Death by PowerPoint: 3 Common Presentation Pitfalls You Need To Avoid

King of boardrooms and auditoriums, the PowerPoint Presentation is something we’re all familiar with. But, here’s a question for you: what do you actually recall from the last presentation you attended? The chances are, it’s not as much as you’d like. There’s a simple reason for this: most PowerPoint presentations just aren’t that effective. 

It’s not that a PowerPoint in itself is a bad idea. In fact, research shows that adding a visual element to your presentation can greatly improve an audience’s information retention rate. It jumps from a measly 10% when the presentation is purely verbal, to 51% when the verbal and visual are combined. So, why are so many PowerPoint presentations entirely forgettable? 

Here are 3 common pitfalls that anyone wanting to prevent death by PowerPoint will need to avoid…

1. Too Much Content 

Are your PowerPoint slides so bloated with information that it would take minutes to read through each one? 

That’s your first mistake. The simple truth is that humans cannot read and listen simultaneously. So, the more content you put on each slide, the more time audience members are going to spend reading. Which means, they won’t be listening to what you are actually saying. 

Now, some presenters may not see this as an issue. They’re still consuming the information- so, what’s the problem? This is where that retention rate comes into play. High retention requires both visual and verbal input. So, when audience members aren’t paying any attention to what you’re saying, they’re missing out on a key ingredient. It’s no wonder the presentation becomes forgettable. 

Besides, bloated, wordy slides have the additional disadvantage of making yourself, as the presenter, completely redundant. Do yourself a favour and take out the paragraphs. Instead, communicate the finer details yourself, verbally. To make this easier, you can make notes separately to refer to whilst presenting. It’s going to create a much more dynamic presentation than if you were just reading off a PowerPoint, convincing the audience to pay attention. 

1. The Slidument

There’s one big reason why so many people fall into the content-heavy PowerPoint trap: so they can hand it out as a document at the end of the presentation. Giving audience members a resource as a parting gift is a great idea. But, your PowerPoint shouldn’t be it. 

I’ve labelled these hand-out PowerPoints “Sliduments”, and there’s more than one reason why they’re such a huge presentation pitfall. Firstly, you run into the initial problem of using a PowerPoint that is so content-heavy that audience members spend the entire presentation reading, rather than listening and fully absorbing information. 

Secondly, they just don’t work as a standalone written document to hand out to your audience. Slides lack the narrative and structure that is needed for a written resource. If you want to hand something out, it should be a purposely-created document with a clear purpose and use. 

To deliver a successful presentation, you’ll want to avoid The Slidument at all costs. You might think you’re creating two resources in one, but what you’re actually doing is missing the mark on both your handout and presentation. 

1. Lack of Visual Aids

So, if slides filled with huge walls of text are out, what’s left? One thing you do not want to present is a visually lacking PowerPoint. Plain, empty slides are not going to keep people engaged. If you’ve created a presentation that lacks visual aids, your audience will simply zone out, or else lose sight of what you were trying to communicate. If you want to avoid this pitfall, then you’re going to need to keep them visually engaged. 

But, that does not mean simply adding attention-grabbing things to your presentation. You don’t want your audience to walk away remembering all the wrong things. Instead, choose highly relevant imagery that’s related to your key messages. That’s what’s going to work best to support your verbal content. Images, graphs and quotes are all good options. 

You could also utilise physical visual aids. For example, something as simple as using a pen to point at the relevant parts of your presentation as you talk can make a big difference. It’s going to help audience members to focus and add emphasis to your key messages. 

PowerPoint was designed and intended to be used as a visual aid for presenters. The most common pitfalls happen when people forget this. Stop relying on content-heavy slides to do all the work for you- because they’re unlikely to do a good job.

Instead, focus on your skills as a presenter by communicating key details verbally. Write notes for yourself so you can stick to using visually engaging images, graphs and quotes on your PowerPoint. When your presentations show, tell and preferably, get the audience involved in your key topics, that’s when they’ll truly have a lasting impact. 

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