Powerpoint presentations can be amazing, if you have the time.  With multimedia you can turn your tired presentation into a YouTube sensation or save directly to Sharepoint as I have done with the presentations below.

I receive a lot of content heavy, unformatted slides which, with a bit of time can be turned into stunning, professional looking presentations guaranteed to keep the audience awake and engaged.  Often I receive a raw Excel spreadsheet or Word document with the brief, "can you turn this into something special on PowerPoint".  The busy manager is perfectly capable of doing this them-self but the deadline may be looming, there are meetings all day and support staff is snowed under.

Here is an example of the life cycle of a presentation:

Step 1: The raw document

Step 2: The basic PowerPoint layout

Step 3: The finished PowerPoint presentation

There is one more step for the advanced presenters.  Prezi!  Subscribe to my feed if you'd like to receive my next article where I will transform the above presentation into Prezi.

So what can the busy manager do to create a presentation with pow!  Read the article below for some great tips on designing a presentation.  If pushed for time give me a call and I'll work to make sure you meet your deadline and wow your audience.  Often a new set of eyes will come up with a design which wouldn't have occurred to you.  To save time and increase consistency, quality and controls I highly recommend setting up a template.  Brand your template with your corporate identity and set up a slide for each of the following layouts: charts, image, bullets, video or movie, graph and text.  When it comes time to put a presentation together all you need to do is to drop in your content.

Further reading: 10 tips for a more professional PowerPoint presentation.

Here's a question - what do you like best about PowerPoint?