Far too often, I see online PowerPoint presentations that just come to an end after an important issue has been discussed. The presenter might finish by saying “well, that’s all I have” or a similarly pathetic statement that just feels awkward. Every online PowerPoint presentation needs a strong concluding slide.
Your conclusion slide should have 3-5 key messages that have already been introduced throughout the presentation, and reiterated on this final slide. Repetition is a key element in any PowerPoint presentation to keep your audience engaged, and for them to walk away remembering your message. The conclusion slide isn’t just to tidy up your presentation, but it’s you last chance to drive home the messages you just spent the rest of the presentation explaining.
The conclusion slide may also have a few bullet points on calls to action that are required either by individuals, or concepts in general. Keep your conclusion slide clean and simple and spend most of your time speaking to it, not reading from it. Use large fonts that have a good contrast with your background, so that everyone can read the messages and let them sink in. Save your most prominent message for last, and emphasize it in your presentation. Finally, be sure to thank the audience for their time and attendance, and if possible and appropriate, field any questions they may have.
The level of success and the efficacy of message penetration will largely depend on how comfortable and familiar you are with your own material. Practice makes perfect. Go through your online presentation multiple times to make sure you are clear on every issue you bring up, and be ready for any questions you may be asked. You will quickly lose the confidence and attention of your audience if you seem unfamiliar, or unsure about the material your are presenting.
While you may be confidence and well-versed in using the Microsoft PowerPoint application, all bets are off when you are presenting online through a web conferencing provider. Most web conference companies convert your PowerPoint presentation into a format compatible with their technology. The interface for presenting is usually a bit, if not very different than navigating through the original PowerPoint presentation. Practicing with your online presentation through your web conferencing service provider is a necessity. Make sure you are familiar with how to upload the presentation, navigate through your slides (both forward, backward, and skipping ahead or forward to a specific slide), and how to use the video and audio systems so that you can make adjustments as necessary. Make sure you have a phone number to contact your web conferencing company immediately if you run into any problems, or have any questions prior to your event.
Practicing can only help so much. Even the most well-practiced and prepared presentation can go awry. Having a contingency plan, particularly if you are presenting to important clients or partners can be useful when presenting online. If your web conferencing service fails during your presentation and you are unable to get your service provider to rectify the problem, you may want to have the phone numbers and email addresses of your audience so that you can then email them the PowerPoint presentation, and get them on an audio-only conference call to continue the presentation and let them move through the slides themselves.
- Do not overcrowd you slides. Keep your audience focused on the content of your online PowerPoint presentation. Overuse of images or effects will only distract them from the point you’re trying to make.
- Use slides to help clarify your online presentation, but don’t use it as a replacement for handouts. If you have lots of technical data to support your idea, email handouts to your participants at the end of the online presentation.
- Use animations and video sparingly. Many webcasting and web conferencing services won’t easily support multi-media content and if your online presentation relies too heavily upon it, you might find yourself in a difficult position if you have nothing else to present with.
- Create a concluding slide that includes 3–5 key messages that summarize your content.
- You can never emphasize your main point too many times. Repetition is the easiest way to have your audience remember your message.
- Keep your design elements consistent throughout the entire online presentation. This includes layout, color scheme, font type (use no more than two throughout the entire presentation), font size and bulleting style.
- Be as brief as possible. Instead of writing out complete sentences, use bulleted phrases as speaking points. Limit your bullets to around 6-8 per slide.
- Keep lots of space in between your text for easier reading. Many people viewing an online PowerPoint presentation will not be watching it on the same sized monitor that your created it on. Test your online presentation on a variety of monitors before presenting.
- Avoid using all CAPS, even when you are looking to emphasize an issue. Online, all CAPS have an appearance you’re yelling, not just emphasizing. Use color, or bold/italics for emphasis.
- Avoid busy backgrounds, if you decide to have a background at all. Make sure that all of your text and images are contrasted against the background if you choose one. People have a variety of preferences for light/dark and contrast on their monitor, so text that is a similar color as your background may not show up at all on some monitors.
Steven Kosslyn outlines 3 goals you should strive to attain in any successful online PowerPoint presentation:
- Connect with your audience
- Direct and hold their attention
- Promote understanding & memory
Goal 1: Connect with your audience. Do not include too much or too little information and select information and use language appropriate for your particular audience.
Goal 2: Direct and hold attention. Attention is drawn to areas that are perceptibly different, so leverage design principles in your online PowerPoint presentation by using contrasting colors and images where appropriate. Make differences big and obvious. People will naturally tend to group similar elements into a single unit, keep them focused on the topic at hand.
Goal 3: Promote understanding and memory. Messages are easier to remember when they are clearly understood. For example, the word Red presented in green text violates this principle as would a graph about the homeless population in Los Angeles, decorated with a background image of people playing with their healthy dogs. Remember that people expect any change in your online presentations, such as a sudden interjection of a joke or a story, or a visual change in slide color or an animation, etc. to have meaning, and when they don’t have meaning this becomes noise and distracts them from being able to remember the message. Audiences can only retain a limited amount of information in an online presentation, so limit the amount of messages within a presentation.
Fonts and Colors are often overlooked aspects of a well designed and effective online PowerPoint presentation. Easy-to-read fonts and solid, well-contrasted colors allow your audience to quickly read your presentation, and focus on your message, rather than your online PowerPoint presentation’s design.
Online PowerPoint Presentation Colors
- Limit the number of colors on a single screen to a minimum.
- Bright colors make small objects and thin lines stand out. However, some vibrant colors are difficult to read when projected, particularly when contrasted against a similarly colored background.
