A good PowerPoint presentation should make it easy for your audience to understand and remember your message. But creating slides that are clear, consistent and easy to follow can sometimes be harder than it seems.
There’s a lot to think about: what to include, what to leave out, how much text is too much, whether your graphics are actually helping and whether the whole presentation feels consistent with your law firm’s brand.
That’s why we’ve created our new ‘PowerPoint presentations: practical pointers’ cheat sheet – a quick-reference guide to allow you to create more effective presentations without overcomplicating the process.
It follows on from our ‘PowerPoint templates: Before you say a word’ blog about the importance of thinking about your audience, message and structure when you begin building your presentation.
The new cheat sheet takes those principles and turns them into a practical checklist you can keep to hand whenever you’re creating or reviewing a PowerPoint presentation.
From planning your message to delivering your presentation
Our cheat sheet kicks off with the basics: know your audience, establish your message and sketch out the story before you start. From there, it moves through some of the considerations that can make a real difference to how a presentation looks and works.
There’s also a handy final-check section to step back and ask some simple questions prior to presenting: Can everything be read easily? Is the main point obvious? Is there anything you can remove? Do your graphics serve a purpose?
Bringing the In Practice blog series together
This cheat sheet also brings our In Practice blog series to a natural close.
Throughout the past weeks, we’ve delved deep into popular Microsoft 365 tools – not simply explaining how the software works, but demonstrating how thoughtful setup, consistent standards and good habits can make those tools work better for your people.
First up, ‘Putting your brand guidelines to work’ considered how guidelines can become part of common documents and communications rather than simply sitting in a brand manual. Next, ‘PowerPoint templates: Before you say a word’ looked at the thinking that should happen when creating presentations.
Moving on to Excel, ‘Let’s start at the very beginning: Getting Excel right from the ground up’ explored the importance of getting the spreadsheet foundations right. Finally, ‘How many Word experts does it take to build a document?’ analysed the structure that sits behind well-designed Word documents.
The thread throughout has been simple: making everyday software easier, more consistent and more effective to use.
More practical resources, all in one place
The new PowerPoint guide is also part of our wider collection of free cheat sheets intended to assist with the software that legal professionals operate. Our library covers a range of subjects, including the Microsoft 365 suite, Google and everyday tasks which empower you to work more efficiently.
Whether you need a quick reminder of an Excel shortcut, some help getting more from Word, or a few Google search tips, the cheat sheet library provides the information you need without having to trawl through a lengthy guide.
A handy guide for your next presentation
PowerPoint can do a lot. But a successful presentation isn’t about using all features available to you. It’s about making deliberate choices that help your audience focus on what matters.
Our ‘PowerPoint presentations: practical pointers’ cheat sheet is created with exactly that in mind. Download it here and keep it to hand whenever you’re creating or reviewing a presentation.
Final thoughts
If you’re working on your firm’s wider approach to documents, templates and presentation materials, we can help you look at the bigger picture too. We can create document and template environments that are consistent, practical and designed around the way people actually work.
Coming next: our new Insights blog series
With In Practice coming to a close, our attention is already on our next blog series: Insights. This will focus on short tips for tackling issues in Microsoft 365 systems – the sort of handy hints that let you get more from the software without needing to become an expert. They’ll be quick to read, easy to understand and straightforward to put into practice, with busy legal professionals firmly in mind.
With the initial spotlight titled ‘Why accessibility matters’, our first Insights instalment is worth keeping an eye out for.