentations: This type of presentation is usually lighter in content and tells a persuasive story, such as a TED talk or pitch deck.
• Recurring reports: Recurring reports include more repetitive presentations like monthly reports or slide decks for team meetings. They often include more detail to document results, trends or activities.
• Insights and research outcomes: Presentations such as survey data or market trend reports distill information from large datasets into high-level conclusions.
• Documentation: This type of presentation provides detailed summaries of findings, typically with many charts and limited commentary depending on the audience.

2. Build your story

Your next step is to ask what message or story you want the audience to walk away with. With your top-level message in hand, you can then begin to structure your slide deck around it.

This is the essence of the Pyramid Principle , a strategy for creating effective business communications ubiquitous in the consulting world. With the Pyramid Principle, you lead with your most important idea, followed by supporting ideas and facts. If your conclusion is that Acme Company should enter a new market, say it up front. Then go through each supporting argument in order of relative strength.

An important corollary to the above is the MECE Principle , which stands for mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

Compared with presenting a laundry list of ideas, MECE is a way to group them in a way that covers all relevant points without overlap. Using MECE to organize and group your ideas ensures a logically sound argument, while making the information easier for your audience to absorb.

3. Write your action titles

Once you have a defined structure for your PowerPoint presentation, you can get down to creating your slides. One of the most important things to remember as you do this is that each slide should present exactly one idea summarized in a single action title. All information presented on the slide must support the action title, including any charts. It is also important to avoid including any visual or textual elements that may convey or imply a different or conflicting message apart from the one in the action title.

One common strategy is to first write action titles for each slide to ensure they tell a complete story on their own. From there, you can go back to each slide and add details such as bullet points and charts.

4. Use a clean layout and formatting

When creating slides, it is crucial to avoid overcrowding them with excessive information or elements that can create visual confusion. One way to approach this is to visualize your slide as a table, laying out elements in columns and rows. Commonly used slide layouts consist of either two to three or four quadrants, depending on the nature of the content and the desired visual representation. You’ll also want to consider:

• The rule of thirds: Placing elements at one-third or two-thirds from the edge of the slide, and particularly where these gridlines intersect, is a universal rule for building a visually appealing slide.
• White space: Resist the temptation to pack too much into your slides. Leaving sufficient white space is essential for readability and helping the audience take in each slide’s main point.
• Presentation type: Key message presentations will have less content on each slide, compared with documentation presentations that include more detail.
• Fonts: Use the same font color and size for titles and body text throughout your slide deck, ideally in a sans serif font like Arial. Titles should be 20 to 24 point size, with body text 12 to 18 point based on the amount of content on the slides.

5. Organize your bullet points

A long list of bullet points is confusing and hard for audiences to digest. Instead, stick to three or five bullets, with a maximum of seven. Again, avoid packing in too much information, and all text should support the action title.

To improve clarity, write bullet points using parallel structure. In other words, if one bullet is a sentence, all of them should be in sentence form. The same goes for using sentence fragments or individual words. Each bullet should start with the same part of speech (e.g., noun, verb, adjective).

6. Choose the right chart

All chart data should be relevant to the slide’s action title. Say It with charts by Gene Zelazny offers a useful approach to choosing your chart in three steps:

• Identify which aspect of the data your chart will highlight
• Determine what you’re comparing, whether it’s components, change over time or correlation
• Select your chart according to the comparison you’re trying to make

7. Format your chart

Once you create a basic chart, you’ll want to format and annotate it in a way that conveys your message without confusion. This means:

• Including a chart title that summarizes the data and aligns with the slide’s action title
• Labeling both the x-axis and the y-axis with measurement units
• Using color sparingly to highlight the chart’s conclusion, for example using muted tones with one key vertical bar highlighted in a bolder color
• Adding trendlines to charts that can visually indicate patterns or trends in the data, for example, CAGRs
• Displaying legends to help viewers understand the meaning of different colors, symbols, or patterns used in the chart

A PowerPoint add-in like think-cell can help you create better slide decks and charts faster. Dynamic charts, process flows, annotations and text boxes all help organize complex information into visually sophisticated presentations, so you can spend less time struggling with formatting and more time on building a compelling story.

Building a PowerPoint presentation from scratch can seem like a tall order. By breaking it down into manageable steps, however, you can streamline the process while ensuring your audience leaves with a clear understanding of your message.

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10 Must-Do Tips for Persuasive Presentations

Prepping for an important presentation? As you’re purposefully planning, think about the following 10 criteria of a successful presentation. These are best practice strategies that can help you turn any presentation into a great conversation, and get what you want in record time.

1. Frame communication

Discuss the purpose of communication up front

2. Be audience focused

Communicate with your audience in mind

Demonstrate you understand your audience’s mindset

3. Know the Content

Demonstrate understanding of the content you're presenting, including understanding an of the business and the case for change

4. Thoughtfully organize

Present in a clear and well-organized fashion

Build in breaks/pauses to check for understanding in a purposeful way (questions are purposefully built-into presentation organization to check for understanding and create dialogue)

5. Use handouts/tools

Use visuals appropriately to support your messages

6. Have clear messages

Cover core messages clearly and tailor them to the audience

7. Provide context

Discuss and emphasize rationale to add meaning

8. Be relevant

Customize and make messages relevant to the team (how the team contributes/fits in)

9. Have a dialogue and check for understanding

Ask questions to clarify others’ point of view

Ask questions to ensure messages were understood

Support honest expression of others’ points of view

Express reactions and opinions without intimidating others

10. Presentation style

When you practice your presentation, have several colleagues listen and give you feedback on the Top 10 criteria above, and how you did. Then, incorporate their feedback, knowing that practice makes perfect!

What strategies do you use to give winning presentations?

—David Grossman

Click below to download your free infographic of 10 Must-Do Tips for Persuasive Presentations:

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How to give more persuasive presentations: A Q&A with Nancy Duarte

Stepping onto the TED or TEDx stage — or speaking in front of any group of people, for that matter — is truly nerve-wracking. Will you remember everything you wanted to say, or get so discombobulated that you skip over major points? Will the audience be receptive to your ideas, or will you notice a guy in row three nodding off to sleep?

Presentation expert Nancy Duarte , who gave the TED Talk “ The secret structure of great talks ,” has built her career helping people express their ideas in presentations. The author of  Slide:ology  and  Resonate , Duarte has just released a new book through the Harvard Business Review:  The HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations .

What would you say are the three keys to giving a great presentation?

The number one thing, I think, is to be audience-centric. To take the time to think through who the audience is and develop all your material from a place of empathy toward them. You’re asking them to adopt your idea, which means they may have to abandon a belief they hold as true — and that’s hard. So, know your audience — take a walk in their shoes. What keeps them up at night? How are they wired to resist your message? Most presenters are consumed with preparing their content rapidly, which makes the material about their own narrow perspective. By flipping that paradigm to an audience-centric approach, your material will resonate and the audience can feel a deeper connection to you and your material.

Number two, you need to understand your role in the presentation. So many people feel like they’re the central figure — kind of like the hero of the story — because they’re the one talking the most. But in reality, your role is that of a mentor — you should be giving the audience a magical gift or a special tool, or helping them get unstuck in some way. You have to defer to your audience. When you put your idea out there for an audience to contend with — if they reject your idea, your idea will die. You have to think of it as, “The speaker needs the audience more than the audience needs the speaker.” Then you’ll start to approach a material with your audience in mind – you’ll have more of a stance of humility than one of arrogance. That will help you create the kind of movement needed to get your idea to spread.

And then the third thing — wrap your content in story. A story serves like the sugarcoating on the outside of a pill in some ways — it just makes it go down easier. If you look at preliterate generations for thousands and thousands of years, stories would pass down for generation after generation after generation — and stay almost completely intact. Yet, a lot of people can’t remember the last presentation they sat through. So, using principles of story — the tension and release that happens in a story — that’s what will help persuade the audience toward your idea.

What do you feel like you learned from giving your own TED Talk?

I learned so much. Being the “Presentation Lady,” I knew I couldn’t suck at it. The hardest part was getting [my talk] to fit within this finite amount of time. So I trimmed and trimmed, keeping in mind that you still have to nail why this is important to the audience. I had a person coach me and point out places where I could trim. “You took too long here, and that made this part of emphasis too long.” I worked with the timer counting up until I knew I was within the time window — then what I did was work with the timer counting down so I’d know, “When I’m a fourth of the way through, I should be on this slide. When I’m halfway through, I need to be on this slide.” I created markers in my mind so I would know how I was running on time. Sure enough, I finished the talk and I had six seconds left on the clock.

It was a great experience for me because I hadn’t gone through it myself. I’d coached people through it but — wow — to actually be a victim was interesting. I learned the power of rehearsing. If you rehearse really, really, really well — it looks improvisational. Some people rehearse to a point where they’re robotic, and they sound like they have memorized their presentation and didn’t take it to the next level. Going from sounding memorized and canned to sounding natural is a lot of work.

So, the classic advice for stage fright is to imagine the audience in their underwear. What do you recommend people do to calm their nerves?

I don’t usually get nervous, but when I got on [the TED] stage, I was nervous because it’s pretty high stakes. I recommend doing some breathing exercises — breathe in as deep as you can, and then take a couple more big gasps. Then, release it really slowly. That calms my heart down. But my favorite piece of advice isn’t my own — it’s from a guy named Nick Morgan. He said, “What you need to do right before you walk on stage is think of someone that you love dearly.” Doing that, I felt the chemistry in my whole body change. My shoulders relaxed and my heart melted. That feeling of affection makes your body calm itself down. That’s a really great way to stop stage fright.

What is the best way to start creating a presentation?

