Bad Presentations: How To Avoid Common Presentation Pitfalls In 2023
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It’s easy to make a presentation, but it’s difficult to make a good presentation.
There are simple mistakes that are made when it comes to the fine art of designing and performing a presentation if you haven’t been doing it for the past 15 years, over and over, like we have!
In this article we explore the common pitfalls most presentation designers/presenters make, and how you can avoid them.
What Impact Can A Bad Presentation Have?
Bad presentations and good presentations have something in common, they’re memorable. Whether it’s a speech at a wedding, or pitching to investors, if it’s bad, it stands out.
The impact a bad presentation can have on your, your business or your brand is profound. It’s more than just the performance on the day. In today’s world, everyone is connected and people talk. It’s difficult to shift your image if you make the wrong impression.
Below are just a few hurdles you can expect to face if your presentation bombs.
Loss Of Confidence In You Or Your Company
When you have or give a bad presentation, it’s easy for your audience to lose confidence in you. After all, at that moment in time, you’re the face of the company and a direct representation of who you represent.
If you drop the ball, that’s what your audience is going to expect you to do if they decide to partner with you. How can they do business or trust in you if they don’t have confidence in you.
Fortunately, we understand how much hard work, time, and dedication it takes just to get the opportunity to deliver a presentation to your audience, your clients, your investors, or your own company. Which is why our presentation design services will help take care of the visual and organizational side of your slides.
We Can Make You Look Goood!
You Can Develop A Negative Reputation
Ineffective presentations are a waste of time, and as we all know, time is valuable. Simple things like unpreparedness, lack of audience engagement, talking too much, a poorly structured or visual presentation design.
These things DO NOT go unnoticed and you will develop a reputation that will most certainly work against you professionally. It takes a lot more work to repair damage that it does to put your best foot forward in the first place.
Slower Business Growth
If your presentation misses out on the key points and the words you’ve chosen for your slides are poor, you will experience slower business growth as there is less information for your audience about your brand. If they are missing out on the key idea because your slides are too simple, they won’t want to buy into your brand.
Here Are The Most Common Mistakes You Can Make With Your Presentation
There’s common mistakes that are both easy to make and easy to avoid if you know what you are looking for. There are common mistakes presenters make because most presentations have too much information, pictures and the information that you as the presenter are trying to communicate gets lost in the jumble of the presentation.
Talking Too Much About Yourself
Presenters who spend too much time speaking about themselves while they present is one example of a common mistake. The audience members want the informative information about your brand, not the informative information about you as the speaker.
Focusing Too Much On Facts And Not Storytelling
You want to engage your audience by using both facts and storytelling to sell them on your brand. If you focus too much on facts, it’s the worst thing you can do for your presentation because you’ll quickly lose your audience’s attention.
Poorly Designed Visual Aids
Visual aids are important to making a great presentation, but not if they are poorly designed. It’s important to have engaging visual aids, dark text on white background is a great way to focus the audience’s attention. Make your presentation your own by choosing well designed visual aids that add to your presentation as a whole.
Disorganized Information (No Logic Or Order)
Are your slides all over the place? Your examples don’t make sense to your brand? The worst presentations are hard to follow, confusing and distracting from the main points. An audience wants to sit through an engaging presentation, and by having order and logic to your slides with words that point back to your idea, you will capture their attention and keep them captivated.
Too Much Information
If you have too many points on your slides, or paragraphs that you’ll be reading off during your presentation, you have too much information. Have less on the slides, keep to the point and spend more time talking directly to your audience rather than reading to them.
No Engagement Or Interaction
A common pitfall that is easy to fall into, is not interacting with the audience members, by making eye contact, allowing time for questions or asking questions to the audience. They are sitting right in front of you (Physically or Virtually) so interact with them right from the beginning so they expect it throughout the presentation. If you need some tips on how to make a presentation interactive, we’ve got you covered.
If you’re looking for a few tips on, this article on being a better presenter can help.
Reading Directly From Your PowerPoint Presentation
When you read directly from the PowerPoint Presentation, your body language is not open to the audience, and it means that you aren’t engaging with either the material or your listeners. If you spend time in preparation and writing out what you will be saying, you can speak directly to the audience and portray confidence in your brand. By purposefully making eye contact, you are connecting with those who are listening to you.
Ending The Presentation Abruptly
When you finish your talk and forget to allow time for questions, you are sending a message that you don’t care about the audience’s understanding of the material you have presented. All it takes is one slide to finish a presentation well and leave space for the audience to ask questions.
Animation Overload
When you overload on animation, you make your presentation look cheap and distracting from your important points. It’s an easy way to make ineffective presentations, as it’s distracting to the main goal of your presentation. Keep animations to a minimum and bullet points on your slides instead to create engaging presentations.
So Is A Bad Presentation Worth The Risk?
Don’t talk too much about yourself, but tell stories about your brand so the audience can connect with you as the presenter and your company. You want to engage with the audience through well chosen visual aids, and keep order to your information both in your slides and your speech. Don’t overload in cheap looking animations and always leave room for your audience to ask questions at the end.
It’s best to be prepared, put our best foot forward and invest the time/money in making sure you’re well rehearsed and have some kick ass slides to back you up. Effort and intent are noticed, as long as they’ve been put it.
Are You In Need Of A Good Presentation To Give The Right Impression?
Your slides are more than just beautiful graphics, they’re opportunities for you to share your stories/ideas. Leave the PowerPoint, Prezi, Google Slides to us and focus on nailing the public speaking part!
Just click the button below and get the conversation started today! We’re here to support you, so connect with a Presentation Geek and take the first step towards a presentation that blows your competition out of the water.
