The Monday Morning Marketing podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowersbusiness owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. Hey guys.Today we're joined by Fiona Walsh and we're talking about using PowerPointpresentations as part of your marketing. Welcome, Fiona.
Hi, thanks for having me.
Great for you to join us. So, PowerPoint, are we talkingexclusively like Microsoft PowerPoint or the Microsoft package that includesPowerPoint? Or do you also do the Apple Mac keynote is it called?
Isn't there a Google slides as well or something?
There is Google Slides as well
And Prezzi
There's lots of different things. I'm predominantlyPowerPoint because I'm a Microsoft master trainer. So that's why I specialisein PowerPoint. So that means that I have a teaching qualification that isrecognised, an IT teaching qualification that's recognised by Microsoft and theMicrosoft Office Specialist exams and then the two of those you getcertifications as Master Trainer.
Okay, brilliant. So now that we've figured out which of thePowerPoint platforms, then why should people use PowerPoint?
Why should people use PowerPoint? That's a great question.Do you know what I see a lot of people doing now? And that is using PowerPointfor webinars as lead magnets. How many people now are doing webinars to getmaybe people's email addresses and they're going to give a little bit ofinformation to them to start with on a webinar and then they're going to putthem on their emailing list, see if they want to sign up to services, courses,what have you. So really your PowerPoint is very much part of your brand.
So PowerPoints - with the amount of scope for using aPowerPoint, because obviously lead magnets and webinars is one way, but it'salso a way of presenting your knowledge maybe at an in person event these daysas well. Is there a prescribed way of doing it that you feel is more effectiveor does it depend on the type of business?
It's a good question. I'm not sure I would agree that itdepends on the type of business, but for me I think it depends on a couple ofthree points actually, and that is the people, the purpose and the place. Sowhen I talk about the people, it's who are you presenting to? Okay, so thiscould be anything. It could be a one to one in a business environment. It couldbe one to one with your manager. It could be a one to one with one of your teammembers. It could be a presentation you're giving in a meeting room. It couldbe to the board of directors. It could be to a classroom of students. It could bea webinar. Okay, there's the place. So where is it that you're presenting? Areyou presenting in a conference type environment where it's a keynote speechyou're giving? Perhaps it's in the meeting room. It could be online and that'sgoing to impact how you're going to create your slides and then the final oneis the purpose. What do you want people to do afterwards? Are you trying toinfluence them to do something? Are you trying to inspire them to do something?Or are you trying to get them to maybe make a sale or follow up on something?And for me, those three "P"s would make a big difference as to how Iwould design slides. Because if you're in a conference room environment,perhaps you're giving the keynote speech. I often see, and I've experienced thismyself in the past couple of months, where I've been back to in person eventsin a large function room and there's been a fantastic presentation. The personreally knew their content really, really well. And the slides, the informationon the slides, it was tiny. Nobody could read it. Now, that would have beenokay if it was an online event because you've got more content where you'resort of closer to what you're looking at so therefore you'd be able to take abit more information. But that's what you have to think about. I really thinkyou have to think about those factors before you start creating a presentation.So if I was designing keynote speech for somebody, I actually just finished oneon Friday, it's very little words, all imagery, literally a couple of words. Soif someone's trying to get a concept across, it might be a case of saying 98%and maybe one word, because that's the thing you want people to remember. Thekey bit of information there is, wow, that's 98%. Not the finer detail. That'swhat you're talking about the finer detail.
And the thing that we least want is death by PowerPoint.
Absolutely. Yeah. But then another scenario could be thatyou're sending an infographic around to somebody by email as a PDF, let's say,for a project update. And then you're going to have lots of information onthat. I could spend 3 hours working on one slide because it's an infographicand it's going to be sent around to people as an update.
Yeah. I would never have considered infographics as part ofthe PowerPoint, but yeah.
When you do it for somebody else, do you have to know theirpersonality quite well?
That's a good question. I think you need to understand thebusiness. You need to kind of know where they're coming from and what they'retrying to achieve. So I would start when I'm designing a presentation forpeople I'd start off asking them. There's a lot of questions and that's wherethe coaching background comes in because you can kind of pick up on what it isthey're trying to do, what they're trying to achieve. I think one of thebiggest things that I see and the biggest mistakes, or two big mistakesactually, one is people don't have, this is more in relation to the webinarthat we spoke about earlier where people are using webinars as lead magnets. Soone of the things I noticed there is that people don't have their branding inslides. So they don't have their colour palette in slides. They don't have muchof the logos. They tend to just use it as a blank slide and if they'reinserting anything into the slides it will pick up Microsoft's default colourpalette. Which is blue, orange, green. Pretty gaudy colours and they've beenaround for ages as well. They've been around for about twelve years. So ifyou're not using your own colour palette in there, people have seen them beforebecause it's the same colours that people would see. If it's just a new file,that's the first thing. And then secondly, yeah, logos, you don't need a logoon every slide, but I often see then that people, they just use whitebackground, those standard default colours and it's a bit plain and dull. Soyeah, you could definitely brighten it up a bit by putting your own branding inthere from a marketing point of view.
