Attending meetings that require you to read after slide with overcrowded content and nebulous images makes you feel claustrophobic. According to research, approximately 4 million videos are viewed on a daily basis. Let’s face reality! Video presentation plays a crucial role in the well-being of our daily lives.
Do you know that you can spend the whole day creating PowerPoint slides, and they will still appear boring and poor to read due to the alignment of text and images? The good news is that you don’t need to be an experienced graphics designer to generate a compelling visual presentation. You only need to dazzle with a few elements, and you are good to go.
Data visualization gives you the power to transform boring PowerPoint slides into an incredible content strategy that places you on a competitive edge within the industry. This article discusses different tips that you can use to convert boring slides into great visuals. Read this blog post for more information!
Table of Contents
Power Your Slides with the Right Visuals
Do you know that the average attention span of a human being is only eight seconds? Now you know! You only have an average of eight seconds to grab your audience’s attention and present your data story. Once your audience gets hooked on your slides, you are better positioned to present your data without experiencing any challenges.
When creating PowerPoint slides to present your data, always remember to use compelling visuals like infographics, graphs and charts such as Sankey diagram, Scatter plot chart and Radar chart which will save you time compared to writing blocks of text. Besides, this increases your chances of gaining credibility during the presentation process.
In addition, the brain easily processes visuals compared to plain blocks of text, which your audience will forget quickly. If you want to generate visual masterpieces, and enable your audience to get a lot out of your presentation, utilize high-resolution and quality visuals that reciprocate the message you are passing to the audience.
Less is More
Most data presenters tend to insert all the information they know in a single slide, assuming that they are making the presentation information-rich. This is not the reality since they only make the slides cluttered, and the audience gets it difficult to understand the information presented.
Presenters need to understand that for the audience to get enlightened, influenced and engaged, every slide should incorporate fewer words. You need to get a better strategy of presenting more information in a few words for the well-being of your audience. Slides with cluttered content imposes more harm to your PowerPoint presentation.
Also, avoid stuffing images in your slides since the audience gets confused while reading the presentation. If you have multiple images to present, consider putting a single image on every slide to help your audience understand every image. Uses as few words as possible on every slide to enhance readability and the rate at which your audience understands the concept.
Also, invest in a simple data dashboard that incorporates all your data details and is easy to navigate to help your market audience read through the content. Keep your titles and subtitles as short as possible and ensure that they are not a data dump.
Keep the Formatting Simple and Engaging (Color and Font)
Formatting is an essential element in any PowerPoint presentation since it makes your content credible and easy to comprehend. Simple mistakes such as misaligned text boxes and poor line spacing heavily impact your key message in a presentation. Besides, poor formatting tarnishes your brand name affecting your reputation across the industry.
You need to take time and format your slides appropriately to avoid small mistakes that are likely to cost your brand at the end of the day. Ensure that every slide you present has a professional touch and speaks a clear message that contributes to the theme of the entire presentation.
To avoid boredom in your slides, consider leaving adequate white space around text to enhance the clarity of the message that is being passed. However, you need to refrain from the cases of double-spacing since they make your text inconsistent. Ensure that you use the right size and color of fonts to make the presentation highly engaging.
To enhance your audience’s comprehension rate, utilize contrasting color pellets for text to help readers understand areas where there is emphasis. However, avoid the use of many colors in your presentation. Besides, ensure that your design appears to be consistent across all the slides.
Make the Presentation Audience Centered and Highly Interactive
Nobody wants to read a boring PowerPoint presentation. The content you incorporate in your presentation creates a robust combination between the brand and the market audience. This means that you need to invest in highly researched and engaging data to enhance your brand’s loyalty.
Focus on highlighting the challenges facing your audience and try to address them. Note that the products and services that you are offering should be tailored to address the needs and concerns of your audience. Once your target market understands that the presentation focuses on helping them, you automatically gain their trust and loyalty, impacting your success.
Only include the important points in your slides to make the presentation meaningful. Also, avoid the use of jargon in your presentation and instead communicate in a simple language that everyone can easily understand without being left with questions. Ensure that every slide in your PowerPoint presentation has a title or a subtitle to make it easy for your audience to understand.
In addition, you can make the slides more interactive by including questions, interesting facts, and other forms of icebreaking elements that make your presentation interesting. After you are done with the presentation, give your audience a chance to ask you questions depending on what you have already presented. Ensure that your presentation allows two-way communication to ensure that the message has been delivered home.
In Conclusion
Approximately 46% of data presenters believe that the most difficult part of developing a successful PowerPoint presentation is creating a compelling data story. This is not the case since you only need to master the ins and outs of data visualization, and you are good to do it. Besides, once you have grabbed all the hacks outlined in this article, you can transform a boring PowerPoint slide into a visual masterpiece.