My best advice is to not start in PowerPoint. Presentation tools force you to think through information linearly, and you really need to start by thinking of the whole instead of the individual lines. I encourage people to use 3×5 note cards or sticky notes — write one idea per note. I tape mine up on the wall and then study them. Then I arrange them and rearrange them — just work and work until the structure feels sound. And from that sound structure, you start to fill it in using a presentation tool.

[For visuals], I think people tend to go with the easiest, fastest idea. Like, “I’m going to put a handshake in front of a globe to mean partnership!” Well, how many handshakes in front of a globe do we have to look at before we realize it’s a total cliche? Another common one — the arrow in the middle of a bullseye. Really? Everyone else is thinking that way. The slides themselves are supposed to be a mnemonic device for the audience so they can remember what you had to say. They’re not just a teleprompter for the speaker. A bullseye isn’t going to make anyone remember anything. Don’t go for the first idea. Think about the point you’re trying to make and brainstorm individual moments that you’re trying to emphasize. Think to the second, the third, the fourth idea — and by the time you get to about the tenth idea, those will be the more clever memorable things for the audience.

One thing that is really different about giving a TED Talk is the fact that you know it will be filmed. How do you think about the difference between live presentations and ones that will exist on video?

On stage, it feels really awkward to do large movements because — normally in life — we’re talking to someone in a more intimate setting and moving your arms really big feels melodramatic. But on the stage, you have to move your body in really big gestures. It feels awkward at first if you’re not used to it, so you have to kind of close your eyes and get used to it. Say things and move largely. Take big bold steps forward, big bold steps backward. You have this grand stage and people don’t use the space enough. I think one of the great things that Jill Bolte Taylor did was how she used her body. Her arms stretched all the way up when she talked about nirvana. Then she when she talks about her whole soul feeling constricted, she brings her hands down and folds her arms down in front of her. She’s using her body as a prop. That’s an important way to create meaning.

Also, with video, a tech rehearsal is important. Your audience on video is exponentially larger than the people in the room. So by familiarizing yourself with the cameras, you can at least look in that general direction. You know how you’re supposed to look around the audience — look and hold for five seconds, look and hold for five seconds? You should look at the camera as if it’s a human. Get used to seeing that circular lens as a face. Feel like it’s a person you’re talking to, because that audience on camera needs to feel like they’re there and that you’re looking right at them.

To me, presentations are the most powerful device. You can’t really name a movement that didn’t start with the spoken word. TED was once this exclusive, amazing event where ideas were exchanged, but you’ve moved to treating presentations as a media type. You guys have been so refined at it, that what it’s done is created a movement. What TED has done is made a platform for introverts, for scientists, for inventors — to share their ideas in a way that’s clear and appeals to a broad audience so that their ideas spread and get adopted. It’s completely changed how people present. It’s created this desire to be excellent in communication.

When you look at even how businesses communicated in the ’30’s, ’40’s and ’50’s — they were so much clearer and well-crafted. I recently went to the Stanford Library and I got a bunch of old GE Board meetings from, like, 1957. And I thought, “These are so beautiful!” Their presentations referenced history, they quoted things, they crafted their words in such a beautiful way. Then PowerPoint entered into the mix and suddenly there wasn’t any desire to craft anymore. I think TED Talks have brought the desire for the craft back.

Your new book is from the Harvard Business Review. Is it intended for someone who is in business, or for anyone?

All of my books are for anyone who has an idea that they need to communicate! I loved working with Harvard Business Review and I think because of the publisher, business professionals may be more interested in this book. But anyone with an idea can benefit from it. It’s a guidebook, so that people can think, “Oh, I need to know how to do this specific thing. I’m going to go get this book and find that one thing.”

Want more advice on giving talks? Our curator Chris Anderson is writing the official TED guide to public speaking —to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in spring 2016. Titled Talk This Way! , it will be packed with insights on what makes talks work.

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60 Effective PowerPoint Presentation Tips & Tricks (Giant List)

Here's a PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks guide that takes you through how to make a good PowerPoint presentation.

The best PowerPoint presentations shouldn’t be remembered. Instead, they should fall into the background to support you and the message you’re trying to get across.

Unlike good PowerPoint presentations , bad PowerPoint presentations are a distraction. You may remember them, but not in a good way.

You’ve seen them before. They might have millions of lines of text. Or a disjointed flow to the slides. Even worse, some slides feature ugly photos and poor design that detract from the message you’re trying to get across. That can even hurt your credibility as a professional or speaker.

This article will take you from finding your initial topic to learning how to make a great PowerPoint presentation. Our guide covers everything in between so that you learn how to present a PowerPoint like a pro.

These Microsoft PowerPoint presentation tips and guidelines are organized into sections. So cut straight to the advice you need and come back when you’re ready for the next steps.

Guide to Making Great Presentations (Free eBook Download)

Also, download our Free eBook: The Complete Guide to Making Great Presentations . It’s the deepest resource for learning effective presentation skills for a PPT.

This eBook covers the complete presentation process. It takes the PowerPoint tips and tricks you learn in this article further. Learn how to write your presentation, design it like a pro, and prepare it to present powerfully. It’s another great source for presentation design tips.

Master PowerPoint (Free Course): 15 Essential Tips

This article is full of helpful tips so you can build a powerful presentation. You can also find more PowerPoint tips in this video lesson:

To learn even more about how to make a PowerPoint look good, review the huge list of tips below.

What Makes a PowerPoint Presentation Effective?

Knowing how to use PowerPoint and work within it quickly is helpful. But more important is making a good presentation that hits all your goals. A great PowerPoint presentation is:

• Prepared to Win . Research, plan, and prepare your presentation professionally. It helps you deliver an effective message to your target audience.
• Designed Correctly . Your visual points should stand out without overwhelming your audience. A good PowerPoint visual shouldn’t complicate your message.
• Practiced to Perfection . Rehearse your timing and delivery so that your points land as practiced with a live audience.
• Delivered With Poise . Present with a relaxed inner calm and confident outward projection. Give your audience warmth, excitement, and energy.
• Free From Mistakes . Avoid typos, cheesy clip art, and mistakes like reading directly from your slides.

Consider this your all-inclusive guide to how to make a good presentation. We’ll look at preparing your presentation and explore how to design it in PowerPoint. Plus, we’ll cover how to practice and nail your delivery successfully come presentation time.

We’ll also address what not to do in these tips for PowerPoint presentations—so you can sidestep any big mistakes. Now let’s dig into these tips for effective PowerPoint presentations.

Killer Presentation Preparation Tips to Get Started Right

Before even opening PowerPoint, start by addressing these things. These Microsoft PowerPoint tips and tricks will ensure that you’re prepared for your presentation:

1. Know Your Stuff

Your presentation isn’t about your slides alone. It’s about the message you want to get across. Before filling in stats, facts and figures, think about the narrative that’ll be discussed, why, and in what order.

2. Write It Out

Start in a Word or Google doc, and storyboard or script the entire presentation. This will give you an idea of how the information presented will flow and how viewers will see it in sequence. Learn the complete writing process .

3. Highlight What’s Most Important

A presentation covers the most crucial pieces only. Whatever you’ve been working on that led to this—a paper, a work project, a new product design—doesn’t need to be shared in its entirety. Pick key points and put the rest in an “Appendix” to refer to during the Q&A session at the end.

4. Know Your Audience

How you talk to a room full of medical professionals should be different from the way you address a room full of young entrepreneurs. Everything, in fact, is different: your topic selection, the language you use, the examples you give to illustrate points. The little bits of humor you include should be tailored specifically with your target audience in mind.

Understand your audience’s needs to create a successful PowerPoint presentation. Customize your content to meet their specific requirements.

5. Rehearse! (Yes, Already)

It’s never too early to get used to the rhythm of your presentation and take note of points you want to emphasize. While saying it out loud, you’ll start to develop a “feel” for the material. You’ll notice that some things work well, while others don’t and might need to be worked around.

6. Rewrite After You Rehearse

As you’re rehearsing your presentation, you’re bound to stumble over sections that don’t quite flow naturally. Instead of reworking your delivery, it might be time to consider the content and rewrite the areas that served as stumbling blocks.

“Editing is hard. ‘It’s good enough,’ is a phrase wannabes use. Leaders take editing seriously.” – Anthony Trendl

The most important part of creating a great presentation is the writing stage. The second most important stage is rewriting.

7. Share With a Friend

If the stakes are high for your presentation, it’s never too early to get feedback from those that you trust. Here’s an article that helps you collaborate as a team on a PowerPoint presentation. Get PowerPoint design tips from those that you trust when you collaborate.

Simple Tips to Design Your PowerPoint Presentation Better

Second only to you (the information you bring and how you present it) is your PowerPoint slides. If not designed well, a PowerPoint can be disengaging or distracting (regardless of the content quality). Here are some presentation design tips to make sure this doesn’t happen to you:

8. Keep Your Slides Simple

This is one of the most important PowerPoint presentation tips to follow when designing your slides. Keep in mind that less is more (effective.) A cluttered slide is distracting. It causes confusion for an audience: Which part of the slide should I focus on? Should I read the slide or pay attention to the presenter?

A simple, visually appealing slide will engage your audience, keeping them on track with your main points. Here’s an example of a simple slide that serves its purpose perfectly:

Minimalist slide templates like Nook can help you resist the urge to clutter your slides.

9. Limit Words on Your Slides

Piggybacking on the last point, less is more effective. If possible, avoid bullets altogether. Otherwise cut them to just a few simple words. The audience should be listening, not reading.

10. Use High-Quality Photos and Graphics

One of the most important tips for quality PowerPoint presentations is to use high-quality photos and graphics.

