We have all sat through tedious PowerPoint presentations; they are like sitting through a friend’s vacation slides. But PowerPoint is a simple presentation tool that can be used to captivate and inform your audience, rather then bore them. You just need to take the right approach.

Don’t Forget Creativity

As the writers at Microsoft’s Business Hub say, PowerPoint doesn’t give you authorization to get lazy. You still have to be imaginative if you want to produce a winning presentation that grabs the interest of your audience. This means that you can’t let PowerPoint’s ease of use trick you into thinking that you don’t have to come up with engaging content. Just because you can create an endless series of text-filled slides doesn’t mean that you should.

Rather, use the opportunity of having a visual aid to improve your presentation. That is the advantage of using PowerPoint; to help memory retention through visual stimulation.

Come with Solutions

Giving solutions or insights into the information you present is another way to help make your PowerPoint memorable. If your meeting is not simply to inform your audience but get them to think about the data and perhaps come up with suggestions for improvement or change, get them thinking along the same lines as you by offering them some ideas to ponder.

Also, if your presentation gives some important information, expand on that. To illustrate, if sales dropped drastically last quarter, explain why. You are providing them with the information anyway, so expanding on it can only help to give them a well rounded picture of the company and what they can do to change or help things.

Don’t Get Too Fancy

While you ought to be creative when you create your slides, don’t opt for all the bells and whistles. A frequent mistake managers make is using unnecessary graphics and pictures, thinking this pop of color will draw the attention of the audience. What it generally does is distract. Additionally, many people simply read their slides to the audience, this is unnecessary and can bore, if not annoy, the audience. They will just read your points. Instead, focus on the most significant item and go in depth. Otherwise you could have just emailed the presentation to them and saved your breath.

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