If anything in this world can go wrong, it will definitely go wrong. When it comes to public speaking and PowerPoint presentations, if your approach is not right, you might end up with a sleeping audience. Do you know even the best presentation can be ruined by someone who is a bad presenter? Presentation software (PowerPoint, Google Slides, Prezi) today is the standard way for corporate and academia to present their work visually and empower their message. What comes as an important fact is that unskilled use of this tools and weak deliverability of content can ruin your presentation endeavours forever!

You just can’t afford your audience to miss out important details about your message. When you’re trapped in the audience during a bad presentation, you might certainly blame the presenter and its deck as evil. People who read each and every slide word by word, instead of utilizing and wooing audience by the visuals, voice and creativity, they’re just reading a book on the dice. The opposite is also true, even the most brilliant of the speakers look bad if the presentation is amateurish. Today, we will stress upon the Eight pitfalls that can ruin your presentation.

  1. Poorly Picked Template or Theme:

Let us say you found a great template on the internet and you designed the base of your presentation on that. You are so confident about the lush blue design template, you’re so sure that it will kill the presentation. But? Well, your presentation is all about your company’s goals and you’ve yo do not have the appropriate visual aesthetics it could be pretty cumbersome.

One must identify what the presentation is going to be about? What are the stakes in hands? What type of audience will be listening to you? Once you’ve evaluated these aspects, then you can move forward on picking an appropriate presentation template for your deck. Always strive to be straightforward and consistent in your visuals, the audience will surely be allured.

  1. Too Much Talking:

On average you can make people listen to your continuously for around 10 minutes. Your audience might start mumble amongst themselves if you fail to garner their attention. It would be evident to mention that great speakers often wrap of their presentations in a matter of 20 minutes. It hardly goes beyond that. Ask yourself, do you really require hours to convey your business goals or message?

We understand that there can be a case where the presentation demands a larger explanation. Well, in that case, you can always break your masterpiece into 10-minute chunks. Take it as a checkpoint, after every 10 minutes or so, you must try to reconnect with your audience. You can always consider making use of short clips in the presentation, you can ask them about the topic, few questions or even a poll. The main point is overcoming the boredom by sort of some activity.

  1. Too much text and poor choice of font:

Let’s say that you are sitting around 18 inches away from the display, that small script font might look attractive. Well, when it comes to people at the back, if someone is sitting 200 feet away from the display, the text is too hard to read for them. When it comes to dealing this menace, sticking to simple and straightforward fonts like Times New Roman as well as Arial is advised. Also, kindly don’t make use of more than 2 types of fonts in the same slide. Keep the size just big enough so that the audience at the end might be able to read the content. To be able to take advantage of this principle, you need to keep the text at minimum. Let photos, diagrams and charts speak for you. Avoid paragraphs.

  1. Unrelated imagenry:

Do not add photos or diagrams just to fill the canvas. Every visual element in your slides needs to be displayed in an appropriate layout and have a coherent relationship with your message and between each other. Avoid a collage. Simply use one diagram per slide. Choose clean and simple to follow diagrams that can map your ideas, but keep aesthetic in mind (avoid standard smart art which are an attention killer)

If you use a picture or photo, try to select an image that represents your story and bonds with your message. Avoid stock photos with unrealistic scenarios. If your message is based on data or facts, apply a clean infographic, instead of big tables or matrices. You can use PowerPoint templates which help you locate your assets in the slides following design best practices.

  1. Killing The Listeners With Bullets:

People who hold a great knowledge and expertise about design often refer bullet points as the killer of any presentation. They impart information in the worst possible way if your presentation is stuffed with them. Still, you would require title and bullets to convey your message. Cramming as much as statistical info into bullets is not going to help you anyway. You are just making it stressful for your audience to grasp the knowledge.

Now, kindly don’t bash the PowerPoint. It would be wise to evaluate your approach. Although it’s appreciated that you must follow a consistent appeal throughout the presentation, but not let every slide look the same. Using an array of infographics, high-definition images with little to no information is advised. In simpler terms, give some rest to the eyes of your listeners in between through engaging visuals.

  1. Leverage Your Vocals:

When you’re presenting your presentation deck, most of the time you’re required to talk and communicate. People generally neglect the power of language and totally rely upon the graphics, data, in short, the presentation content. Always remember that your language and command of the content are your biggest assets. Both of them should go hand in hand. When you’re on stage, you should try to keep a reality check on your pace. You certainly don’t want to run short on time, do you? Also, as a speaker presenting a presentation, you must also check your volume. If it’s a big room, then there is no harm to raise your volume & vice-versa.