Often called "Slideument" or "DocuPoint," most presentations miss the mark by trying to be two different things. Those designing presentations (and unfortunately it's the majority) have trouble creating a PowerPoint that doesn't moonlight (just on the weekends...okay, only in days ending in "y") as a Word document.
You've heard the phrase a million times - "Can you email me the PowerPoint?"
Yes, of course you can, but offering your audience your slides shouldn't help them much. They shouldn't, because an effectively designed PowerPoints puts reinforcing images and very little text on the screen while the important information comes out of your mouth.
Unfortunately, many presenters try to kill two birds with one stone and put ALL of their information onto their slides, often in bullet point form, so that when the audience member reviews the presentation, they can look at the slide and read from it.
Instead of creating a good PowerPoint and offering an informational takeaway, they accomplish neither. They create a poorly designed (quite forgettable) PowerPoint deck, while the takeway (aka the same slide deck) offers little value when referenced later.
While I pray I'll be married to my wife forever (Lord willing), in this case I'm begging for a divorce! You must keep your presentation and your takeaways separate!
Design your PowerPoint deck as a visual backdrop to your story. Make sure it serves that one-and-only purpose. Then, once you finish designing it, open Microsoft Word and create a word document highlighting the important points of your presentation. Include statistics, bullet points, headlines, titles, etc. Make it easy and simple to read, but make it serve it's single purpose.
Your audience will thank you.
