First impressions are important for communicating with people. This is also true for presentations. When you start giving your presentation, the first few things an audience notices is your topic, you, and the opening slide. Right there, they’ll make up their mind about many things and convince themselves that they understand it before you’ve even had a chance to introduce them to the topic. If they come to a different conclusion than what you intended, this could lead to a difficult atmosphere.

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The First Slide

The first slide in your presentation should not include too much information on it, or people will try to read it before listening to you. You might think that they’re listening to you, but they are actually reading the slide. This gives them a first impression on the contents of your presentation, and its conclusion which they may not change so easily.

Introduce The Topics And Then Discuss Them

You should put less and less information on each slide in the presentation. This will allow you to provide the context yourself. They should be able to understand the small amount of information quickly, and then look towards you to explain what it all really means. You can also try using animation techniques like reveal effects to reveal more and more of an image, table, or a graph to the audience.

Use Animation To Engage The Audience

When people think of using animation effects, they envision strange flying effects and bouncing objects on the screen. Please note that we are not encouraging you to use animation effects randomly. Too many people start using random and distracting effects. This has led to animation being viewed as annoying. When applied correctly, animation has its place as an effective tool to keep the audience’s attention.

Focus on the Audience

Design the presentation while thinking from the audience’s perspective. Think about what you’re going to say at each slide and how you’re going to introduce the next one. You can try using some animation effects like Motion Path Animation and Slide Transition Effects to make the topic easier to follow.

Image From

Online Webinar by Stephan Ridgway [CC BY 2.0] via flickr