Audiences can’t read and listen to you at the same time, so make the slides support what you are saying as clearly and visually as possible. Just one or two words—or a visual without words—may back up what you are saying more effectively than a list of bullet points.
Avoid reading from your slides. Your audience can read faster than you can talk, and you are guaranteed to bore them with this technique.
Use your media wisely, and respect your audience’s time. If you feel that you need to include more than three or four bullet points (or more than fifty words of text) on a slide, you may be trying to convey information in a slide show that would make more sense in a report. Rethink your presentation so that what you say and what you show work together to win over your audience.
Use text on your slides to guide your audience—not as a teleprompter. Be familiar enough with your material so that you don’t have to rely on your slides to know what comes next.
Make sure any text you show is big enough to read, and create a clear contrast between text or illustration and background. In general, light backgrounds work better in a darkened room, and dark backgrounds in a lighted one.
Be careful not to depend too heavily on slide templates. The choices of color, font, and layout offered by such templates may not always match your goals or fit with your topic.
Choose visuals that will reproduce sharply, and make sure they are large enough to be clearly visible.
Make sure that sound or video clips are audible and that they relate directly to your topic. If you want to use sound as background, make sure it does not distract from what you are trying to say.
Although there are no firm rules about how many slides you should use or how long each slide should be made visible, plan length and timing with your audience’s needs and your purpose in mind.
Most important, make sure your slides engage and help your listeners rather than distract them from your message.