- Use no more than four colors on any single chart.
- Check the colors of your online PowerPoint presentation on variety of screens. Your online presentation may look drastically different on various monitors, so you need to make sure your design works for the majority of them.
Online PowerPoint Presentation Fonts
- Use sans-serif fonts such as Arial or Helvetica. Avoid serif fonts such as Times New Roman or Palatino as they are sometimes more difficult to read.
- Use no font size smaller than 24 point. Your online PowerPoint presentation will be viewed on monitors of different sizes. You need to make sure that your text is legible for the majority of them.
- Use clear headlines. Use a larger font (35-45 points) or different color for the headline.
- Use a single sans-serif font throughout the online presentation. Use different colors, sizes and styles (bold, underline) only for impact.
- Try to avoid italics as they may be difficult to read.
- Do not use all caps except for titles.
A key element in producing an influential online PowerPoint presentation is tailoring it to your audience and effectively presenting the material. Content is what drives your online PowerPoint presentation. It’s easy to get lost in the fancy multimedia features that PowerPoint offers, however fancy graphics and animations are no substitute for quality content. Without it, you’ll quickly lose your audience.
A good online PowerPoint presentation should follow this structure:
- Attention-getting opener
- Brief overview of the topic
- Describe what your audience needs, that is, the problem
- Explain how your solution meets that need
- Tell how your audience can implement your solution - that is, action steps
- Brief summary and conclusion
By organizing an online presentation into this six-step structure, you can ensure a logical flow that everyone can easily follow even when you’re not physically there to deliver the presentation and make eye contact with your audience. The material in each step must be simple and organized. Create a separate outline to use as notes, so you’re not reading directly from the online presentation. By concentrating on your text in outline form, you can easily write down your ideas, see the flow of the entire presentation at once, and move ideas from one place to another so they flow more logically.
Openings are the toughest part for most presenters. Like most impressions, you have less than 15 seconds to make a good first one. Many presenters have different styles for starting their online meetings. Some open with a joke or anecdote to calm there own nerves and some start talking immediately to cover up their anxiety or to project confidence.
In an online PowerPoint presentation, you usually can not directly see your audience, so the non-verbal cues that you would find in a standard meeting don’t apply. Open with a personal story that reflects your humanness. Your opening line is the most critical line which should connect with the audience.
Again, since you can not make eye-contact with your audience, you need to speak naturally and in a friendly manner. Reading directly from your notes or slides will quickly lose the attention of your audience. Speak as if you are merely having a conversation with individuals, who happen to be in a group. Speak in short, concise sentences, pausing frequently to really connect with individuals. Open the online meeting to questions at the end of each topic, or when presenting material that may be difficult to understand.
Use humor based on your own experiences and limitations as a human being. In this era of political correctness, jokes can easily offend or get you in trouble. Personal stories are limited to you and are often endearing. If the audience feels that they can connect with you on a personal level, they are much more likely to feel they can relate to the information you are presenting.
It’s usually pretty simple to tell when someone is speaking to an online PowerPoint presentation that someone else has put together. You may hear or see expressions of surprise or puzzlement or even comments that a graphic is especially good. You can have someone else prepare your slides and even have someone else manage the online meeting, but you have to own the presentation as if you created it. When you are completely familiar with the presentation and are comfortable working through the slides, you become free to connect with your audience and stand out as a presenter.
While online PowerPoint presentations will not take the place of communication skills, it can be a great tool for enhancing and improving presentation skills. Through practice, repetition and hard work, you can learn to be a great presenter by studying and using the right tools. Mind you, that the best speakers and presenters are the ones who are able to speak in a way that is most congruent with their own personality. The more authentic you are on your subject and to your audience, the more effective the communicator you are. The strength of online PowerPoint presentations and webcasts are that they give you the flexibility to use your own style and clearly get your message across to your audience.
The phrase “in conclusion” is used too frequently and often without actually being at the very end of a presentation. “In conclusion” is a signal to your audience to start paying attention again and make sure that they receive the key take-away messages that they might have missed while checking their email or paying their bills while only half paying attention to your online PowerPoint presentation.
Too many presenters falsely signal the end of their presentation with this phrase and the problem is they rarely actually conclude with a concise trailing statement. I’ve been in webinars and seen online presentations where the speaker has said “in conclusion” nine times during his presentation. If you really want to annoy and lose the attention of your audience, say “in conclusion,” and then keep on going for another ten or twenty minutes.
The best thing to do is simply avoid the phrase “in conclusion” altogether. If you have a well organized online PowerPoint presentation that focuses and repeats your key messages, your audience will have absorbed that information by the time your presentation ends. Leave your audience with something more thought-provoking, or if the online meeting was more light-hearted, use something appropriately humorous. You want to leave your audience looking forward to your next presentation, not dreading it.
Message retention is the most important take-away in any online PowerPoint presentation. Your entire presentation should revolve around only a couple key messages. The universal rule in message retention is repetition.
Start off your online PowerPoint by telling them what you are going to tell them, second, tell them, and finally tell them what you just told them. While you’re telling them, tell them over and over again. While repeating the exact same thing word-for-word will drive your audience insane, you can instead make an important point and use several different illustrations to drive that key message home.
If you want the audience to remember the important points in your message, you have to make each point in 3-6 different ways. According to one study, if you make a point only a single time, by the end of your presentation, just 10% of your audience will remember it. If you repeat a point as many as six times, retention then jumps to 90%. Without repetition, 40% of your audience will forget almost everything you said within 20 minutes of your conclusion. Within 24 hours, 70% of the audience will have forgot almost 100% of your message.