Slide after slide crammed with tiny type. Incomprehensible graphs. Dorky clip art. Presenters who drone on and on.  If you’ve been in the business world any time in the last 15 years you’ve surely sat through your share of slide presentations that put listeners into a coma or make you want to gauge your eyes out with a dull fork.
A recent Inc. article outlines “The 3 Reasons Most Presentations Fail.”  Number one is trying to present too much information.  A slide deck is not the venue for presenting comprehensive or detailed data.  Audiences can’t read loads of text on screen and listen to what you’re saying at the same time…and they won’t remember 95% of it anyway.
What people will remember is the story you tell. Â Developing a compelling story line takes some time and thought. But here’s how you can start: use the “presentation view” feature of PowerPoint to look at the overall flow of your slides. If you just read the slide headers, what story line emerges?
Keep your slide headings informative. Â Or better yet, replace basic topic headings with compelling statements. For example, instead of a slide heading like “Company History,” you could say “45 Years of Experience.” Â Instead of just listing a product name, focus your heading statement on what the product actually does: “Solving XYZ Problem.”
Next, figure out just one key idea you want your audience to take away from each slide. Make sure any artwork or graphics are truly relevant and help illustrate or support that key idea.  If there is more detailed data, lists or material that you need to provide, well, that’s what handouts and leave-behinds are for.
These guidelines provide a starting point for improving your slide content. More content tips and a discussion of slide graphics and format will be the topic of future posts. Â And if you’re looking for additional tips, check out this article from Lifehacker:Â “How to Create Presentations that Don’t Suck.”