Now, I wanted to ask you've obviously been listening to ourpodcast, so you've picked up on our personalities and you've now seen us inperson a few times. So if we were to ask you to create a presentation for us,you've got two very distinct personalities here, so you could have like Andrewand Pete and myself and Esther. So how would you amalgamate the personalities,bearing in mind the brand and the messaging?
You know, I don't think I've actually had a presentationthat's had two people delivering it. It's usually one person that's deliveringit.
Interesting.
Yeah, isn't it?
So this is a new challenge for all of our listeners. Fionaneeds two people to come along and challenge her.
But I'm sure even at the end of the day, Melanie and I, yes,we're different, but as the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast, we have ourbranding, we have our colours, so that at least is a jumping off point. Butyeah, I totally agree with you having the branding and the colours and stuff ineach slide because also if you're going to be doing an online presentation, howmany times are people screenshotting your information?
Yeah, absolutely.
And if it's blank, then they're going to try to pass it offas their own. Do not steal. That was, remember from a previous podcast, I saiddo not steal. But it happens. I mean, it happens that you're not sitting theretaking notes, but you're like, oh, that's a good, that's a good quote, I wishI'd thought of that. And you screenshot it. I've done it, I'm holding my handsup, I've done it. But if there's no branding on it, then you might come back tothe screenshot and go, who said that? What webinar was I on? So it's reallyimportant to use your colours and your branding and everything. So is there anoptimal length of a presentation? Let's say we're doing a ten minute webinar ora ten minute keynote presentation. How many slides per minute?
Good question.
Now, I don't go down that route of having slides per minute,because it depends what the slides are and it depends how you set the slidesup, right? Because if you've got imagery and you're using mostly imagery, andif it's keynote, you probably are. And if I was doing a keynote, I wouldn'tnecessarily have a logo on every slide, because sometimes when you've got fullimagery on a slide and you've got a logo, logo is kind of not really workingwith it. So sometimes I wouldn't have logos on, as in pictures, not the slide.
But you could have the people on there, couldn't you?
Say that again?
You could have the person on there.
Yeah.
You're still talking about the brand because it's talkingabout the person.
Like the name, you mean?
Or a photo of the person.
Yeah, I do that quite a lot. I find when people are doingkeynotes, they don't have pictures themselves on. And I'm like, you have tohave a picture of yourself because you're selling yourself aren't you. At theend of the day, you have to have a couple of pictures of you, whether you likeit or not. Well, actually, the one I've just finished is for somebody who isdoing a speech, keynote delivery, whatever, at Croke Park, actually, during theweek, and I was in that venue a couple of weeks ago, and it's quite large, andif you're sitting in the back, you won't actually see the speaker. And they'vegot sort of screens down the room. Monitors down the room. So people will belooking there and see you a bit there. First thing I said was images of you.Absolutely need a good few of those. So we've got three images throughout thepresentation. One on the front, so that people can see, because you'll be smallon the stage, and then people can be behind because it's a huge, massive screenthere. And one in the middle we had somewhere, and then one of the end as wellwith a call to action because a lot of times people don't have call to actionsin presentations, they go, "thank you" and it's not really doing anything.
So I've got to ask, a million years ago, when I was atprobably secondary school, I'm thinking, when was I doing presentations?Probably secondary school, they would say, I just want to see if it's stilltrue today. Say what you're going to say, say what you're going to say, andthen say what you said.
Say that again.
Say what you're going to say. Say what you're saying andthen say what you said. So first tell people what's coming up. Say what you'regoing to actually say, and then say what you just said. That was how I wastaught how to do my PowerPoint presentations. That's the start, middle and end.So is that still true today as it was back then, obviously slightly moreinteresting.
I still think you need to tell people what's coming becauseif you don't, they're probably wondering where things are going. Definitelysummary. So definitely tell people what you said. Definitely, yeah, without adoubt. I suppose the beginning could be a little bit different. Maybe you wouldn'tnecessarily say what you're going to say. If you started off with a reallystrong hook of a story, then you're probably not going to tell them, you're notgoing to say that as your opening. It's going to be a bit more something verydifferent to get them interested. So maybe not to start, but I think thetelling them what you're telling them and tell them what you told them so Ithink they end it. Yeah, because you're kind of doing a wrap up on the summaryof your key points then.
