Intro
No matter how often you deliver PowerPoint presentations, you want your audience to be amazed and impressed with whatever it is you have to share.
So in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven tips to help make your PowerPoint presentations look awesome and that much more memorable.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
Change Cursor Pointer
So let's start off with tip number one, and this has to do with our mouse cursor.
I'm just gonna go into presentation mode for this particular slide.
How often do you see someone using the standard basic mouse cursor to draw your attention?
I want you to look at this word over here, and then I want you to come over here and look at something else that I'm wiggling around or swirling my mouse cursor around.
Well, there's a much better way.
If we right-click on the screen and come about halfway down on this menu, we have some pointer options.
The first one is called a laser pointer.
And if I select this, I get a little red laser.
So if I wanna draw my attention to a particular word or an image or a diagram, I can do so here with this laser pointer, but I've got other options available to me as well.
I can use this pen option for example.
And if I want you to really focus on all the apps on your phone, I can do so here.
If I want to underline this automated word, I can do so as well.
The last option we have available to us here is a highlighter, and we can actually change that color if we want to.
But by default, if I want to maybe highlight this word "web," I can just sort of run over it a few times.
Maybe highlight this word "you" for example, I can highlight certain things on my screen.
So not only do things come more to life, it is much easier for your audience to follow you along.
Align All Your Objects
Now our next tip has to do with making you look great on every single slide.
And one of my pet peeves is when I'm watching someone else's presentation, and they have things out of alignment.
Whether it's text or images or whatever it is on their slide, they've got things out of place.
This is such an easy fix so that all of your slides can look great.
Here in this example, I've got four different images that are really all over the place.
In fact, these two are sort of overlapping a bit and they are certainly not in alignment.
So in order to fix this, all I need to do is select all of the objects that I want to align.
So in this case, I'm gonna select these four options.
Oops, I didn't get that last one there.
I got all four images at this place, and then I need to come up here to arrange, and under arrange, we have the option to align.
Now, in this case, I'm gonna align in the middle and you can see everything automatically gets aligned into this middle.
But let's go one step further.
I'm gonna come back to arrange and we're gonna come back to align, and another one that I use quite often is either distribute horizontally or vertically.
Well, in this case, I wanna distribute horizontally, so I'm gonna select this option and now I've got even spacing between all four options.
So when I go to present this slide, it looks professional, it looks neat, it's quick and easy.
Often just takes you a few clicks, and you can make sure everything is in line on your slides.
Animate Text or Images
Next up, let's talk a little bit about how we can add some polish and pizazz to some of our slides.
One of the things that I like to do is make some of my images move just in a little subtle way.
Animate Text or Images So if I'm talking and I'm going to be on this slide for a few minutes, there's something else that is going on.
This can really add a little bit of oomph to your slides and really make you stand out from other presentations.
So in this case, what I want to do is I want this image, this bell icon to sort of teeter back and forth just very slowly, just very gently as I'm talking about this concept.
So what I need to do is select, select the image or images that I'd like to move, and you're probably already familiar with some of these basic animations here.
I'm gonna select for more options and what I want to look for here is emphasis.
These are things I don't want to fade in or fade out, I just want to emphasize this particular image.
So I'm gonna select teeter in this case, and you can see it just teetered there for a little bit, but that's not what I want.
I don't want it to teeter once and I also don't want it to do it at that speed.
So in order to get some more options here, I'm gonna select it and then select the animation pane.
So now to adjust some of my options, all I'm gonna do is select this down arrow beside the animation.
Now by default, when you add any animation, it's going to start on a click, but I just want to transition into this slide and have it happen automatically.
So in this case, I'm gonna select start after previous.
So now it's going to happen as soon as I transition into this slide.
I don't have to press the space bar, I don't have to click anything else, but then we also want to come down here and select effect options.
So in this case, we want to come over here to the timing option.
And we're gonna say we want the duration to be a lot slower, in this case, I'm gonna say slow so about three seconds in duration, and I'm also gonna come down here to repeat, and I'm gonna say repeat until the end of the slide, meaning I want it to happen the entire time that I'm on this slide until I transition out.
So let's hit okay on this one, and now we're gonna go back into presentation mode.
So now you can see, I haven't initiated anything, I've just simply opened up this particular slide.
It just gives this slide a little something extra special, something else that's going on as I'm presenting my deck.
Morph Transitions
But if you really want to wow your audience, then you're gonna want to learn how to morph between two slides.
Morph Transitions Morphing a slide is designed when you want to emphasize something that is already on this slide.
So in this example, what I want to happen is have this image, this bell icon grow larger and move to the right-hand side.
Then I want this text here at the bottom to move to the left-hand side of the screen and be larger.
So the first step that we need to do here is actually duplicate the slide.
So I'm simply going to copy and then paste this slide so I've got two exact versions of this slide.