Earlier in this tutorial, you saw Envato Elements, an all-you-can-download service with PPT tips inside of templates. Those pre-built designs are a beginner’s best friend. They’re even better when paired with Elements’ unlimited library of stock photos .

People are more likely to take you seriously if your presentation is visually appealing. Users view attractive design as more usable. Similarly, they’ll view a more attractive PowerPoint as more effective.

11. Use Accurate and Relevant Charts and Graphs

Charts and graphs can also be distracting if they’re not used right. Make sure your information design is simple and clean so that the audience doesn’t spend the entire time trying to decipher what your X axis says. Learn more about PPT data presentation .

12. Use High-Quality, Fresh Templates

Have you seen the old PowerPoint template that looks like worn paper and uses ink splashes? Yeah, so has your audience. Templates can be distracting if they’re too basic or if the design feels dated. You need one with great design options.

Costs are always a concern. But when you use Envato Elements, you’ve got everything you need to create a great PowerPoint presentation . That’s thanks to the incredible all-you-can-download subscription package.

The best PowerPoint tips and tricks can hardly compare to the value of using a template while building your presentation.

On Envato Elements, there are thousands of PowerPoint design templates that are ready to use. Instead of designing a presentation from scratch, start with a template! Just add your specifics to the placeholders.

Templates like Galaxi are impressively designed and waiting for your slide specifics.

The best PowerPoint design tips save you time. And there’s no tip more powerful than this one: use a pre-built template . It helps you master how to present a PowerPoint without spending all your time in the app.

13. Choose Appropriate Fonts

Fonts are an important part of engaging your audience. Fonts and typography choices have a subconscious effect on viewers. They can characterize your company’s presentation and brand either positively or negatively. Make sure that you’re choosing fonts that are professional and modern.

14. Choose Color Well

Like font choice, colors cause specific subconscious reactions from viewers. Choosing an outdated color combination for your presentation will render it ineffective.

Below is an example of the Popsicle PowerPoint template , which has a modern presentation color choice:

The Popsicle PowerPoint template highlights how harmonized color palettes can create beautiful slides.

15. Clean + Simple Formatting Makes All the Difference!

We’ve got a full tutorial on how to make a good presentation slide . Give it a read through and review the accompanying video. Just remember, less is more. The focus is you and your message , not your slides.

16. Make Sure All Objects Are Aligned

A simple way to create a well-designed presentation is to make sure all items on a slide are intentionally aligned. To do this, hold down Shift and select all the objects you want to include. Then choose Arrange in the options bar and apply Alignment Type .

17. Limit Punctuation

This isn’t the place for exclamation points. Emphasize your points (while speaking). Don’t enlist punctuation to do this for you. (Leave these at home!!!)

18. Avoid Over-Formatting Your Points

This PowerPoint presentation tip is simple. There’s no need to have every word of every bullet point capitalized, or to have all your bullet points in title case. If possible, drop bullets altogether. Again, the simpler, the better!

Limit your text formatting, including reducing the use of bullets, underline, and other effects. Compare the before example on the left to the revised version on the right.

19. Combine Information With Graphics in PowerPoint

One of the most powerful presentation skills for PPT is using infographics. With the right type of visuals, slides come to life and reduce the text in favor of graphics.

Infographics help combine information with graphics. It’s easier to explain complex ideas when you use visual formats that are intuitive.

Practice Presentation Tips: Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse!

Delivery is probably more important than the actual content. Here’s how to become more aware of your own unique ticks, and how to present like a polished pro:

20. I’ll Say It Again, Rehearse!

Just do it. Again and again. Experiment with pauses, gestures, and body language. Practice around one hour for every minute of your speech.

21. Practice With a Timer

Consistency is key to an effective PowerPoint presentation. The timing should be similar (ideally the same) each time you rehearse. This one will especially pay off when it’s time to present in front of your audience.

22. Slow It Down

Many of the best speakers today intentionally speak slowly. You’ll have the chance to emphasize, appear more thoughtful, and make your information easier to digest.

23. Pause More Often

Like the prior tip, pausing more often allows your main points to be emphasized and gives time for information to sink in. You need to let key points breathe a little before rushing into the next section.

24. Record Yourself

Use your phone’s voice recorder. Assess and critique yourself. Consider:

• Are your pauses too short or too long?
• Are you speaking slowly enough? Too slow?
• When you’re nervous, does your voice get high like the mice in Cinderella?

It’s always weird to hear your own voice recorded; don’t stress it. Use this as a time to adjust.

25. Choose Three Focal Points in the Room

If you stare at the same spot (or even creepier, the same person) the entire time, your presentation will be ineffective (and awkward.) People will be distracted by you, wondering what you’re staring at.

Try this: pick three points in the room (typically: left, center, right). Take time to direct your delivery toward each physical focal point in the room. Also, focus on the center when making your primary points.

26. Vary Your Sentence Length

This makes you sound more interesting, and it’s easier for your audience to follow. Think short and punchy. Or go long and complex for dramatic effect.

27. Modulate!

Don’t speak in monotone for your whole presentation. Be conscious of raising and lowering your voice tone. Otherwise, people will tune you out, and you’ll come across like the teacher in Charlie Brown.

28. Practice in Front of a Mirror

What you look like is as important as how you sound. Pretend you’re having a normal conversation, and allow your hands to move with your speech to emphasize your points. Just don’t get carried away! (I’m thinking Brene Brown or President Obama , not your Aunt Jamie after a few gin and tonics.)

29. Use “Present Mode” When Rehearsing

When you finally are ready to hit the Present button in PowerPoint, make sure you use the Present Mode option. This allows you (and only you) to view extra notes about each slide—just in case you forget something!

30. Practice With New Audiences

If possible, try doing a few real live test runs as a webinar or even at a local Toastmasters organization to get some feedback from a live audience.

31. Engage the Audience by Asking Questions

There’s no reason that a presentation should be one-sided. Why not invert the format and ask your audience a question?

To learn how to create a slide that kicks off a Q&A, use this article . These PowerPoint design tips help you create an engaging and exciting discussion.

Helpful Tips to Step Up and Deliver Come Presentation Time

When the actual day arrives, there are only a few last PowerPoint presentation tips and guidelines to keep in mind:

32. Take a Deep Breath

Deep breathing is proven to relieve stress. It’s simple, and it’ll help you remain calm and in the moment, even up to the last minute before starting.

33. Lighten Up Your Mood

Tell yourself a joke or watch a funny video clip. Do this before the presentation, of course. Research concludes that happy people are more productive. More productive is more focused and able to perform better.

34. Remind Yourself to Take It Slow

When we’re stressed or nervous (or both), we tend to speak faster. Consciously, take yet another deep breath and remind yourself to take it slow!

35. Read the Room

Every presentation room has a temperature. It’s your job as a speaker to gauge it and tailor your presentation to it.

Here’s a great example. Layoffs are coming at a company, and you’re asked to speak to an audience. Even if the audience isn’t personally affected by the actions, you’ve got to consider the morale of the workforce.

Skilled speakers have a knack for reading the energy of the room and adjusting their presentation on the fly.

The last thing that group will want to hear is how strong the economy is and why the company is the best place to work. That doesn’t mean that you’ve got to align to their uncertainty, but don’t go too far against the grain while presenting.

Robert Kennedy III is a master of bringing energy and aligning a speech to the audience. Here’s his advice for adjusting:

“It can be hard to wake up a “dead” crowd but go for it. Most of all, don’t take their energy personally. Focus on serving them with every bit of your fiber then leave empty.”

36. Fake It ‘Til You Make It!

Go forward with confidence. If you act confident, you’ll start to feel more confident. Move slowly with grace, speak clearly, smile, wear something nice. You’ll appear confident to all attendees (no matter how you feel internally).

PowerPoint Presentation Tips and Tricks to Help Avoid Mistakes (What Not to Do)

Most importantly, focus on what you can do to make your presentation better. There are a few important things not to do that we’ve got to address. Here are a handful of PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks to help you avoid missteps.

37. Stop With the Sound Effects

Sound effects are distracting and outdated. In most cases, avoid them. Add audio or music to your presentation to inject interest or highlight an important point, but it’s something to take extra care with. If you insert audio, then make sure your use really connects with your audience and has a fresh approach. Otherwise, it’s best to leave it out.

38. Don’t Use Flashy Slide Transitions

Again, this is distracting and outdated. Use transitions and subtle animations in your PowerPoint presentation. But you need to take care and do it right .

39. Beware of Clip Art

This PowerPoint presentation tip shouldn’t even have to be said. But please, please don’t use clip art. Use professional graphics instead.

40. Don’t Be Afraid to Be Afraid

The fear of public speaking is a real one. Many beginners think that if they’re feeling nervous that a presentation won’t go well or succeed. That might lead them to cancel the presentation.

Here’s a tip from expert Sandra Zimmer, who leads The Self-Expression Center on conquering your fears before you take the stage:

“Get out of your head and into your body. I do this through a grounding exercise that really works to calm nerves and bring you present in the moment.”

If you think that public speaking fears aren’t normal, you might never give your award-winning presentation. So don’t be afraid to be afraid, and acknowledge it’s part of the process!

41. Don’t Read Directly During Your PowerPoint Presentation

If you spend your entire presentation looking at the screen or your note cards, you’re sure to lose your audience’s attention. They’ll disengage from what you’re saying, and your presentation will fall flat.

Reading from your paper or screen also makes it look like you’re not prepared. Many people do it, but no one should. As a general rule, only present something you know well and have, at least mostly, memorized the main points of.

42. Don’t Miss Out on PowerPoint Customizations

Many new PowerPoint users often make significant mistakes when using Envato Elements designs.

