When Powerpoints Attack: One Marketer’s Battle

Most people who spend any time with Powerpoint have a love-hate relationship with it. For me, lately, it has been more hate. The issue staring me down today, like so many days before, is that Powerpoint presentations toy with the right and left sides of my brain. Do I let my creativity roam free or do I just get down to the bare bones of bulleted text and maybe a few graphs. It’s a tug-of-war that I’d rather not even play, because there’s really no correct path to choose. Ultimately, Powerpoint makes me wish that my colleagues would forget they ever asked me to put a slide presentation together for them. Sorry, guys!

The request is seemingly harmless, at its surface: “I need a presentation about [topic] for a sales meeting… tomorrow.”

That’s not so difficult, I say to myself. I live and breathe that topic every day, so the copy will be no trouble to write.

Oh, but wait. What about the design? What visual elements should I use, and in what dosage?

Right there, your confidence in being able to whip up a no-hassle, professional Powerpoint presentation just took a nose dive. It’s not that you aren’t capable of doing the work, but if you don’t have a corporate template you use for all of your presentations, then how do you decide on the design theme, colors, graphics, and animations that are meant to support and emphasize the copy? Because, very often, the graphics  and animations can overpower the copy to the point that your audience’s attention is distracted from the critical message of the presentation. It’s the pitfall of many Powerpoint presentations created by well-intended individuals that happen to be too Powerpoint-savvy for their own good. And let me say here that graphics and animation does NOT directly equate to a professional presentation.

There are several factors to consider how to build your Powerpoint presentation:

1. Your presenter. Are they comfortable in expounding upon brief copy, or do they need more copy in the presentation to help deliver their messages?

2. The audience. If your audience is comprised of high-level executives who don’t have a lot of time, you may want to lean toward less graphics and animation. If your audience is marketers, salespeople, or creative staff, you may be inclined to use more creativity when you build the presentation.

3. Your brand identity. No matter how you build your Powerpoint, it’s a smart idea to keep brand integrity in mind at all times. After all, your Powerpoint presentation is just like your website, your sales literature, and anything else that represents your company’s brand identity. So, don’t use any colors, graphics, or write anything that doesn’t reflect well on your brand. And, ideally, companies should have a Powerpoint template design that can be used for every presentation across your organization.

I think Powerpoint is a necessary evil for nearly every company. That first blank slide can be intimidating, but once you have made some decisions about your presenter, your audience, and your brand identity, you will feel more comfortable about building a Powerpoint presentation that meets the expectations of you and your colleagues.

To Blog or Not To Blog… What is the Intention?

To blog or not to blog?

For many, it’s a no-brainer: “No, that’s not for me. I don’t write (or) I don’t know what I would write about.”

For some, it’s an easy decision: “Yes! I blog all the time and love having the space to share and exchange ideas.”

For a very few, it’s a difficult decision: “I want to blog, but I want to do it right, not just because I can.”

So, then comes the paramount consideration. . . What should you blog about?

Well, let’s stop right there. It doesn’t matter what you blog about. There’s an audience for any topic imaginable (and some you can’t ever imagine). Bloggers devote way too much thought to what they blog about, forgetting that the primary goal should be to share original thoughts and keep in mind their intentions for writing. It’s not about what you write about, it’s about how you make it yours.

Wait a minute. Back up! What’s this about “intentions?” We’re talking about a blog here. Why does a blog have to be so well-thought-out?

Your intentions for writing your blog DO matter, because:

#1. If you don’t know the intention of your blog, why you are writing it, and believe in it, you won’t stick to it. You’ll lose interest in it, or, you’ll just trudge along barely-willingly because your boss makes you do it.  Thus, your blog will fade away into that cold cemetery full of other blogs that started off with a BANG but quickly were abandoned by their owners.

#2. If you don’t know the intention of your blog, and believe in its purpose, then your readers won’t know it either. Your readers need to be able to identify or relate to your blog in some way that is meaningful to them. If you write about donuts one day, then plate tectonics the next day, that may actually be okay as long as there is a central theme, identity, or relevancy that people can point to.

[I admit that my blog is far from what I envision it to be. It's an evolving creature that may take many forms across its lifetime. I strive to find its true identity every week.]