6 Tips - How to Make Your Presentations Stand Out

PowerPoint presentations have become an inseparable part of our work lives. Be it on the job or for a job, working on slides is a way of life. As a presenter, you are desperate to make an impactful presentation while the listeners are equally desperate to keep themselves awake. It isn't easy to break away from this mould of corporate culture. Here are tips that can make a difference to your presentations and make them different.

1. Alter your perception. 'YOU' are central to your presentations, not PowerPoint. Don't hide behind slides loaded with information and expect them to work for you. Slides, no matter how attractive, cannot substitute YOU to stand by them. Work on making an interesting delivery that can have an impact on everyone than expect dumb slides to do all the talking for you.

2. Smile. Do all presentations have to be serious business-like affairs?

A smile will not just help you feel comfortable but also defuse the tension for your audience. Smiling is also a sign of confidence and that you feel in control of the situation. Here, I mean a genuine smile that exudes poise and not a plastic grin pasted on your face throughout the presentation.

3. Review your current slides. How about conveying your point through a powerful picture? A picture is worth a thousand words, so give it a try. Contrary to popular belief, slides full of text are hardly helpful in stimulating the interest of your audience. PowerPoint is just a visual medium to aid your talk. So ensure that the slides work in your favour, not against.

4. Ask questions. Asking questions - rhetorical or otherwise is an effective strategy to keep the audience involved. But don't expect all the answers coming from the other side of the table. Pause to let the listeners grasp the point you have made and move on. Reserve questions for select occasions when it can be most effective.

5. Use humour. You might not be the best in making people burst into laughter with your quips. But one can always think of appropriate topical humour to get people sit up and notice. You can also use humour to draw the attention of your audience to certain issues that might be a taboo otherwise. Although, be careful with the way you convey humour lest it backfires.

6. Think innovative. Try something that can make your presentation stand out and make it interesting too. You could get the audience to play a quick game to introduce the central theme of your presentation. Use a flip chart or a drawing board to draw figures and explain your data or illustrate graphs. This is better than loading slides with graphs full of figures left to the imagination of the audience to interpret it.

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