Seminars are one of the perfect ways to interact and get your message across to your target audience. This has been a great method to get the message across effectively. Public speakers are always in high demand and people follow. This cult following is not easy to achieve. It comes only when one is a perfect speaker and a person who leaves an eternal impact on the audience.

A good PowerPoint seminar contains efficient planning and a flawless presentation. Efficient planning is required for an impressive presentation. A good presentation is a constitution of several elements. The different elements that make a good presentation are namely the content of the presentation, the layout of the PowerPoint slides and the presentation style.

The content of the presentation

The topic: Before jumping into what the presentation content should be, it’s important to come up with and stick to an engaging and engaging topic that is relevant to the audience. The speaker must value the time of the audience. You must make it clear that the audience must learn something by spending their time listening to it.

Investigate: Proper research is required even before framing a structure for the seminar. It gives the speaker control over the language and the confidence to pronounce and answer the questions that the audience may ask. It also helps the speaker to frame new ways of representing information.

Scheme: An outline or structure gives a definite direction to the presentation, the presenter, and the audience. Proper schema saves a lot of time, while incorrect planning at this step can be a burden later on, and the presenter has to realign and redo the entire structuring. When you create the structure, it can be included on the second slide after the title slide (which usually contains the topic, the presenter’s name, and the date). This helps provide the audience with a direction of what will come next.

Introduction: This is a short introduction to the topic and can start with quotes, any interesting facts, or questions. Icebreaker techniques can be used here to engage the audience in the discussion.

Body: This is the longest part of the presentation and carries the topic. It is highly recommended that the presentation is not very text-heavy and that it makes use of the important points clearly. Using relevant high-resolution images can enhance the appearance of your slides.

Conclution: The conclusion sums up the entire presentation. It can be a quote, an engaging question that prompts the audience, a summary of what has been discussed, recommendations or suggestions, or some learning and action points.

Design your PowerPoint slides

Microsoft PowerPoint is an excellent tool for making a powerful presentation. The simple functions of Microsoft PowerPoint help even beginners to create their own presentation. Here are some points to keep in mind when designing a PowerPoint presentation.

Sources: The use of fonts such as Times New Roman and others that are already installed in Microsoft PowerPoint, gives the presentation a monotonous appearance. Free and attractive fonts available on the internet can be easily downloaded and used to make a beautiful PowerPoint presentation.

Colour: You can use color combinations to make your slides look attractive. Make sure to use a good color scheme. Make sure the text is legible and the colors are not too harsh on the eyes.

Alignment: Image and text alignment is equally important. It should look nice and not disconnected.

Text: If you use more text, your slides start to look clunky and unattractive. Therefore, it is advisable that only the main points are presented in bullet format and used on the slides. Another downside to this is that the audience loses the speaker’s focus and starts reading the slides. If it is important to use the text, it should be divided into smaller sections and parts, and appropriate paragraphs should be established.

Images, graphs and tables: Care should be taken not to use copyrighted images without proper approvals. Images must be of good quality when displayed on a large screen and therefore high resolution images are preferred. The source of the graphs and tables taken from external sources must be cited.

Animation: A lot of text and images flying around don’t give the presentation a clean look. This is also a distracting factor. Therefore, one should be careful when using animation and should not overdo it.

Cohesion: This is a crucial factor in presentation design. Grouping similar topics and categories helps. You can then look to set different font styles, background color, theme, font styles, and font colors for the groups to make them look consistent and similar, and to give the presentation a structured look. This will not cause the presentation to disconnect in different parts.

Delivery style

Wear: The speaker is advised to wear clean, formal clothing.

Body language: The speaker must be confident. You should use open hand gestures and should not be awkward in your gaze or attitude. The speaker must take care of his volume, clarity and tone. You need to make sure it is clear and audible to the last person sitting in the last row of the aisle. Eye contact with everyone in the room is a sign of a good speaker. The use of the stage is immensely important. The speaker can choose to use the stage freely, but must be careful not to stand in front of the screen to obstruct the slides being projected.

Resources and configuration phase: Resources are the tools, equipment, or any other material that the presenter needs. These include a projector, clicker, flip chart, or laser pointer. After arriving on stage, the presenter must make sure that he is ready.

Connect with the audience: The audience should feel connected and should pay attention to what the speaker is saying. This can be achieved if the speaker interacts with them and finds ways to make the session interactive, provides relevant examples, which seem to be connected to their lives. Little activities, games, questions and quizzes help to connect with the audience.

The pros and cons of those mentioned above can help even a novice speaker. The key to delivering a fantastic presentation, of course, comes with experience and practice, and the speaker must continually practice their research, design, and delivery skills to improve their overall presentation skills. It is obvious that presenting a good presentation is not an overnight skill, but an art that must be learned, honored, and developed over time. With the help of the above pointers, a speaker can seek to deliver a presentation that is relevant and interesting.