The best way to see how to make a good presentation PPT is to start with designs from others. That means using a template, but that doesn’t mean you can’t customize them!

Don’t forget that PowerPoint templates are infinitely customizable. Think of them as guides with built-in presentation design tips.

To see more presentation tips that show you what not to do, make sure to check out our guide .

Work in PowerPoint More Effectively (Tips & Tricks to Level Up Your PPT Skills)

These PowerPoint tips will help you get the most out of the application to level up your next presentation. Let’s dive in.

43. Use the Visual Guides

When you’re designing your next PowerPoint presentation, it helps to create a sense of visual rhythm. Slides that have objects aligned and centered are more likely to resonate with an audience.

44. Use a Few Animations (Tastefully)

Animations in effective PowerPoint presentations are a slippery slope. We’ve all sat through presentations where there were so many objects in motion that it was easy to lose focus on the key ideas in the presentation.

But that’s why animations get an unfairly bad reputation. Use animations to create motion and hold an audience’s attention. Use them sparingly and on key elements on your slide, and you’ll capture that attention properly.

45. Stage Key Content With Animations

You just learned that animations should avoid being distracting. But there’s an important principle to using animations properly. It’s called staging content.

Staging content means that the content appears step by step. There’s nothing worse than overwhelming an audience with all your content at once. But when you stage content, bring it on step by step.

Take it from presentation pro Suzannah Baum :

“If you’re sharing a slide with lots of different points on it, using the animation to reveal those points one at a time is a way to keep the presenter’s content flowing smoothly.”

For more animation presentation tips and tricks, follow our guide .

46. Add a Video to Your PowerPoint

When you’re sharing a big idea in your presentation, it helps to share your perspective from a few different angles. Adding a video to supplement your content can do just that. Luckily, it’s easy to add and embed a YouTube video in your next PowerPoint presentation.

47. Add Charts & Graphs

Charts and graphs can help you tell stories with data. It’s easy for an audience to zone out when you throw a big data table or set of statistics at them.

instead, convert those to charts and graphs. Try out our tutorial to learn how to edit those graphs.

48. Build Your Own Infographics With SmartArt

Earlier in this tutorial, we gave you one of my favorite PowerPoint design tips: use infographic templates.

Here’s another. One of my favorite PowerPoint features is SmartArt, which allows you to build infographics right inside the app.

You don’t have to use another graphic design app like Photoshop or Illustrator to add visuals. Instead, try out SmartArt to help you build graphics that are easy to update.

49. Use Presenter View

Remember that when you use the PowerPoint, you’ re the presentation. The slides are just there to reinforce what you’ve got to say and support your speaking points.

That’s why I always recommend using Presenter view. More often than not, you’re going to have several displays. Presenter view shows your content on your screen, while your presentation is displayed on another screen.

50. Track Your PowerPoint Changes

One of my favorite PowerPoint design tips is to collaborate. Those who know you best will suggest compelling changes that are sure to help you succeed.

As you start collaborating on your presentation, it helps to keep track of proposed and included PowerPoint changes. Use this article to track changes made by others.

10 More Advanced PowerPoint Tips & Tricks

Really need to wow an audience with a good PowerPoint presentation? Give these tips a try to make an unforgettable impression:

51. Engage With an Interactive Quiz

A good PowerPoint presentation gets your audience involved. One of the best PowerPoint tricks is to do that with a quiz. By engaging audiences, a quiz makes your slides memorable.

By adding trivia, you’ll see how to present a PowerPoint in a way that people will love. Channel your inner game-show host today. MIDTEST is a  good PowerPoint presentation  with quiz slides.

52. Illustrate With Custom Image Masks

One of the top PowerPoint tips is to illustrate your slides. But you can go beyond simple, rectangular images on each slide.

The Burte template is full of  PowerPoint tricks , including custom image masks. Image masks shape photos into unique works of art. And thanks to premium templates, you can style photos just like this. Masks overlay your photos onto geometric shapes, instantly elevating your style.

53. Print Handouts With Extra Notes

Wonder how to give a good presentation PPT that audiences will remember? Give them a piece of it to take home.

PowerPoint makes it easy to print handouts with room for notes on the page. This way, audiences can keep copies of your slides, along with their own notes. This is the perfect way to ensure everyone engages with and retains your content.

54. Make Bulk Edits With Master Slides

When you think about how to present a PowerPoint, consider your branding. That means keeping your logo front and center in the eyes of an audience. But if you’re working with a lengthy slide deck, this could seem daunting.

That’s where master slides come in. They’re common in premium layouts, and they’re a leading example of presentation skills for PPT. Master slides let you make bulk edits fast.

55. Shrink File Sizes for Sharing

Many of the top presentation tips involve making your slides more accessible. Often, that involves sharing them with audiences online.

You’ll often find that email clients and cloud services limit the size of files that you share. This can be a problem with large PPT slide decks. But there are a few quick steps you can take to reduce PPT file size. Cut graphics, scale down photos, and more.

56. Map Processes With Flowcharts

As you consider how to do a good PowerPoint presentation, think of ease of understanding. After all, you’re trying to explain something to your audience.

The  Flowcharts in Infographics  template seamlessly illustrates ideas and processes. A flowchart maps out a process in a visual way. Instead of resorting to endless narration, try a quick illustration like this. It saves you time and effort, and your audience is sure to thank you.

57. Use Brand-Specific Colors

Using presentation skills for PPT helps form an association between your message and branding. There’s no better way to do that than with your brand colors.

PowerPoint makes it easy to change color themes, adding your brand colors and logo to each slide. This is one of the top PowerPoint tricks for marketing presentations.

58. Build Social Media Posts in PPT

A good PowerPoint presentation doesn’t have to be shared through a projector. Use the app and templates to build amazing illustrations to use anywhere.

A template like Soffee helps you learn how to present a PowerPoint easily with a pre-built design.

Try using PowerPoint to create social media posts. It helps you engage with your audience, with no need to design custom layouts from scratch.

59. Be Industry-Specific

One of the top presentation tips in 2024 is to be industry-specific. That means avoiding generic layouts and choosing something more customized.

This offers two key advantages. First, you save time by having layouts built for you. Second, you gain design inspiration for your specific topic. Themed templates are truly the best of both worlds.

The Medical and Health template is a good PowerPoint presentation with a set theme.

60. Design for Online (Virtual) Sharing

Last but not least in our list of PowerPoint tips comes virtual presenting. More and more often, slides will be shared with online audiences around the globe.

Why not design your slides for that very purpose? And then learn how to share flawlessly with a global team? It’s one of the top presentation tips for 2024. Embrace it today.

More Great PowerPoint Tutorial Resources

We’ve built a resource for Microsoft PowerPoint that you’re sure to want to try. It includes countless PowerPoint tips and tricks. It’s called How to Use PowerPoint (Ultimate Tutorial Guide) and has all the PowerPoint design tips you need.

Discover More Top PowerPoint Template Designs From Envato Elements for 2024

You’ve just seen our favorite powerful PowerPoint presentation tips and guidelines to help you improve your speaking. We’ve also mentioned Envato Elements, an incredible all-you-can-download source for top PowerPoint designs .

Here are five of the best PowerPoint templates that you can use to create your best presentation yet:

1. Galaxi PowerPoint Template

Blast off to success with the help of this PowerPoint template! Think of the pre-built slide designs as pro PowerPoint design tips. They’re built by professional graphic designers. All the popular and modern slide styles that are perfect for your next presentation. Use Galaxi’s five styles and 30 designs to create a great presentation.

2. Masmax PowerPoint Template

We selected templates for this article that match the PowerPoint tips and tricks provided. Masmax fits the bill perfectly across its 234 unique slide designs. These slide designs are sure to align with the latest in design expectations.

3. STYLE Multipurpose PowerPoint Template V50

Style is subjective, but we can all agree that this template is stunning! The light and airy slide designs are built with fashion-focused designs in mind. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not perfect for most presentations. When learning to present a PowerPoint, remember that templates can be customized to suit your purpose.

4. Peachme Creative PowerPoint Template

Peachme has image-focused slides with splashy designs. The slides are colorful and perfect for a modern presentation. Don’t worry about remembering all the PowerPoint design tips because they’re included in the pre-built slides. Use Peachme’s designs for your presentation today.

5. Buizi Office Building Rent PowerPoint Template

Buizi markets itself as a real estate focused template. It’s ideal for that purpose because of the minimal, image-focused slide designs. But that also makes it a perfect choice for presentations in many fields.

We’ve just scratched the surface of PowerPoint design tips with these five options. Here are many more, bundled inside of the best roundups on Envato Tuts+:

How to Build a Good PowerPoint Presentation Quickly (In 2024)

You’ve already seen effective presentation skills PPT techniques. But you may be wondering exactly how to do a good PowerPoint presentation. It only takes a few clicks. Let’s learn how in just five steps.

For this mini-tutorial, we’ll use the Enjoy PowerPoint Template from Envato Elements. You’ll see that it’s a beautiful template that helps you learn how to present a PowerPoint by giving you every object and layout you need.

Let’s get started:

1. Choose Your Slides

As you can see, a template like Enjoy has dozens of unique slides inside. The key to how to give a good presentation PPT is to choose only the slides that you need.

One of the best PowerPoint tricks is to start by selecting slides you wish to use from your template.

In PowerPoint, scroll through the sidebar on the left to view different slide layouts. Right-click and choose Delete to remove unwanted designs. Plus, you can click and drag slide thumbnails to reorder them in the deck.

2. Add Text

Consider how to do a good PowerPoint presentation without investing a ton of time. That’s where premium templates come in.

