1. Know Your Stuff

Your presentation isn’t about your slides alone. It’s about the message you want to get across. Before filling in stats, facts and figures, think about the narrative that'll be discussed, why and in what order. It's a must as you learn how to give a good presentation PPT.

2. Write It Out

Start on a Word or Google doc. Storyboard or script the entire presentation to give you an idea of how the information presented will flow, and how viewers will see it in sequence. Learn the complete writing process:

3. Highlight What’s Most Important

A presentation covers the most crucial pieces only. Whatever you’ve been working on that lead to this—a paper, a work project, a new product design—doesn’t need to be shared in its entirety. Pick key points and put the rest in an “Appendix” to refer to during the Q&A session at the end.

4. Know Your Audience

How you talk to a room full of medical professionals should be different from the way you address a room full of young entrepreneurs. Everything, in fact, is different. Your topic selection, the language you use, the examples you give to illustrate points. The little bits of humor included should be tailored specifically with your target audience in mind.

5. Rehearse! (Yes, Already)

It’s never too early to get used to the rhythm of your presentation and take note of points you want to emphasize. While saying it out loud, you’ll start to develop a “feel” for the material. You'll notice that some things work well, while others don’t and might need to be worked around.

6. Rewrite After You Rehearse

As you're rehearsing your presentation, you're bound to stumble over sections that don't quite flow naturally. Instead of reworking your delivery, it might be time to consider the content and rewriting the areas that served as stumbling blocks.

7. Share With a Friend

If the stakes are high for your presentation, it's never too early to get feedback from those that you trust.

8. Keep Your Slides Simple

This is one of the most important PowerPoint presentation tips to follow when designing your slides. Keep in mind that less is more (effective.) A cluttered slide is distracting. It causes confusion for an audience: Which part of the slide should I focus on? Should I read the slide or pay attention to the presenter? 9. Limit Words on Your Slides

Piggybacking on the last point—less is more effective. If possible, avoid bullets altogether. Otherwise cut them to just a few simple words. The audience should be listening, not reading.

10. Use High-Quality Photos and Graphics

One of the more important tips for quality PowerPoint presentations is to use high-quality photos and graphics.

11. Use Accurate and Relevant Charts and Graphs

Charts and graphs can also be distracting if they’re not used right. Make sure your information design is simple and clean so that the audience doesn’t spend the entire time trying to decipher what your X axis says.

12. Use High-Quality, Fresh Templates

Have you seen the old PowerPoint template that looks like worn paper and uses ink splashes? Yeah, so has your audience. Templates can be distracting if they're too basic or if the design feels dated. You need one with great design options.

13. Choose Appropriate Fonts

Fonts are an important part of engaging your audience. Fonts and typography choices have a subconscious effect on viewers. They cause them to characterize your company's presentation and brand either positively or negatively. Make sure that you're choosing fonts that are professional and modern!

14. Choose Color Well

Like font choice, colors cause specific subconscious reactions from viewers. Choosing an outdated color combination for your presentation will render it ineffective.

15. Clean + Simple Formatting Makes All the Difference!

We've got a full tutorial on formatting your PPT slides properly. Give it a read through and review the accompanying video. Just remember less is more. The focus is you and your message, not your slides.

16. Make Sure All Objects Are Aligned

A simple way to create a well-designed presentation is to make sure all items on a slide are intentionally aligned. To do this hold down Shift + select all the objects you want to include. Then choose Arrange in the options bar and apply Alignment Type.

17. Limit Punctuation

This isn't the place for exclamation points. Emphasize your points (while speaking). Don’t enlist punctuation to do this for you. (Leave these at home!!!)

18. Avoid Over-Formatting Your Points

This PowerPoint presentation tip is simple. There’s no need to have every word of every bullet point capitalized, or to have all your bullet points in title case. If possible, drop bullets altogether. Again, the simpler the better!

19. Combine Information With Graphics in PowerPoint

One of the most powerful presentation skills for PPT is using infographics. With the right type of visuals, slides come to life and reduce the text in favor of graphics.