Then all I need to do is select the top version.
This is the version that we're starting from, and then I'm gonna select transitions.
Instead of fade, I want to select morph.
Fade is usually my particular default as I'm naturally fading in between my slides, but in this case, I am going to say morph.
Now what I want to do is go to my second slide.
Remember, it's identical at this stage, but now I'm going to make those changes.
So for example, I'm gonna take this image.
I'm gonna move it to the right and I'm gonna make it significantly larger.
Then I'm gonna take this text over here.
I'm gonna move it to the left-hand side.
I'm gonna change some of its dimensions.
And I'm also going to make the text quite a bit larger.
So instead of 40, let's bump it up to maybe something like, oh, I don't know, something like 66, something like this.
I really want to emphasize this point.
I really want to get my audience's attention.
So it's the same content.
It's the same content on both slides.
It's just rearranged in a different manner.
Now in order for this to work, you need to make sure that both of the slides that you want to morph have morph selected as their transition.
Let's select this first one and go into presentation mode and see what happens.
I'm now gonna transition to that second slide.
And did you see how everything moved nice and smoothly?
This bell icon got nice and large and my text very smoothly moved to the left and then transitioned into a larger font.
Let me just go back and forth here just to show you what is going on.
Isn't that gonna wow your audience?
Remove Image Background
Now, of course, any awesome PowerPoint presentation is going to have a variety of images and pictures.
But another one of my personal pet peeves is when everyone is using these standard square or rectangular images within their slides.
So let's take a look at this one here for an example.
I want to quickly and easily remove the background of this image, but I don't want to have to load it in some other application.
I don't want to have to search for a transparent background.
I like this hand with this phone, I just want to get rid of this background.
Well, all I need to do is select this image and then come up here and select picture format.
And the very first option on the left-hand side is remove background.
If I select this, you can see it actually makes the entire background purple.
However, I can make a few tweaks and modifications.
I can see that the lower part of the arm here is actually going to be removed if I select keep changes, but I have the choice to mark areas to keep, but also mark areas to remove.
So in this case, I'm gonna select mark areas to keep, I'm gonna come down here with the stylus and select that part of the arm.
I'm gonna do it maybe one more time, there we go.
Now I've got the entire arm and I get to select keep changes.
Now the background is removed and I can add this to any part of my slide as I want.
This is gonna look a lot more clean and a lot more professional as I add text here on the right-hand side.
So don't forget to remove the background of certain images, which you find online.
Add a Countdown Timer
Now the next one on our list has to do when you're giving a presentation and perhaps there's either an exercise or a break that needs to be included in between.
I think one of the biggest challenges as a presenter is that even though you tell people that we're only gonna take a 10-minute break, everyone's watch is a little bit out of sync.
And maybe there's not a clock in the room, or depending on where you're delivering this, perhaps virtually, not everyone is getting back in time.
Well, let's make that easier by adding a countdown timer to do the work for us right within our slides.
So all I need to do is come up here to insert and select get add-ins.
And this is gonna open up the Office add-in store.
Now in the search bar here, we can type in things such as timer or in my case, I'm gonna type in countdown and then hit search, and there's gonna be a variety of ones for you to choose from.
I'm gonna select this one, which is called a break time and say add.
Yes, I'm gonna give it permissions here by selecting continue, and now I've added a timer directly to my slide.
Now I can make some changes here.
Let's say I want to only make this a five-minute break so I'm gonna select five minutes there.
It even comes with a few different themes, so if I want to add something here like this glass of water, I can do so as well.
So now when I open up this slide, I can start this timer myself, initiate the countdown, and that control panel will fade away into the background so it looks clean.
It looks professional, and now everyone knows when we will return to the presentation.
Live Polls with Slido
Now engaging your audience is so important, maybe even more so if you're delivering your presentation virtually.
That's why I've been adding live polling to every single one of my PowerPoint presentations for the last few years.
Now in this case, I'm using an extension called Slido.
Slido allows me to insert polls directly into my PowerPoint slides so I don't have to open anything else up.
First, let me show you how it works.
So let's say that I'm on this slide that we created earlier.
I'm gonna go into presentation mode, but I'm just going to transition to my very next slide, which happens to be a Slido live poll.
So now I can ask my audience what's their favorite shoe brand, and they can participate in this fun poll in real time.
Slido also makes it very easy for people to join the poll.
All they need to do is go to this website, enter in a code, which you get to choose, or they can scan their by using this QR code.
This is an incredibly fun and engaging way to keep your audience participating and engage with the content which you're delivering.
Conclusion
Now I can't go into all of the details of how to use Slido, but if you would like my full tutorial of how to integrate live polling into your PowerPoint presentation, be sure to click the video you see on the screen now.
And if you have some favorite tips and tricks for using PowerPoint, I'd love to hear from you.
Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.
In fact, it's very simple.