One of our top presentation tips when working with a PPT is to lean on the pre-built text boxes for your content.

To add custom text, simply click and select the contents of any text box on your slide. Then, type in your own words. Repeat as needed throughout your slide deck.

3. Customize Fonts

With text selected, it’s easy to customize fonts on each slide. Find the Font section on PowerPoint’s Home tab. From there, you’ve got a variety of dropdown options.

Another of our top tips for presentation tricks is to use a custom font setting in your template.

Click to change the font, font size, and more. You can also use the buttons on the left to add bolds, italics, and more.

Need more custom font styles? As an Envato Elements subscriber, you’ve got instant access to thousands of custom fonts . Use them in your presentation with ease.

4. Insert Images

Slides like this one contain an image placeholder. That’s another advantage found only with premium templates. These make adding images a breeze.

Add images to your PPTX template for more visually interesting slides.

To get started, find an image file stored on your computer. Then, drag and drop it over the placeholder. PowerPoint will import it, sized and scaled for a perfect fit.

5. Change Colors

One of the top effective presentation skills is changing shape colors. This helps you control the look and feel of each slide.

With a shape selected, find the Shape Format tab on PowerPoint’s ribbon. Then, click on the Shape Fill dropdown. You’ll see a color chooser menu appear. Click on any thumbnail to apply it to the shape or browse through the Gradient and Texture options.

Start Putting These PowerPoint Presentation Tips & Tricks Into Use Today!

Learning to write, design, and present a PowerPoint presentation is an invaluable skill, no matter where you use it. If you’re a good communicator of important messages, you’ll never go hungry.

Luckily, improving PowerPoint presentations isn’t as hard as it seems. Follow these tips for PowerPoint presentations to design and deliver with greater confidence.

Remember: Less is more (effective) . Use PowerPoint presentation templates for better design and more effective visual impact. And you can customize a PPT template quickly , with the right workflow.

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7 Ways to Make Presentations More Convincing

Presentations are more persuasive when they touch both mind and heart at multiple levels..

The point of a presentation is to convince decision-makers to make a public commitment to whatever you're selling, according to G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa , co-authors of the excellent book The Art of Woo . Here's how:

1. Make it vivid.

Rather than abstract concepts ("reduces costs," "increases productivity") use concrete, real-life examples that carry emotional heft with the audience ("saved ABC $1 million," "prevented XYZ from going bankrupt.")

2. Put your heart into it. 

If you don't really believe in yourself, your firm, and its offerings, you'll persuade nobody.  And it's not enough to simply believe... it must be obvious to the audience that you're a true believer.

3. Tell a story. 

Humans use stories to order events so that they make sense to their daily lives. Your presentation should have a hero who overcomes obstacles to achieve a goal. BTW, the hero must be the customer, not you.

4. Personalize your examples.

A presentation should cause an emotional shift from being "undecided" to being "certain."  This is only possible if your presentation is relevant to your audience's work and life experiences.

5. Make it a puzzle. 

If there's some mystery to your presentation, your audience will get involved solving it. So don't reveal everything up front, especially when you're telling a story. Let the story evolve into a meaningful ending.

6. Use telling metaphors. 

Drawing parallels with the familiar helps the audience grasp complex ideas. Example: "Photolithography becomes problematic at 180nm." Or, in other words, "It's like trying to draw a blueprint with a hunk of chalk."

7. Force them to think.

True decision-makers are quickly bored by ideas and information that they already understand. Instead, they crave opportunities to exercise their brainpower to learn something new and insightful.

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20 Secrets From Strategy Consulting & Persuasion Science To Create Memorable Presentations

How do you build a memorable and persuasive presentation?

I spent over ten years working in the consulting industry at places like McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group and now as a freelance consultant. Communication is central to everything the consulting industry does and in some ways explains why the industry has been so successful for so long.

Yet, across the business world and increasingly in the entrepreneurial community, few understand how to present information in a compelling way.

Most default to the behaviors of their colleagues or the templates that their company provides. While these methods may result in a beautiful slide, the content tends to fall short.

I am motivated to help people tell remarkable stories, communicate complex information in simple ways, and to teach people how to be memorable. Over the past several years, both through my work and through my research, I have identified many “secrets” of what it takes to create compelling and impactful presentations.  

I’ve broken these tips into three sections:

• Make your message memorable
• Structure your message
• Designing slides

Make Your Message Memorable

#1 ignore the facts.

Carmen Simon, who wrote Impossible To Ignore, one of the best books on creating memorable content

“It is difficult for our audiences to remember many facts, unless we repeat them regularly and repetition is often hard in business contexts”

For analytical thinkers, it can often be an overwhelming impulse to want to “show your work.”  Part of this may be wanting to prove how much effort you put into something and another part may just be a misunderstanding of how to craft a compelling story.  

Does this mean not to use any facts? No, but if you are going to share them, figure out what the most important ones you want your audience to remember and then make sure they are communicated in the most simple way possible.

For example, instead of saying “only 34% of people are engaged with their jobs” you could say “out of a group of 100 people, only 34 say they are engaged with their jobs”  or “slightly more than 3 out of every 10 people are engaged with their jobs.”

#2 If you want to use facts, put them in context

Carmen Simon also points out a second drawback to facts in her book ‘Impossible to Ignore’:

“… when we present facts, abstract ideas, and meanings – essentially conclusions – it is difficult to control those conclusions.  People are more inclined to act if they believe they reached a conclusion. And it’s harder to reach a conclusion when they don’t see what you saw.”

To deal with this challenge, she recommends helping the audience see what you saw.   The best way to do this is to be very explicit and descriptive about the sensory details of the experience – what you saw, heard, felt and tasted.

Compare the following two stories, one with sensory details and one without:

Story 1 : She drank a glass of red wine.

Story 2 : After a long day of travel, she settled into her waterfront villa in Fiji.  She slowly poured herself a glass of red wine and sat down in a hand-crafted chair, where she spend the next 30 minutes watching the sun slowly set. Right before it set, It ignited the sky in a red and orange glow.  As she put the glass of wine to her nose and sniffed the smell of a perfect red wine, she thought about how lucky she was.

Both stories are factual accounts of the events, but one is more memorable and offers an experience and sensory anchors in which the data is embedded into, allowing your audience to connect with and remember the facts.  

I don’t think I need to tell you which is which.

#3 Pictures Are Only worth 1.5 words

The line “pictures are worth 1,000 words” seems to be repeated so often that it must be fact, right?  Turns out pictures are only worth about 1.5 words, or at least that is the finding of Professors Paul W. Foos and Paula Goolkasian.

What they actually found is that some pictures are more powerful than others – pictures that are easy to label.  However, text or language that is easy to picture can also easy to remember. It’s quite easy to picture a purple elephant, just like its easy to label the yellow fruit in the below image.

#4 Pair the abstract with the concrete to make it more memorable.

So we know that pictures are not worth 1,000 words, but everyone says you should use pictures over lots of text, right?  The problem is that pictures are often complex and an audience of 100 people may ascribe 100 different meanings to the picture. Take a look at the following picture:

What do you see?  Some people might see “people on their phone” others might see “loneliness” or “addiction.”  Without giving the audience guidance on what you are trying to show with the picture, they are going to draw their own meaning:

The opposite is also true.  The business world uses many abstract words like efficiency, value, impact, improvement, productivity, innovation and success.  If you are giving a presentation, try to be very specific about what you mean when you say something like impact – does it mean everyone on the team is doing great work or the boss is getting paid?

#5 Tell people why it matters

If you can help the audience understand the deeper meaning of what you are trying to portray it can help them connect with your message.  Think about raising money to help an imaginary person, Angela, with her cancer treatment:

• Concrete Facts : Our goal is to raise $1000 to pay for Angela’s treatment
• Abstract Explanation : Our goal is to raise enough money so Angela does not have to worry about her future
• Meaning : Our fundraiser will help save Angela’s life

Each of these can be appropriate for different audiences, but if you are trying to communicate something that really matters to you, tell them why it matters!

#6 Repeat what you want remembered

In consulting there was a popular line that went something like this: “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them.”  

As well as being a catchy phrase, it is useful advice. Too often in presentations, people are more focused on detailing every single detail of research they uncovered rather than thinking about what they want the audience to remember.

Figure out what your one key theme is and then integrate it into every piece of your presentation.

#7 Use Powerful Words To Invoke Emotion

Words can be a powerful tool to trigger our imagination.  Words or phrases like “imagine,” “think about a time,” “remember a time when you were really happy” can be effective ways to engage with your audience.  Allowing your audience to access their creativity or memory can allow for memorable experiences. The persuasion researcher Robert Cialdini once did an experiment looking at how people might react to three questions:

• “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine?”
• “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I have to make copies?”
• “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”

It turns out including the word “because” – no matter the reason after that word, increased the rate of compliance with the request to over 93%.  Of course, you shouldn’t just add certain words to your presentation, but when used to fit well with your story, they can be very effective. Copywriter Greg Ciotti makes this same point :

“ you must understand why these words are persuasive, and you must use them in the contexts that make sense for your audience and your business. If you just start slapping them on every piece of content you create for no apparent reason, you’ll quickly see just how unpersuasive they can be. “

In his work, he found five words were consistently effective in his work:

…but don’t just follow advice of someone you read on the internet, go experiment for yourself.  Watching the reaction of your audience is always the best way to assess what works.

#8 Make Any Powerful Points Distinct From The Rest

Is there a point that you want to make that is more important than the rest?  If so, one thing you can do is to make the formatting distinct from the rest of the presentation.