20. I’ll Say It Again - Rehearse

Just do it. Again and again. Experiment with pauses, gestures, and body language. Practice around one hour for every minute of your speech.

21. Practice With a Timer

Consistency is key to an effective PowerPoint presentation. Timing should be similar (ideally the same) each time you rehearse. This one will especially pay off when it’s time to present in front of your audience!

22. Slow It Down

Many of the best speakers today intentionally speak slowly. You’ll have the chance to emphasize, appear more thoughtful, and make your information easier to digest.

23. Pause More Often

Like the prior tip. Pausing more often, allows main points to be emphasized and for information to sink in. You need to let key points breathe a little before rushing into the next section.

24. Record Yourself

Use your phone’s voice recorder. Assess and critique yourself.

25. Choose Three Focal Points in the Room

If you stare at the same spot (or even creepier, the same person) the entire time, your presentation will be ineffective (and awkward.) People will be distracted by you, wondering what you're staring at.

Try this: pick three points in the room (typically: left, center, right). Take time to direct your delivery toward each physical focal point in the room. Also, focus on the center when making your primary points.

26. Vary Your Sentence Length

This makes you sound more interesting and it's easier for your audience to follow. Think short and punchy. Or go long and complex for dramatic effect.

27. Modulate!

Don't speak in monotone for your whole presentation. Be conscious to raise and lower your voice tone. Otherwise, people will tune you out, and you'll come across like the teacher in Charlie Brown.

28. Practice in Front of a Mirror

What you look like is as important as how you sound. Pretend as though you're having a normal conversation and allow your hands to move with your speech—emphasizing your points. Just don’t get carried away! (I’m thinking Brene Brown or President Obama, not your Aunt Jamie after a few gin and tonics.)

29. Use “Present Mode” When Rehearsing

When you finally are ready to hit the Present button in PowerPoint, make sure you use the Present Mode option. This allows for you (and only you) to view extra notes about each slide—just in case you forget something!

30. Practice With New Audiences!

If possible, try doing a few real live test runs as a webinar or even at a local Toastmasters organization to get some feedback from a live audience.

31. Engage the Audience by Asking Questions

There's no reason that a presentation should be one-sided. Why not invert the format and ask your audience a question?

32. Take a Deep Breath

Deep breathing is proven to relieve stress. (Source: the NHS Website) It’s simple and it'll help you remain calm, and in the moment, as well. Even up to the last minute before starting.

33. Lighten Up Your Mood

Tell yourself a joke or watch a funny video clip. Do this before the presentation, of course. Recent research concludes that happy people were more productive. (Source: Fast Company) More productive is more focused and able to perform better.

34. Remind Yourself to Take It Slow

When we're stressed or nervous (or both), we tend to speak faster. Consciously, take yet another deep breath and remind yourself to take it slow!

35. Read the Room

Every presentation room has a temperature. It's your job as a speaker to gauge it and tailor your presentation to it.

36. Fake It ‘Til You Make It!

Go forward with confidence. If you act confident, you'll start to feel more confident. Move slowly with grace, speak clearly, smile, wear something nice. You’ll appear confident to all attendees (no matter how you feel internally).

37. Stop With the Sound Effects

Sound effects—like that swoosh that used to happen when your college professor brought up a new bullet point in PowerPoint—are distracting and outdated. In most cases avoid it.

Add audio or music into your presentation to inject interest or highlight an important point, but it's something to take extra care with. If you insert audio, then make sure your use really connects with your audience and has a fresh approach. Otherwise, it's best to leave it out.

38. Don’t Use Flashy Slide Transitions

Again, this is distracting and outdated. Use transitions and subtle animations in your PowerPoint presentation.

40. Don't Be Afraid to Be Afraid

The fear of public speaking is a real one. Many beginners think that if they're feeling nervous that a presentation won't go well or succeed. That might lead them to cancel the presentation.

41. Read Directly During Your PowerPoint Presentation

If you spend your entire presentation looking at the screen or your note cards, you're sure to lose your audience's attention. They'll disengage from what you're saying, and your presentation will fall flat.

