Making Persuasive Presentations

1Mrs.Najm-un-Nissa

What is Persuasion?

Persuasion is, quite simply, the use of messages to influence an audience.

The art of persuasion is the art of finding the best available means of moving a specific audience in a specific situation to a specific decision

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Persuasion in the Real World

• Presenter (Your Needs &

Interests)

• Audience (Their Needs & Interest)

• Subject (Your Program’s Needs & Accomplishments)

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Five tips for giving powerful presentations

1. Prepare

2. Preparing Your Slides:

Presentation Design

3. Body Language

4. Use at least Three Visual Aids

5. Wrap Up with a Good Review

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Prepare

• Know the needs of your audience and match your contents to their needs

• Know your material thoroughly.

• Put what you have to say in a logical sequence.

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• Practice and rehearse your speech at home or where you can be at ease and comfortable, in front of a mirror, your family, friends or colleagues.

• Do proof reading before presenting.

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Contd……

• Know what your strong and weak points are. Emphasize your strong points during your presentation.

• Dress appropriately for the occasion.• Present the desired image to your

audience.• Look pleasant, enthusiastic, confident,

proud, but not arrogant. • Remain calm. Appear relaxed, even if

you feel nervous.

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• Speak slowly, pronounce clearly, and show appropriate emotion and feeling relating to your topic.

• Talk at a natural, moderate rate of speech

• Establish rapport with your audience. • Repeat critical information. • Pause briefly to give your audience time

to digest the information on each new slide.

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Preparing Your Slides:Make readability a top priority.

• Select clean, simple fonts. Arial, Tahoma and New Times Roman are the best choices.

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Don’t overload your slides with too much text or data.

• This page contains too many words for a presentation slide. It is not written in point form, making it difficult both for your audience to read and for you to present each point. Although there are exactly the same number of points on this slide as the previous slide, it looks much more complicated. In short, your audience will spend too much time trying to read this paragraph instead of listening to you.

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• The title should be no smaller than 28 points. A font size of 28 to 34 with a bold font is recommended for subtitles. The title default size is 44.

• If you use a small font, your audience won’t be able to read what you have written

• Bulleted items should be no smaller than 22 points.

• CAPITALIZE ONLY WHEN NECESSARY. IT IS DIFFICULT TO READ

• Don’t use a complicated font

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• Keep each bullet to one line, • Limit the number of bullets in a screen to

six, four if there is a large title, logo, picture, etc.– This is known as “cueing”– You want to “cue” the audience in on what

you are going to say.• Cues can be thought of as a brief “preview.”• This gives the audience a “framework” to build

upon.

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Spelling and Grammar

• Proof your slides for:– speling mistakes– the use of of repeated words– grammatical errors you might have make

• If English is not your first language, please have someone else check your presentation!

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Caps and Italics

• Do not use all capital letters– Makes text hard to read

• Italics– Used for “quotes”– Used to highlight thoughts or ideas– Used for book, journal, or magazine

titles

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Colors• Reds and oranges are high-energy

but can be difficult to stay focused on.

• Greens, blues, and browns are mellower, but not as attention grabbing.

• White on dark background should not be used if the audience is more than 20 feet away.

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Colour-Good

• Use a colour of font that contrasts sharply with the background– Ex: blue font on white background

• Use colour to emphasize a point– But only use this occasionally

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Colour - Bad

• Using a font colour that does not contrast with the background colour is hard to read

• Using colour for decoration is distracting and annoying.

• Using a different colour for each point is unnecessary– Using a different colour for secondary points

is also unnecessary

• Trying to be creative can also be bad

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Use of numbers

• Numbers are usually confusing to the audience. Use as few as possible .

Charts need to be clearly labeled. You can make more interesting charts by adding elements from the drawing toolbar.

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Back ground of slides

Backgrounds should never distract from the presentation.

• Backgrounds that are light colored with dark text, or vice versa, look good.

• Sounds and transition effects can be annoying.

• Too much animation is distracting. • Consider using custom animation

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Avoid backgrounds that are distracting or difficult to read from

Always be consistent with the background that you use

Background – Bad

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Create visuals that signal quality.

• People don't remember your points, they remember your illustrations. You can insert video and audio clips into PowerPoint.

• You can also insert hyperlinks. • Use clear, simple visuals. Don’t confuse

the audience. • Graphics should make a key concept

clearer.

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Illustrations• Use only when needed, otherwise

they become distracters instead of communicators

• They should relate to the message and help make a point

• Ask yourself if it makes the message clearer

• Simple diagrams are great communicators

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Graphs - Good

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Graphs - Bad

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Body Language

• Keep your eyes on the audience • Strong eye contact but do not stare them.• Use natural gestures. • Don’t turn your back to the audience. • Don’t hide behind the lectern. • Avoid looking at your notes. Only use

them as reference points to keep you on track. Talk, don’t read.

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7 Annoying Things About Presentations • In a recent survey done over the internet,

respondents were asked to name the top three things they found the most annoying about PowerPoint presentations they’ve seen. Here’s what they said:

• The speaker read the slides to us• Text so small I couldn't read it   & instead of

bullet points• Slides hard to see because of color choice• Moving/flying text or graphics• Annoying use of sounds• Overly complex diagrams or charts• No flow of ideas - jumped around too much

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Conti…

• %From an online survey conducted by Dave Paradi, MBA, a published author and professional speaker, specializing in the proper use of supporting visuals.

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websites

• http://www.management-issues.com/2006/5/25/opinion/five-tips-for-giving-powerful-presentations.asp

• http://ezinearticles.com/?10-Tips-For-Powerful-Presentations&id=1279572

• http://www.shkaminski.com/Classes/Handouts/powerpoint.htm

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