Another thing you can do is change your delivery style for that point.  Can you use a handout? Can you deliver your message from a different part of the room?  Can you tell a story without using slides. Think about what is most important and make sure you deliver that in a distinct way

#9 Give people something surprising (but still familiar)

Look at the image below of the blue orange.  You know it is a blue orange, but you have likely never seen anything like it before (unless you hang around the same stock image places as me!).  What makes the image memorable and invoke an emotional reaction is the fact that it is both familiar and novel. You are able to understand what it is while still acknowledging that it is surprising and different.

This can be useful when trying to convey a new idea to an audience.  Have them connect the new metaphor or image with your key takeaways or message.

#10 Tell Stories

Seth Godin has embraced the power of story and persuasion in everything he does.  He reflects on why this is so important:  

“Communication is the transfer of emotion….You can wreck a communication process with lousy logic or unsupported facts, but you can’t complete it without emotion. Logic is not enough.”

The Psychologist Uri Hasson has shown that when you tell a good story, it “couples” the brains of the storyteller and the receiver, meaning the same regions in both brains of the people will be activated.   So what does a powerful story look like? Professor Paul Zak found that the most effective stories activated a cortisol and oxytocin response in the body.  This results when a story both gets people to pay attention (cortisol response) and to care about what is happening (oxytocin).  Combined, these elements can get people to take action.

#11 Activate An Emotional Response

In his famous text, Rhetoric, Aristotle argues that three elements make up a persuasive argument.  Logos is the appeal to logic. Ethos is driven by the speaker’s credibility or character and pathos is an appeal to emotion.  More specifically he defines pathos as “”awakening emotion in the audience so as to induce them to make the judgment desired.”

In thinking about emotion in presentations, there are four different ways to think about framing your message: moving towards or away from rewards or towards or away from punishment.  Each of these can be more or less effective depending on the audience.

Almost anywhere you look, especially anyone selling products on the internet, you can see these techniques at work.  Take, for example the below Uber ad recruiting drivers:

This is a clear “move towards rewards” call to action.  In this case, they have likely found that people are more likely to sign up as drivers when it is framed as a positive benefit for themselves.   Toyota takes a different approach with its “offer ends June 3rd” clearly listed below the sale.

While this is not framed as a clear “punishment,” the implication is clear.  Don’t miss out on this sale. Depending on the audience, you can try to elicit an emotion that is appropriate for your audience.  Carmen Simon offers a map of the different emotions you might trigger using these different approaches in Impossible To Ignore :

Here are four different examples I created for my course as an example of the four different techniques.  

As you can probably tell, some approaches work better on you than others.

Structure Your Message

#12 pick three things or “points” you want to get across.

I once spent several hours trying to figure out if there was any research behind why things appear so often in groups of threes.  Unfortunately, the best explanation I found was that three is the least number of items needed to form a pattern. Perhaps the best argument for embracing the “rule of three” is the observation that it emerges in creating many of the most memorable ideas or stories across many domains.

• Stories : Three Little Pigs
• History : “Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness”
• Physics: Newton’s Three Laws
• Writing : Three-Act Structure
• Slogans : Snap! Crackle! Pop!
• Photography : Rule of Thirds
• Consultants : Three Key Things

When giving a presentation, using three themes is a great way to structure your talk and a good organizing principle of complex ideas.  Tim Ferriss uses this approach to structure his talks :

“approximately 2-minute introduction, three 10-minute segments, and a 2-minute close. I use this “rule of thirds” for the three segments whether the presentation is 60 minutes or 10 minutes.”

#13 Structure your story using the pyramid principle

The Pyramid Principle was created by Barbara Minto at McKinsey & Company.  It is a framework that is effective for organizing a complex argument to communicate clearly and persuasively and is still used in almost every presentation at McKinsey & Company today.

The Pyramid Principle helps you to focus on your message and organize it in a simple way.  The way it is taught first at McKinsey is as a writing technique. We were taught to “start with the answer” and then to outline the supporting arguments, with a structure like this:

• Paragraph 1 : Overall recommendation summarizing the overall message and three arguments
• Paragraph 2 : Argument #1 including evidence, research, interviews and other relevant analysis
• Paragraph 3 : Argument #2 including evidence, research, interviews and other relevant analysis
• Paragraph 4 : Argument #3 including evidence, research, interviews and other relevant analysis

There are many ways to organize the arguments that depend on the type of audience you are trying to persuade and the strength of your supporting research.  

If you want to see an example of how I map this to a real presentation I created, check out the following video:

#14 Be Generous early in the presentation

In the first five minutes of the presentation, if you can offer some sort of tip, tool or free offer, you can build a sense of trust and connection with your audience.  Don’t wait until the end to give something away to the audience, engage them early. This can help tap into the reciprocity principle of persuasion highlighted by Robert Cialdini :

“Simply put, people are obliged to give back to others the form of a behavior, gift, or service that they have received first. “

#15 Think About The Action You Want Them To Take

Most presentations have some sort of action that you want the audience to take.  It is not enough to just hope your audience takes an action. You should think about priming them with a trigger so that they can think about taking action at the appropriate time.  Here are a few examples:

Designing Slides

#16 make slides like a strategy consultant:.

There are many simple little “hacks” you can use to create good-looking powerpoint slides that look like the ones you might see from McKinsey or BCG.  I created a short 20-minute video that will walk you through some of these hacks

You can also find templates around the web that have been tried and tested to save you time. I made my own which you can download here.

#17 Use Of Colors

While many people have strong opinions about the colors of their powerpoint slides, there still isn’t great research on the best combination of colors.  Some people swear by black backgrounds and white font, while others stick to white background with the occasional picture slide.

Professor Zufic at the University of Zagreb performed a study on people’s memories in e-learning scenarios based on the color of the content they were exposed to.  In their findings they found fifteen combinations that were more effective for memory than black text on a white background.

While the study did not test the full range of colors and applications, you may want to experiment with different color combinations beyond the default choices.  I recommend checking out this color optimizer to ensure your color schemes look great,

#18 Vertical Flow

When you first start at McKinsey, one of the first things you are taught is that a slides title should always be the takeaway of the slide. Other firms are more flexible with this rule and might put takeaways in other places of the slide, but once you see how often people violate this in presentations (and how hard it is to figure out what the underlying message of an individual slide is) you will not want to be an offender.

Don’t label a slide “Overview: Diabetes.” Give them a piece of information like “Diabetes is the fastest growing disease in Western nations.”  Then prove it in the content of the slide.

The less text and data you need to “prove” your point, the more persuasive and memorable the content will be.  Here is an example I like to use to show this without using any text:

#19 Horizontal Flow

If you are giving a long presentation, you should think about the overall presentation as a comprehensive story.  You should be able to scan through the entire presentation in a couple minutes and have a good sense for the overall structure of that story.  If you have incorporated the idea of “vertical flow” into your presentations, the titles should be the key points or takeaways for each slide. The next step is to see how they fit together.

A quick check I do while compiling a presentation is to use the outline view in PowerPoint and check to see if the titles make any sense when read in order.  

While they don’t need to be a Dickens-level masterpiece, there should be some level of logic to the overall flow of the presentation.

#20 Concise and informative bullets/writing

We made it to number 20 and somehow never talked about bullets.  Is there a place for bullets? Sure, but I hope after reading this you realize that bullets are only the surface of a great story.  I tend to gravitate towards the rule of three and unless the document is intended to be read in detail as a research report, I try to keep it as simple as possible.  Here is an example of a simple slide where I was trying to impart some wisdom on company culture:

So there you have it! Everything you need to create compelling, memorable, and persuasive presentations. I hope you take away at least one or two things to make your presentations a little more engaging and memorable to your audience.

For $49, immediately download the 100+ templates I created based on my experience in consulting so you can start creating kick-ass presentations now. I also do one-on-one coaching with executives to help them develop presentations for CEO-level communication.

Do you have a toolkit for business problem solving? I created Think Like a Strategy Consultant as an online course to make the tools of strategy consultants accessible to driven professionals, executives, and consultants. This course teaches you how to synthesize information into compelling insights, structure your information in ways that help you solve problems, and develop presentations that resonate at the C-Level. Click here to learn more or if you are interested in getting started now, enroll in the self-paced version ($497) or hands-on coaching version ($997). Both versions include lifetime access and all future updates.

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Design and Data: How to Create a Persuasive PowerPoint Presentation

• December 27, 2022
• One Comment

Data presentations are probably the most visually appealing presentations that you can create. There are lots of data visualizations you can use as graphics. You can incorporate infographics or even more graphs to illustrate your presentation.

 Make sure your presentation shows real data and statistics. Your goal is to guide your audience and make them interested in your data. You can show the trends in your data by using graphs and charts. This will get your audience focused on what you are trying to tell them. 

Make your audience really care about your data by showing statistics in a way that makes them emotionally connected. Be honest in what you share with your audience.  Audio Presentation- listening to a presentation is a fundamental skill .

Choose a theme

When creating your slides, you should choose a good theme for your slides. You should not want to waste time and money creating a theme that is not good for your audience.  “Don’t make a theme that’s boring to look at, especially for the younger crowd. Have a theme that matches the audience you are presenting to, or better yet, a theme that matches what the audience needs to hear right now.”  Know your audience. When choosing a theme, remember that your audience is the person you are presenting to.

Create a sense of urgency

This is one of the most important elements to remember when creating a persuasive PowerPoint. Remember that it is still a slide show, not an academic paper. So, to make your presentation compelling, keep your audience’s attention. You don’t have to tell them something new, but you have to make them curious.

They must keep on reading your slide, because they want to know what you are saying. They have no time to spare!  Engage the audience’s senses. This is a trick you can use in your PowerPoint slides. You can add visual details, such as arrows or text, which will make your slides more visual. By reading these details, the audience’s eyes will spend time on them. By the end of the slide show, your audience will have seen them several times.

