Your IT Support Experts - Homepage

We partner with many types of businesses in the area, and strive to eliminate IT issues before they cause expensive downtime, so you can continue to drive your business forward. Our dedicated staff loves seeing our clients succeed. Your success is our success, and as you grow, we grow.

Home

About Us

IT Services

Understanding IT

News

Blog

Contact Us

Support

(703) 359-9211

Free Consultation

Interested in seeing what we can do for your business? Contact us to see how we can help you! Sign Up Today

Macro Systems Blog

Macro Systems has been serving the Metro Washington, DC area since 1997, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

Don’t Get Trapped in PowerPoint Purgatory

b2ap3_thumbnail_powerpoint_skills_400.jpgEveryone dreads presentations, but for different reasons. Some people are just afraid of public speaking, or they are just overall unorganized. In the end, well designed presentations are essential for your company's success, whether they are given to clients or to your employees. Thankfully, there are ways to minimize the stress that giving a presentation can cause. One of the best ways to prepare a presentation is to use a Microsoft PowerPoint slideshow as an aid.

However, it's very easy to fall into "PowerPoint Purgatory", a place filled with overburdened slideshows that last for hours on end. The amount of professionals who don't use PowerPoint effectively far outweigh those who do. Macro Systems is here to help by providing you with some useful tips to make your presentations both easy for the presenter and for the audience!

Appearance is Everything
1. Cut Down on the Slides - Seriously, how your presentation goes will likely depend on the way that it looks to the audience. When they see that your presentation is 140 slides long, they will sigh and want to take a nap. Use the minimal number of slides to get your point across.

2. Choose a Clear Font Style and Font Size – If the audience can't see what you have put on your slides, they won't learn anything from the presentation. Similarly, if they can't read what you've put on the slides, they still won't get anything out of it. The font color should always be in contrast to what your background color is (i.e. white words on a black background, rather than orange text on a red background). This makes the text clear and easy to spot.

3. Simplicity is Best – Always keep the text simple when you can. The audience's attention should be on you, the presenter, rather than the presentation itself. Always make sure that your slide backgrounds are simple and consistent throughout the slideshow. Don't use anything too distracting, or you risk the audience's attention being lost.

4. Spelling and Grammar Check – Nothing says "unprofessional" like misspelling your company's name on the title slide. It's embarrassing when you know how to spell a word, but perhaps you simply missed a key. Go through it once on your own and pay particularly close attention to the spelling, then let spell/grammar check handle the rest.

The Presentation Itself
1. Be Prepared – the bane of everyone using a PowerPoint presentation is finding out that your presentation won't work with the computer you are working on. Get to venue ahead of time to ensure that all of your equipment is working correctly. Make sure that the resolution of the projector matches the resolution of your presentation; otherwise, there might be display issues that will take away from your presentation.

2. Bring Note Cards – If you get nervous about presenting to a large audience, don't fall into the trap of reading whatever is on the slide. Make note cards for yourself and do not read the slide. This makes the audience concentrate on you and what you have to say. The PowerPoint is merely an aid for what the presenter, you, have to say. It should not be the opposite way. Note cards also help you stay on track and on time, if that is an issue.

3. Turn Off Your Screen Saver – You might think your desktop and screensaver are great, but that doesn't mean that the audience will. You want their full attention, so turn your screen saver off.

For more best practices, contact Macro Systems at 703-359-9211. With these easy tips, your next PowerPoint presentation will surely be a winner. Do you have any secrets you would like to share? Let us know in the comments!

Don’t Be Taken by the Cloud Computing Trend!
4,238,983 Records Compromised So Far in 2014… and ...
 

Comments

No comments made yet. Be the first to submit a comment
Guest
Already Registered? Login Here
Guest
Sunday, December 22, 2024

Captcha Image

Customer Login


Contact Us

Learn more about what Macro Systems can do for your business.

(703) 359-9211

Macro Systems
3867 Plaza Drive
Fairfax, Virginia 22030