The real power of PowerPoint presentations lies in their ability to weave pictures into words. A well-captioned and bulleted business profit graph is always more appealing than a set of slides on ‘101 ways to improve your business margins’. Granted, the latter may have taken many more hours to research and prepare, but how effective will it really be?
Well researched information presented using apt illustrations allows the presenter to capture the attention of the audience during a PowerPoint presentation. When you are short of time, this can certainly give you an edge over the competition.
The human brain is always looking for a pattern to relate to information offered. PPTs with visual appeal allow the audience to draw business analogies, and help by presenting the information in such a pattern. More often than not, the pattern is what the presenter wishes to sell, rather than what the audience would deduce from the information.
PowerPoint comes loaded with simple ready-to-use SmartArt illustrations, mostly dealing with tables, relationships, hierarchies and processes. More complicated illustrations are best done with some professional help. Illustrations that are amateurish can easily distract the audience from the topic of PPT, and totally defeat the purpose.
When you scour the Internet for a business PowerPoint template or images that can describe your business analogies, look for editable images. Why? They can be altered to suit your particular business concept without having to rework it using expensive image-editing software. Remember never to use copyrighted images, or your company may get into trouble!