Collect the data

You’ve got your text and graphics, but how do you collect the right data? There are a lot of data sources you can use: charts, graphs, scatter plot, or just simple data. You can also use predefined tables to present them.

The most important step, however, is to collect the data you need. This includes using the same criteria throughout your slides (e.g., the same week, the same month, the same quarter, etc.). Also, make sure your data is consistent across all slides, even if you use a different theme and design.  The presentation themes.

Before your presentation, you have to decide on a presentation theme. There are different types of themes to choose from. Some are more casual (e.g., new products), while others are more formal (e.g., graphs, charts, and tables).

Determine what information to include in your presentation

Have you ever wondered what kind of impression you leave on your audience when you present in a one-hour PowerPoint presentation or a simple one-page pitch? As you create your slides, you might begin to become more selective about what to include and what not to include.

After all, there will be some PowerPoint presentation that you cannot show, like a PowerPoint-free PowerPoint presentation or a PowerPoint presentation that is more detailed than you can handle (with data sets). However, don’t completely eliminate anything from your presentation. You must include at least the following elements:  Title/ Abstract – The first thing people will see, so you need to create something that has impact. It is advisable to include the relevant keywords that will help people find your data.

The Power of Data

Present your data in a way that you, your colleagues, and your audience will appreciate. Too often, an infographic is created purely as a data visualization tool and then tossed aside. In fact, those eye-grabbing charts can often be a distraction.

Too often, data is placed in silos, with pie charts showcasing those by and large in greatest need of help. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that very little analysis goes into visualizing data. The answer appears to be right in front of your eyes. People are flooding into the workforce at record pace. In fact, for every worker left unemployed, 3 more enter the market.

Designing a Persuasive Presentation

In his aptly named “The Design of Everyday Things”, Apple designer Jony Ive made the case for “pure, honest, and unadorned design”. “Design is in service of the human condition” he said, adding that good design should be thought of “as an extension of the user’s emotional connection to the product”. A quality presentation is just as important as a quality product.

The trick is to design a compelling presentation that conveys our message while maintaining a clear focus, without using excessive visual clutter. While PowerPoint isn’t about simplicity, it can certainly provide a solid foundation for designing your own clean and easy-to-understand visual communication. Remember to pick the right slides, ensure that they support your point, and use only one type of chart.

Rehearse Your Presentation

A study in advance of presenting a 500-page study showed that those who presented knowing how much time they had left spent considerably less time explaining how the study was designed or even the fact they had the report.

And when it came to defining the study’s focus and highlighting key findings, having a regular practice in front of a mirror made all the difference. Still, presenting to someone who’s unlikely to know a whole lot about your data is a different matter. Whether it’s your officemates, peers in class, or clients, do your best to create and rehearse your presentation in front of a mirror, even if it’s just for 10 minutes a day. This can help you spot anything that seems off to you — or, of course, look for anything that seems off to your audience.

When to Use Persuasive Techniques

Reinforcing your message with graphics and text allows your audience to see and understand the larger scope of your message. Plus, including statistics can help others understand how your company or product works, and what the benefits and drawbacks are. Gaining a hearing from someone can be as easy as asking a question.

 Asking for permission to explain a process, even briefly, takes up far less time and forces others to weigh in. In presentations, you can use this technique to drive engagement and comprehension as you reach out to your audience and let them know they’re important. One way to start an in-depth discussion is to outline a central question and work backward to build a response, no matter what the audience’s immediate reactions to your message.

How to Identify Data Points for Your Chart

Business Point of View The key to executing a successful presentation is to ensure your audience is as convinced as you are about the point you’re making.

 Every good presentation begins and ends with the most important point you’re trying to make — and there are two main points for your audience to understand: Making their job easier so that they can get back to doing what they do best. Driving their mind so that they see your business as much more than a collection of data points, which they cannot always fully comprehend. The main point of view in your business involves thinking outside the box.

Graphs and charts

Graphs are another type of visual data you’ll want to keep it straightforward.  Define the data you want to show. Make sure you know precisely what you’re talking about and what metric you’re measuring. You can explain your reasoning by saying something like, “In the second quarter, year-over-year growth was 9% in total shipping revenue.”

 If there are important caveats or comments to make, such as the fact that the numbers include up-sales from the previous quarter, split into the same period, they’re already summed up, or the margin of error is very small, don’t repeat yourself twice. Just make the point succinctly and without explanation.  Even better, use visual aids to clearly present the data you’ve been working with all along: graphics or charts.

Pies and bars

Some charts focus on identifying major slices of pie. For example, if your pie chart is going to chart how many people have access to oil, you might divide the slice into five different categories to illustrate the different types of access (oil in an airplane, your gas tank, a van, at home, etc.). With data like this, it’s important to ask yourself: What questions can you answer with this information? Are you providing visual support for the issue at hand? Did you do your research? Is this consistent with your data from the past? As with any chart, its usefulness depends on how you use it.

Tables and lists

A simple presentation about a new idea will be more effective if you can link it back to a foundational element of the product, such as a feature list or a previous feature. You can use this technique to introduce new features by asking the audience to draw their own conclusions based on each new feature and then cross-referencing them. Don’t expect people to remember your ideas, but give them a sense of your overall product vision and help them get a quick “feel” for how to view and analyse your new ideas. Illustrate your data. Combining images with text helps reinforce concepts, but there’s a big difference between highlighting an idea with a small image and creating a table that summarizes it.

Funnel charts

• Beer pong graph-
• 2-D pie chart-
• Product sales funnel 
• CRM funnel 
• Financial funnel 
• Round-robin comparison chart 
• Formula chart 
• Bottle cap chart
• Mixed signal line 
• Hand-drawn chart 
• Scatter plot chart 
• Circles/square-rigors on points graph 
• Funnel plotting graph 

These basic elements of design are to be relaxed but structured, confident yet conversational and are better together.  Understand how your audience will interpret the data you present, then make it as clear and explicit as possible. Include three key aspects: how the data can be interpreted, the message the chart is conveying, and the reasons behind it.  Avoid the single point of data — the bar chart is most commonly used to show point spreads, but it should be used sparingly.

Column charts

A couple of PowerPoint’s most commonly used data layout features are the “bar chart” and the “column chart.” A column chart is a fairly straightforward shape: you’ve got columns — some filled, some empty. In a row or column chart, you’ve got equal-sized rectangles in each column.  When the gridline is transparent, you’re dealing with a transparent rectangle. As the name implies, there is no gridline in a column chart; data can spill over to adjacent columns and cells, but it is impossible to jump backward through time in a column chart (you have to jump forward).  A column chart is a fairly straightforward shape: you’ve got columns — some filled, some empty. In a row or column chart, you’ve got equal-sized rectangles in each column.

Today, many people are using presentation software as an alternative to printing and sending a paper presentation. However, the digital format is not always the best. Most of the PowerPoint templates have similar, if not similar, design. While the same is true for websites, one main reason to select a website for a web design is that it has a variety of styles and options for customization. For example, you can choose a dark theme or light theme, and use different colors for the background. Another advantage is that you can access the templates directly through the website. Most online businesses have a template store. Choose a template and create a unique PowerPoint that helps you improve your business.

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The slide master saves time and aids consistency, you can remove image backgrounds, cropping images is surprisingly easy, powerpoint has a presenter view, the designer feature instantly professionalizes your slides, the selection pane makes animating much easier, useful keyboard shortcuts.

As with many Microsoft 365 programs, PowerPoint can take some getting used to. Here are seven things I've learned over the years which, had I known about them earlier, would have saved me a lot of time and helped me hit the ground running with slick, professional slides.

In this article, I'll talk about the features available to Microsoft 365 subscribers in the PowerPoint desktop app. Some of these tools are accessible in the web-based version of the program, but—as with all Microsoft 365 programs—the app offers the best flexibility.

One of my main PowerPoint bugbears is seeing slides with different layouts and color schemes, so when I'm creating a slideshow, I like to make sure my viewers don't have the same experience. The best way to ensure your slides are consistent is by using the Slide Master —and doing so will also save you lots of time.

You can use the Slide Master on a blank PowerPoint presentation or a Microsoft template. However, if you have already amended some slides in the Normal view (such as font colors), some changes you make in the Slide Master will not apply to these slides.

In the View tab on the ribbon, click "Slide Master."

You will then see a new Slide Master tab on the ribbon, and your thumbnail pane on the left of your screen will change to a new view.

The top slide thumbnail is the master slide, and all related layouts are displayed underneath. Any formatting changes you make to the top slide—such as font colors, borders, or images—will be duplicated in the remaining slides. In this example, I've added a green border to the slide's text area and changed the title font to blue. I have also moved the slide title area to the right and added a small image to the left, and you can see all these changes applied to the other slide thumbnails below.

You can also make changes to specific slide types. For example, if I wanted the title layout slide to have a yellow background, I would move down to the second thumbnail in the screenshot above and change that slide layout only.

When you have made all the necessary changes, click "Close Master View" in the Slide Master tab, or "Normal" in the View tab.

Then, in the Normal view, to add a new slide, click the "New Slide" drop-down option in the Home tab and choose from the newly designed layouts.

If you have a busy slide with lots of objects, your image backgrounds can take up some valuable space. Instead, you can edit the images to keep the foreground only —as a result, your slide will appear less cluttered to your audience, and you're keeping only the focal point of your photos.

First, upload your image to PowerPoint. To do this, in the Insert tab on the ribbon, click "Pictures," and then choose the appropriate location.

Now, with your image selected, head to the Picture Format tab, and click "Remove Background."

