How To Write A Great PowerPoint Presentation That Will Glue Your Audience To Their Seats

Everyone on the planet knows what a PowerPoint presentation is. We’ve all probably sat through at least 10 of these in school and at work, and I daresay most probably put half of the audience to sleep. And that’s not PowerPoint’s fault! It’s probably poor writing and poor execution. In today’s article, I’m going to show you how to write a great PowerPoint presentation that will keep your audience engaged with you and your slideshow.

What To Consider When Writing A Great PowerPoint Presentation

There are three main things you have to keep in mind when writing your PowerPoint presentation: the content, the organization, and the delivery. The content is, as the name obviously states, the content of your PowerPoint. It’s the words, pictures, charts, videos, etc. included in your slides. The organization of your slides is the way the content is arranged, the design, and the animation and other effects. The delivery is your script and how you will incorporate your PowerPoint into your presentation.

And I know it looks a lot when listed like that, but trust me, it’s really easy if you break it down. So if you want to know more about how to write a good PowerPoint presentation, just read on!

How To Write The Content Of Your PowerPoint

The first step in writing a good PowerPoint presentation is to identify what to put on your slides. It’s important to note here that knowing how to write a PowerPoint presentation outline is essential because then you’d have a solid plan for the most relevant information you can include in your slides.

After you’ve determined what information to insert in your slides, you’d have to decide how to phrase it next. The way you present the information on your slides is crucial if you want to write a good PowerPoint presentation. For this part, you just have to remember to KISS – Keep It Short and Simple. You want the content of your slides to be concise yet still clear and easy to understand for your audience.

Don’t use too many words. Use phrases instead of long sentences, but make sure that your phrases still make sense and convey the idea effectively.

As for pictures, charts, and other media, use them whenever appropriate. Don’t use too much because if you do, your presentation will look like a mess. Use charts when you’re presenting data. Use pictures, illustrations, videos, or other graphics when it can demonstrate your point easier than words can.

How To Organize A PowerPoint Presentation

Now that you’ve written the content of your PowerPoint presentation, you have to organize it so that it’s cohesive and easy to understand – and your first step is to arrange the content. That is, you can’t put too much on a single slide. If you do, your slides will look congested, and your audience might feel discouraged to read your presentation. This means you have to decide how to break up your content so that it’s distributed evenly among your slides.

Identify Your Main Topic

Try designating a single topic or point to a single slide. If you have a lot of content for one topic or point, then divide the content between several slides. Don’t be afraid of using a lot of slides. The number of slides you have isn’t a marker of how long your presentation is. You’re covering the same topic whether or not you use a lot of slides; it’s just that you chose to present information in bite-sized amounts, so you ended up with more slides.

Arrange Your Slides Logically

After arranging the content, you have to organize your slides and make sure that it flows smoothly. You can’t simply jump from one topic to another without considering how they flow into each other.

You have to make sure that the transition doesn’t feel weird or stilted, but rather natural and predictable. If your content has similar topics that don’t necessarily need to be presented in a specific order to be understood, then you can just follow your gut instinct and arrange them in the way that makes the most sense.

Design Your Presentation

After finalizing the arrangement of your content and slides, the last thing you should do is to design your presentation. You can opt for a simple design by choosing from the templates offered by PowerPoint. You can also find and download some templates online if you want something different but don’t want to spend too much time and effort.

If you want to be creative and really unique, you can also make your own template – choose your own background, accent colors, fonts, borders, etc. Just make sure that whatever template you do choose (whether it’s one of PowerPoint’s premade ones or your own) is appropriate for the nature of your presentation.

Still, if you don’t have time for any of that, you can choose to outsource your presentation design , which will ultimately save you a lot of time and will increase your productivity too.

How To Plan The Delivery Of Your PowerPoint Presentation

Finally, you have to plan how you want to incorporate your PowerPoint into your presentation. For most people, this would mean writing a script. While there is no solid or official rule on how to write a PowerPoint presentation script, a general tip is to make sure that it complements your slides and not just repeat what’s already written there. This means that you have to work around your content so that your script ties in nicely with it – that is, it’s not redundant, but not entirely disconnected either.

It would also be nice if you can write your script so that you spend roughly the same amount of time on your slides. It’s not really a big deal, but spending more time on some slides as compared to others gives off the feeling that you weren’t able to manage your slides well. Besides, your presentation would look much more put together if there is a steady flow of information when moving from one topic to the next.

Another tip when writing your script is to make sure it doesn’t sound too stiff. Yes, you’re writing a script, but you don’t have to make it sound like a script. The goal of your script is to make you sound like you know the topic of your presentation inside out.

Are You Ready To Start Writing Your PowerPoint Presentation?

If you’re entirely new to PowerPoint, it’s okay to take your time learning how the program works and learning what kind of writing and designing style suits you and your needs. You also don’t have to worry about following the things mentioned above to a tee. These are tips and guidelines, not rules and laws.

Learning how to write a good PowerPoint presentation is not an exact science because a lot of what makes a PowerPoint presentation good is how the audience receives it. So, if you want to make a good presentation, try putting yourself in your audience’s shoes. Try imagining what you would want to see, how you would want the information to be presented, etc. If you’re having trouble with that, ask for help. There are really so many things you can do to create a good PowerPoint, you just have to find the way that works for you best.

If you don’t have time for mastering your own slides, at 24slides, we spice up PowerPoint presentations with professional design techniques and loads of creativity. We create beautiful presentations from scratch and redesign existing ones. Take a look at some examples of our work and let’s get in touch.