Five Ways to Make Your PowerPoint Presentations More Interesting

Boring PowerPoint presentations are all too common, which is why many presenters have chosen to ditch them entirely. However, is PowerPoint really to blame for boring presentations? The fact is, PowerPoint can be an effective tool for sharing information and reinforcing key points in a presentation if done correctly. The idea is that the PowerPoint is meant to supplement the presenter, not replace them. If you are preparing for a presentation, you don’t have to throw out the PowerPoint. Instead, use these strategies to make your PowerPoint an interesting and engaging tool for your presentation. 

1. Tailor it to Your Audience

Think about who you will be presenting to when designing your slideshow. Consider the demographics, knowledge level, and tech savviness of the audience. Will this group prefer a combination of graphs, charts, and written material or would they respond better to multimedia elements? Is your goal to entertain or to educate? In order to prepare a presentation that will interest your audience, you must consider the needs of your audience. Then, you can adjust your PowerPoint accordingly to make it more relevant to your audience. 

2. Choose Powerful Images

Instead of overloading your audience with text, choose powerful images that are relevant to your topic. Look for images that will elicit an emotional response, infuse humor, or enhance how people will remember your content. Real images can be incredibly powerful and they can be useful for keeping your audience engaged.

3. Bring Your Presentation to Life with Videos

Videos are another great way to make presentations more interesting. Videos can help break up text and can help capture your audience’s attention. They can be used to emphasize points or simply to provide a break from the monotony of listening to someone speak. Videos could include tutorials, screencasts that show data, interviews, or even short entertainment to keep people engaged. 

4. Make it Interactive

A common mistake presenters make when using PowerPoint is the failure to interact with their audience. They simply refer to the slideshow and forget about involving the audience in the presentation. You can make your PowerPoint more interesting by adding prompts, plug-ins, polls, questions, or even social media handles to boost interactivity. 

5. Mix Up the Content

We can all agree that no one wants to sit through a PowerPoint that is crammed with text and bullet points. If you want to hold the attention of your audience, you need to diversify your content. Charts, graphs, images, text, videos, audio, and GIFs are all great examples of how you can mix up your content. This will help keep engagement levels high and will give the audience a variety of ways to connect with the content.