The goal of any presentation is to engage its audience. There are a number of rhetoric techniques to achieve this, such as appeals to emotion and reason. However, you can also apply these techniques on your deck.
Aside from tapping into basic design principles that make your PowerPoint more eye-catching, current innovations in the presentation program have made it possible for an interactive presentation.
Find out how you can create a winning deck using three of PowerPoint’s interactive features:
1. Interactive Feed
One of the biggest breakthroughs of our time is the rise of social media. It has brought people closer and allowed new connections to form across geographical and cultural boundaries. Among the leading social platforms online, Twitter lets you interact directly with your audience and gain insight on their thoughts when you display a live feed on your slides.
Tap into the power of social media during your presentation, and encourage people to bring out their phones so they can tweet about your pitch.
Make use of a hashtag specific to your event, and look it up using a Twitter wall. Web sites like Tweet Beam let you view live tweets about specific events or hashtags and show them to your audience for added credibility, according to its founder, Pim Stuurman.
Import the live feed onto your deck by clicking Insert > Web Page. Copy the URL from the Twitter wall and paste it on the dialogue box that will open.
Unfortunately, LiveWeb is only available in PowerPoint 97 to 2010. You can download the LiveWeb add-in for PowerPoint to display your live feed for a more interesting and engaging deck. You can also add Web pages in PowerPoint 2013 onward through free add-ins like Office Mix.
2. Animation
If you prefer not to put up an interactive feed on your deck, attract and hold the viewer’s gaze with animation.
Just last year, Microsoft released an add-in that makes it possible to craft seamless basic animation that elevates the quality of your slides: PowerPoint Morph. This comes with an Office 365 subscription for PowerPoint 2016, but once installed, it creates unprompted effects that look like convincing basic animation.
Morph is found under the Transitions tab, and it gives you the option to animate objects, words, or characters. Just move your selected slide element in the path you want it to move after choosing the Morph option. Without needing any clicks, it will move in your desired path once you play the slide show.
This lets you discuss your pitch and interact with your audience further with your animation as a supplement.
3. Hyperlink
Take your pitch outside the slide with hyperlinks. This can be as simple as hyperlinking a specific word or phrase on your deck or to designing shapes or buttons that will help you navigate through your slides. For specific details on making the latter, check out our previous tutorial on hyperlinks.
Whichever object you choose, right click on your chosen slide element and select Hyperlink. A dialogue box will appear, where you can either insert a site URL or direct to another slide on your deck. Unlike the previous two options, this will require some work on your part as you go over your pitch.
You’ll need to click on the hyperlinks every time you want to move around your deck, but this is a relatively easier method than sifting through slides or opening a new window and loading a page.
Conclusion
An interactive PowerPoint can boost your audience engagement and successfully pique people’s interest faster.
Tap into social media and display a live feed on your wall. Find out what your listeners feel about your presentation and address their concerns in real time. Attract attention with effortless animation. Install the PowerPoint Morph add-in to achieve self-presenting animation on your deck. For easier navigation across and outside slides, add hyperlinks on selected slide objects. It’s designed to help your pitch move along smoothly by removing the hassle of manual backtracking, so strategically place them throughout your slides.
If you’re still having trouble with your presentation design needs, contact our SlideGenius experts today for a free quote!
References:
Pillai, Shyam. “LiveWeb – Insert and Update Web Pages Real-time in PowerPoint.” OfficeTips. n.d. www.skp.mvps.org/liveweb.htm
Stuurman, Pim. “How Do You Display a Live Twitter Feed in a PowerPoint Presentation?” TweetBeam. February 10, 2015. www.tweetbeam.com/blog/twitter-feed-powerpoint
“Using the Morph Transition in PowerPoint 2016.” Office Blogs. n.d. support.office.com/en-us/article/Using-the-Morph-transition-in-PowerPoint-2016-8dd1c7b2-b935-44f5-a74c-741d8d9244ea
Featured Image: “Interactive Interactive – Laura” by Dan Zen on flickr.com