Reading from your paper or screen also makes it look like you’re not prepared. Many people do it, but no one should. As a general rule, only present something you know well and have, at least mostly, memorized the main points of.

42. Don't Miss Out on PowerPoint Customizations

There's a major mistake that rookie presenters miss when they start working with PowerPoint designs.

The best way to see how to make a good presentation PPT is to start with designs from others. That means using a template, but that doesn't mean you can't customize them!

Don't forget that PowerPoint templates are infinitely customizable and serve as design tips inside a PPTX file.

Don't skip PowerPoint templates as you learn how to use PowerPoint effectively. Think of those templates as guides with built-in presentation design tips.

Be careful with the visuals you insert, or with adding flashy effects. Here are some great uses of creative ideas that you can pack your PowerPoint presentation with to be more effective:

43. Use the Visual Guides

When you're designing your next PowerPoint presentation, it helps to create a sense of visual rhythm. Slides that have objects appropriately aligned and centered are naturally more likely to resonate with an audience.

44. Use a Few Animations (Tastefully)

Animations in effective PowerPoint presentations are a slippery slope. We've all sat through presentations where there were so many objects in motion that it was easy to lose focus on the key ideas in the presentation.

But that's why animations get an unfairly bad reputation. Use animations to create motion and hold an audience's attention. Use them sparingly and on key elements on your slide and you'll capture that attention properly.

45. Stage Key Content With Animations

You just learned that animations should avoid being distracting. But there's an important principle to using animations properly. It's called staging content.

Staging content means that the content appears step-by-step. There's nothing worse than overwhelming an audience with all your content at once. But when you stage content, bring it on step-by-step.

46. Add a Video to Your PowerPoint

When you're sharing a big idea in your presentation, it helps to share your perspective from a few different angles. Adding a video to supplement your content can do just that. Luckily, it's easy to add and embed a YouTube video in your next PowerPoint presentation.

47. Add Charts & Graphs

Charts and graphs can help you tell stories with data. It's easy for an audience to zone out when you throw a big data table or set of statistics at them.

48. Build Your Own Infographics With SmartArt

Earlier in this tutorial, we gave you one of my favorite PowerPoint design tips: use infographic templates.

49. Use Presenter View

Remember that when you use the PowerPoint, you're the presentation. The slides are just there to reinforce what you've got to say and support your speaking points.

50. Track Your PowerPoint Changes

One of my favorite PowerPoint design tips is to collaborate. Those who know you best will suggest compelling changes that are sure to help you succeed.

51. Engage With an Interactive Quiz

A good PowerPoint presentation gets your audience involved. One of the best PowerPoint tricks is to do that with a quiz. By engaging audiences, a quiz makes your slides memorable.

52. Illustrate With Custom Image Masks

One of the top PowerPoint tips is to illustrate your slides. But you can go beyond simple, rectangular images on each slide.

53. Print Handouts With Extra Notes

Wonder how to give a good presentation PPT that audiences will remember? Give them a piece of it to take home.

54. Make Bulk Edits With Master Slides

When you think about how to present a PowerPoint, consider your branding. That means keeping your logo front and center in the eyes of an audience. But if you’re working with a lengthy slide deck, this could seem daunting.

55. Shrink File Sizes for Sharing

Many of the top presentation tips involve making your slides more accessible. Often, that involves sharing them with audiences online.

56. Map Processes With Flowcharts

As you consider how to do a good PowerPoint presentation, think of ease of understanding. After all, you’re trying to explain something to your audience.

57. Use Brand-Specific Colors

Using presentation skills PPT helps form an association between your message and branding. There’s no better way to do that than with your brand colors.

58. Build Social Media Posts in PPT

A good PowerPoint presentation doesn’t have to be shared through a projector. Use the app and templates to build amazing illustrations to use anywhere.

59. Be Industry-Specific

One of the top presentation tips in 2021 is to be industry-specific. That means avoiding generic layouts and choosing something more customized.

60. Design for Online (Virtual) Sharing

Last but not least in our list of PowerPoint tips comes virtual presenting. More and more often, slides will be shared with online audiences around the globe.