Between a student’s presentation and a professional PowerPoint presentation, prepared by you for business purposes, there are some differences. The majority of the recommendations in this article may seem like simple common sense, but these small details in your presentation can capture the attention of the audience. At the same time these details are able to determine the amount of information that the audience will learn and master in the future. Also they affect in general, weather the audience perceives the presentation seriously or not.
Below you will find a checklist of general points which should be counted while preparing a professional PowerPoint presentation. It is highly recommended to print out for yourself something similar to this checklist and before you submit your PowerPoint presentation to be reviewed or inspected, check each key point by yourself.
- Use a template. If it is possible, use a standard PowerPoint template, while creating your own presentation. When it is necessary to create PowerPoint presentations, use a standard one, which is used by your company for any project. This is something that most likely your audience will be waiting for, and if not (for example, if you have got a new customer), this will determine his expectations in the future.
- Constant slide style. Throughout the PowerPoint presentation, you should use a permanent style for the slides. Exceptions to this rule are:
‘ The first slide
On the first slide of your PowerPoint presentation will be used the types, which will not be used for the other slides. This is normal since the first slide may be a standard one, used in the presentation of your company, or a standard slide for your project. The purpose of this slide can be to generate interest and attention to the presentation, and therefore you need to allocate it among the rest.
‘ Header/Footer
Headers and/or footers of each PowerPoint slide are usually a part of the standard presentation template, which is used all the time in your company, therefore, obviously the font headers will differ from the substantive content of the slide.
Except in the above mentioned two examples, the content of the slide should be used in a permanent type. For example, the text content of your slides should be created in one type, as well as headers and footers which are not the parts of your template.
- Refrain from using the illustrated inserts “ClipArt”. Although, in the beginning of creating a slide with a large bulb with the words “idea” it may seem original, but your audience would not give you any additional points. Clipart is fairly standard, and absolutely does not add anything to the presentation, it just clutters it. On the other hand, if you want to use images related to the subject of your presentation, then that is absolutely fine and will be much appreciated by the audience.
The above recommendations represent a good initial instructions manual, which you can use before you speech in public with your presentation. You need to complete this checklist with information specific to your work. It will save everyone’s time and make the first draft of your presentation almost perfect.