PowerPoint will then attempt to identify which parts of your picture are the foreground and which parts are the background, keeping the former and removing the latter. The part it intends to remove will be highlighted in purple.

If you're happy with which parts of your picture are to be removed, click "Keep Changes" in the Background Removal tab. However, sometimes, PowerPoint's background recognition might not work perfectly well, as in my screenshot above. In this case, I would click "Mark Areas To Remove," and use the freehand pen to tell PowerPoint where the rest of the background is. Each time I click and then unclick, the image will update accordingly.

If you make any mistakes when drawing out your area, simply press Ctrl+Z (undo) to bring back the part you just removed. Luckily, you don't have to be perfectly accurate with where you draw your areas to remove—this process is satisfyingly intuitive.

When you're done, click "Keep Changes."

You will then see the new image with only the foreground retained. Simply select, copy (Ctrl+C), and paste (Ctrl+V) the image if you want to use it somewhere else in your presentation.

Is your image too big? Or do you just want to make the background smaller? PowerPoint lets you do this in just a few clicks.

Select your uploaded image and, in the Picture Format tab, click the "Crop" drop-down arrow. You will then see five options.

• Crop —Clicking this option will place black handles around the edge of your picture, which you can then drag to cut out the necessary parts of your photo (see the screenshot below).
• Crop To Shape —If you click this button, you'll see a choice of shapes that you can select to change your image shape without distorting its ratio. Some shapes will let you adjust their dimensions, but others (such as the oval) will be a set cropping shape.
• Aspect Ratio —If you need your image to be a certain aspect ratio (the image's height versus its width), click "Aspect Ratio," and choose one of the set parameters.
• Fill —This lets you resize the image so that the entire picture area is filled. This is only applicable if you have already changed the image cropping.
• Fit —Finally, this option lets you resize the image so that it displays in full within the picture area. Again, this will only work if you have already cropped the picture.

Whichever cropping option you choose , simply click anywhere away from the image once you're happy, and your amendments will apply to your pic. Press Ctrl+Z to undo this, or click the Crop icon again to revert the image to its original shape or amend the dimensions.

If you're presenting your PowerPoint on a projector or screen, when you press F5, you will automatically see the Presenter View on your primary screen and the slideshow on the other. In this screenshot, the Presenter View is on the left (my laptop screen), and the slideshow is on the right (my second screen).

The Presenter View is great for showing you what the next slide or animation will be, but the best use of this tool is the notes section. When preparing your presentation (before you press F5), click "Notes" under a given slide, and type some comments into the area that appears.

Then, when you press F5, you'll see these notes in the Presenter View.

While you can use Excel's many templates to help you choose your slide layouts, I prefer to use the Designer tool , mainly because it designs your slide based on what you type.

Open a blank PowerPoint presentation and head to your title slide. Then, in the Home tab on the ribbon, click "Designer." You'll then see some nice designs appear in a sidebar on the right, which you might choose to click through to find a suitable layout.

But wait! Don't jump straight into a design. First, try typing a title into your first slide—in our example, we'll type Technology—and see how the design suggestions change to suit your theme.

Add a sub-heading to your title slide, and see the design suggestions update again. Once you see an appropriate design, simply click your choice. When you create new slides, the rest of the presentation will be designed to match your title slide.

If you have lots of objects—such as images and text boxes—on one slide, it can sometimes be confusing which object is which when adding and organizing your animations. In my screenshot below, you can see that the images are labeled with random numbers, so identifying the individual pictures and their animations can be difficult.

Instead, I find that naming the objects individually makes this process a lot clearer. In the Home tab on the ribbon, click the "Select" drop-down arrow, and choose "Selection Pane." You'll then see the Selection Pane appear on the right, listing all the objects on that particular slide.

From here, you can rename the objects by double-clicking the placeholder names and typing your preferred object name.

Now, when you reopen the Animation Pane via the Animation tab on the ribbon, you'll find it much easier to organize your animations.

Do you have only a few hours to create your PowerPoint presentation? There are many keyboard shortcuts you can use in PowerPoint , but speed up the process by learning and using these handy ones:

Whether you're a PowerPoint newbie or a power user, hopefully, some of these tips will make your life a little easier. As well as these hints, there are some other traps you might fall into when creating your presentation, so make sure you avoid making these common PowerPoint mistakes .

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How ancient Greek speaking skills can supercharge your presentations

• The rhetorical skillset of the ancient Greeks can help improve our company presentations.
• Rhetoric comprises three key, interdependent modes of persuasion: ethos (credibility), logos (reason) and pathos (emotion).
• Ensuring you have an even mix of ethos, logos, and pathos will help you achieve Aristotle’s formula for a perfect argument.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that modern ways of doing things are always better. But some of the tools we take for granted these days have made us lazy. Take presentations, for instance. 

The ancient Greeks didn’t have slides, clickers, and bullet points to help them make their arguments. And arguments are what presentations typically need to be. Most presentations are about wanting to change something, be it the way your audience thinks about something, what they buy, or what they do. 

The real job of presentations is persuasion. Aristotle, like many other great thinkers and speakers of the time, famously relied on the effectiveness of his communication. And the Greek approach to governance and organization remains a key foundation for how we conduct ourselves today. Their philosophy is still something that’s studied and used. I know philosophy can feel complex or out of reach, but it doesn’t have to be. We’re going to look at the basics and see just how easily we can apply them in our own presentations. 

So, how did the Greeks approach it? They believed in the power of rhetoric to persuade and inform. Rhetoric comprises three key modes of persuasion which convince others to accept your argument: ethos (credibility), logos (reason) and pathos (emotion). What’s more, all three need to work together. Aristotle believed any imbalance in these tools — let alone omitting one entirely — would significantly reduce the power of one’s argument.

So, let’s dive into each of these modes of persuasion.

Ethos is the Greek term for character. In the context of persuasion, it refers to establishing your credibility. In short, why are you, in particular, worth listening to on this topic? If you can give them a good answer to that question, they’re far more likely to engage with your attempt to persuade them. That means they need to understand your experience or expertise. Of course, the fact that some of you are cringing at the idea of “selling yourself” shows that there is a fine line to be walked here. 

No one likes a bragger or a name-dropper. But underselling yourself can be just as damaging to your chances of making an impact with your presentation. Often the right balance can be struck with case studies and examples. Consider mentioning the people you’ve worked with, the praise you’ve received, and any recognition or rewards that you’ve earned.

Academic credentials are often cited in scientific presentations, while businesses might prefer to hear about similar roles you’ve held. Every industry is different, but the question is the same: “Does this person know what they’re talking about?” Figures and statistics are also effective here. It’s much easier to tell an audience that you’ve been coaching for 15 years than it is to tell them that you’re the best coach around!

However you decide to build your credibility with ethos, make sure this happens early. People want to know if you’re worth listening to before you launch into your main message. Start with establishing your authority and go from there. 

With ethos out of the way, your audience should hopefully be thinking, “Okay, this presenter knows their stuff. So, what have they got to say?” But in fact, you don’t want to start with what. You want to start with why. Because logos, the second mode of persuasion, is all about logic. One thing we do have that the Greeks did not is Google. An endless wealth of information at our fingertips. And that means that giving your audience facts or quotes they could find on their own is simply a waste of everyone’s time. Your presentation should not be a brochure. 

So instead of simply giving them “what,” give them “why”. Explain how you arrived at the main point of your presentation. Walk your audience through the thinking step by step so that they can understand the journey and embark on it with you.

Every industry is different, but the question is the same: “Does this person know what they’re talking about?”

Simon Sinek is famous for his TEDx talk “Start with Why” as a masterful demonstration of this principle. Clients of mine mention that clip so often when they want to supercharge their own presentations. And it’s built on a fundamental point you should keep in mind: Don’t assume your audience will agree with you straight away. Give them the process and the information to make their own decision. If they then end up agreeing with you, they will be far more bought into the conclusion you both share — after all, they did the thinking themselves and arrived there too. 

Last but certainly not least of the three elements of rhetoric is the use of emotion. Pathos is often overlooked in presentations, but it can have a huge impact on the power of your delivery and your message. How often do you make decisions based on gut decisions, or how you feel? It’s so quick and easy for us to trust our instincts and go with what feels right. Appealing to emotion adds another layer to your argument. Because emotions and logic are handled in different parts of the brain, activating both of these areas at once strengthens our reaction to what’s being said. But what are the emotions you want to generate in your audience? Let’s start with what to avoid.

How often are you likely to really empathize and agree with someone who resorts to pleading or guilt to get what they want? Sure, you might give in out of pity, but you’re unlikely to really respect and believe what they’re saying. Emotional connection comes from authenticity and vulnerability. When people let us in and show us their own true feelings, we are far more likely to feel a real bond with them. Most often, stories are the best way to add pathos to a presentation. Whether it’s the origin of an idea or product, the lives touched, or the personal hardships that got you to this moment, give your audience a chance to feel the emotion behind your message. 

We may think of good presenters as nerve-less robots, but the reality is that we’re all human. Use that truth as a source of connection. 

Go Greek with your next presentation

The Greeks are famed for the arguments they presented. And while we have an arsenal of modern tools at our disposal, we sometimes forget the fundamentals of persuasion. The Greeks didn’t need PowerPoint to make powerful points. 

Using Greek philosophy as a base for your presentation can dramatically increase its effectiveness. Ensuring you have an even mix of ethos, logos, and pathos will help you conform to Aristotle’s formula for a perfect argument. 

If you can convince your audience that you are worth listening to, take them on a logical journey towards your conclusion, and tell them a story that appeals to their hearts as well as their minds, you’ll deliver a presentation that makes an impact.

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