March 20th, 2008
Question: Why is my PowerPoint presentation so long?
Answer: Because you used PowerPoint to write the presentation. A client we worked for recently said that she and her staff were in “PowerPoint purgatory.” “Everything we do,” she said, “is done in PowerPoint.” Using PowerPoint to support your presentation is a good idea. Using it to draft your content is not, because you are more than likely to end up, as our client did, with too many slides, packed with too much text. We strongly urge you to plan your presentation in Word before building it in PowerPoint. And remember, PowerPoint slides should support your message. Here are some steps to follow to create an effective presentation:
Decide why you are presenting
- Think about your audience’s interests, needs, and concerns
- Focus on your most important message
- Answer your audience’s key questions by providing supporting information
- Create a set of slides that support and reinforce your message
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:51 am
I completely agree…. PP is not the best for creating content – just presentating it…. and is only OK for that as well. A better tool is a product from Mindjet – MindManager which is great for brainstorming, organizing and collecting information – easy to review a large amount of information and getting it into manageable pieces.
It also has a presentation mode that works quite well – and this is why start-to-finish it is a better tool for the overall process. Lots of additional features as well – web export, linking to reference docs, embedded items…. and full disclosure, I’m only a user not in sales!
Just thought I’d share….
Paul White
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:29 am
Jessie…
This is one of the more useful reads I have had today….