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04 jul 10 Essential PowerPoint Hacks For More Exciting
design firm that creates
Presentations KILLER presentations
12
for startups, large
by Adam Noar businesses, and
individuals.
But you don’t have to figure these out on your own. Instead of
wondering how to make an engaging PowerPoint presentation, you can Enter your your name
just read our list of expertly curated hacks and put them to use right and email below to get
away. this free presentation
template and also get free
You heard that right panda fam! We’ve come up with a list of some
updates!
super nifty tips to help you master PowerPoint and take your
slideshow presentations to the next level.
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PowerPoint Presentation Hack #1. Use Poll Everywhere To
Ask Your Audience Questions and Keep Them Engaged
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It is a great tool to make you feel more like you’re having a conversation
with your audience, and less like a lecturing parent who is receiving an
uninterested “yeah” and nod from their teenager without making any
eye contact. You want your audience to come away feeling like they
learned something, but a lot of times you want to learn from them too –
even if it’s just feedback on how you’re doing.
By using this inexpensive and simple digital tool, you can ask your
audience questions and receive the answers in real-time.
If the black seems a bit harsh, you can go with a peaceful white-out
instead. Hit “Control” + “W” and your audience will be dazzled
by a white screen. It’s an easier and gentler way to wake them up and
shift their focus back to you (and that important point you’re about to
wow them with).
And don’t worry – your screen isn’t blank forever. Whenever you need
to move to the next slide, you can hit any key or move the mouse to get
your slide back, and proceed as normal.
This hack can be especially helpful with webinars where the audience
can not reference what part of the slide you are talking about.
If you’d like a demonstration, check out this video for a quick tutorial.
Drawing with your mouse sounds easier than it is, and it can be a bit
tough to control for things with more detail. It’s great if you want to be
able to quickly circle or point to something, but a bit tougher if you
want to write something out.
If you need more control than a mouse can give you, you can always
purchase a drawing pad to use when you make your drawings. Oh
you fancy, huh?
When sketch time is over, it’s easy to go back to the pointer, too. All you
need to do is hit “Control” + “A”, and you can go on to the next slide.
If you miss the bright, 3D, rotating screen savers of the 1990’s and want
to relive your glory days, this presentation hack is for you (sort of). We
don’t recommend going as all-out as they did back then (please no
shimmering text), but a touch of animation and movement will make
your slides look a lot cooler.
It’s easy to do, too. PowerPoint offers just about every permutation of
every movement you could ever want. You can use their animations to
make interesting slide designs or just to jazz up your presentation.
We may have been a little misleading with the 1990’s reference at the
beginning – the key word here is MODERATION. If your slide
fades in, your title gets typed in letter by letter, and then each line does
a backflip before landing, you’ve gone way too far. Just use them for a
touch of interest and movement. Excessive and unnecessary animation
just makes your slides look childish and annoying – don’t give your
audience the idea that you’ve teleported in from the 90s.
Don’t be afraid to go against the grain a little to stand out – just like you
don’t have to use the standard PowerPoint slide size, you don’t have to
stick with stock templates for your presentation. Create something
custom to wow your audience and be uniquely you.
5.) Click “Close Master” to apply the template to all the slides in the
current presentation
If you don’t have the time, or you just don’t want to, you can purchase a
pre-made professional template from several different vendors on the
market. Of course, our favorite is Graphic River – it may be a little
biased, but that’s the only place you can get our magical template, The
Influencer, that our team of pandas launched a few months back.
If you have a strong opinion on the teal vs. cerulean debate, change it!
Same goes for the font and the images – if you want something
different, all it takes is a few clicks of the mouse to swap it out for what
you want.
Graphic River has a huge selection of PowerPoint templates you can use
instead of making your own from scratch, which is one of the many
reasons we love them. It’s also super easy to customize them by
changing the color palette, font style, images, and much more.
Beyond our Influencer template (seen above) here are a list of some of
the best ppt templates of 2016.
What the audience will notice is fumbling, awkward pauses, and clear
technical issues (and swearing because of said issues, so don’t do that).
Instead, avoid all that by practicing a few simple key
navigation commands:
“F5” starts your presentation
“N” or “The Arrow Key” advances to the next slide
“P” moves back to the previous slide
“Enter” + slide number jumps directly to that slide
Knowing these commands will help you feel more at ease with your
presentation, avoid getting muddled when fielding questions, and keep
your audience’s focus where it belongs: on you and your message.
If going through your slides in order seems passé, try a “choose your
own adventure” style instead!
Long presentations are necessary sometimes, but they can also be tough
to pull off.
1.) Click the “Video” button in the Media section (if you have your slide
layout set up to add media, simply click on the film reel icon)
That’s it!
In general, aim for videos that are 30 seconds to a minute long. That
length will work well for most purposes, although of course it will vary
depending on your audience.
Hopefully you’ve gotten the memo by now, but if you haven’t, let us fill
you in: bullet points suck.
The problem of giving away the ending can be solved by using our #4
presentation hack on this list: use the animation tools to dole out your
bullets one at a time. Unfortunately, that doesn’t solve the style
problem. So what should you do?