Powerpoint Presentation Tips

Hi. I'm Lawerence Berstein, a professional speech writer, and I run greatspeechwriting.co.

uk. And irrespective of the sort of speech that you're going to give, there are two or three key things to bear in mind. Firstly, there is nothing to beat preparation.

And hopefully, you're not watching this twenty-four hours before you're due to give your speech. But the more time you leave yourself, the better. Second of all, don't worry about speaking for too long.

Often a five-minute speech is much much more powerful and impactful than a twenty-minute one, and brevity is often the key. And finally, although a lot of the videos that I've created are about writing a speech, please remember that you can't think about writing and delivering separately. They're one and the same thing.

You're writing to make the speech easy to deliver, and if you think of it that way, the thing should work. So, you're putting together a powerpoint presentation, and I have nine tips that are not going to write it for you, but which I hope will help you avoid many of the pitfalls that I find in clients who approach me with Powerpoints that I've never seen before. The first is keep your slides and your script separate.

You do not want to have hundreds of words on each slide, and you should be telling the audience things that your slides are not. So, that's first and foremost. And the distinction between those two is crucial to everything that follows.

Second of all, make the visual, make the slide, the thing that they're looking at, interesting. Don't just have words in bullet point format. I use a rule that I try not to ever have more than ten words on one slide, and that one picture will speak louder than, in this sense, ten words will do.

If the picture can be faintly amusing, even better, but something that will catch their attention and make them want to listen to what you've got to say next, is crucial and will help you get your point across very very clearly. Thirdly, and it links on from the second one, particularly if the subject is technical, don't get bogged down in technicality and sincerity. Try and weave in a bit of humor.

This is a presentation, and your audience are people. And they would like to be amused in the same way that they would be if they were listening to an after-dinner speech. So try and use your slides, if possible, not to turn it into stand-up, but to get the occasional smile and a bit of empathy and a relationship with your audience.

Fourth, have a story that you want to tell. The story might be the end game. It might be the one memorable fact that you want them to take away from this thing.

It might be the philosophy that holds together everything else you're saying. It might be something entirely unrelated to the subject, but which brings it to life. And if you can keep coming back to something that's understandable, that people will find relevant and interesting, then you're going to make the Powerpoint more interesting, too.

Fifth tip is work backwards. When you're planning this thing, think about what you want your audience to say about you and the presentation afterwards, and then build it in that way. If they want it to be original, be original.

If they want it to be funny, be funny. But you decide what they want, and on that basis, you have the most chance of creating something that is entirely interesting, relevant, original, and all the other things that we would suggest any speech or presentation should be. My final four tips are more negative.

And again, they cover some of the old ground but in a slightly different way. First of all, do not go into too much detail. There is nothing worse than a slide with a thousand figures on it which you only have twenty seconds to look at.

Next tip follows on from that one, but make sure that you stay silent for long enough to enable people to absorb what has gone on in that slide, because their eyes will always dominate thei