Yeah. And then you mentioned having a call to action at theend. On a PowerPoint what is the best type of call to actions? Is it a link? Isit a phone number? Is it QR code? What's the best, easiest way for people to dothe call to action?
Again, I think it depends what you want people to do, but Ithink the QR code is very good, especially for keynote speeches, because theneveryone's got their phone in the audience and they can quickly do that unlessyou're on.
At the end of the day, at which point the phone has died.
Yes. The other thing is as well, I know I was at aconference recently and taking all the information from the keynotes, but thenI could lose them on my phone and I didn't even write some down. Definitelysomething to think about, isn't it?
Yeah, because I remember years ago, it used to be like itwas the five digit telephone number, just send a message to this five digits,but it cost you money and even if I was down in the Republic of Ireland at aconference, then I couldn't have messaged the number because it wasn't a localnumber to me. Things like that you really have to take into consideration. ButI suppose that if it's a PowerPoint on a webinar, then usually maybe a link -could it be clickable? Would you advise people to send people their webinarslides after the webinar?
Yes, again, I suppose it depends. It depends oncircumstances like if they are collecting email addresses and they can sendsomething out afterwards and yes, they can. Sometimes when you're sending out aPDF, it's not always clickable, so you need to make sure that it is, becausesometimes the way you export it loses the link and then you've just got anunderline with a text that you can't actually click on, so you need to makesure you've done that right. The other thing that quite a few people areinterested in doing is having like a "connect with me" type call toaction, and then I'll do a screenshot of their profile so that when somebodyfinds them, they know they find the right profile. The way you might be seeingsomebody, they're talking on stage or they're talking to the webinar, and thenyou look them off on LinkedIn, you're like, is that them? That doesn't soundlike them. Is that really their screenshots? Because then you'd recognise thatwhen you came across it, that profile when you came across it.
And one point that Esther brought up there was about sendingthe slides. And there's one particular speaker that I've seen, pretty muchevery time I've seen them, has always put up a link a bitly link of theirslides. Is this a good takeaway to have?
Interesting, I was at a conference recently and somebody,one of the speakers did that and I downloaded the slides, and there's a hugeamount of slides, massive file. And it depends what information is on them aswell, because for this particular presentation, I think the slides wouldn'thave made any sense to you unless you're in the presentation. Do you know whatI mean?
That is quite intentional because I do that as well. To me,it's actually more a prompt as to what to say. A) Most people read what you'veput down in seconds and then they switch off and B) especially in the spherethat we're in, because obviously you work in different areas, it changes soquickly that we don't want people going, well, you said this, and like, well,that was a year and a half ago. So I think a lot of businesses and a lot ofspeakers would do that quite intentionally. It would only be a prompt to peoplewho were there. And we go, oh, yes, I forgot they mentioned that when they seethat picture and all that phrase.
Yeah. And people often ask me about using the notes and thenhow to use the notes so that perhaps they're using presented view when they'representing, so they can see the notes on their screen and then the audiencedon't seem slide. It's almost like you have two slide decks. You could alwayshave one with the notes incorporated so that you can send that out to people.You might not necessarily want to send out the notes view because sometimesthat doesn't look great, but sometimes you could always do two presentationsand say, if you're doing people doing sales pitch, okay, and they've got acertain amount of information actually on the slides and a certain amount ofinformation in the notes because you don't want to deliver that information.You don't want to have that information, key information on the slide, because,as you've just said, now people are reading ahead and then they see theinformation before you've had a chance to deliver it. So really what you wantto do is you want to be talking that through and, you know, what I mean? Youwant to be delivering that with your voice, not with somebody reading it on theslide.
But then if you're sending a pitch deck round afterwards tothe potential investors, then you might want them to have more information. Soyou could have two slide decks, one with the full information on that youwouldn't present, that you'd send round as a PDF, and then the other one is theone you actually deliver. Yeah. So the pitch decks, it might be case on too, Ithink, with one with all the information in and the other one is you'redelivering in, having conversations around.
It just a question that has popped into my head. Is there afont that is a definite no no when it comes to PowerPoint? Or should peoplejust stick to, I hear at times, New Roman or what's the other one thateverybody uses?
Comic fans?
No, please. No. Unless you're a primary school teacher andeven then, please don't.
Is it Trevichet?
Is the other one is there one that just really don't pleasedon't use this. Or does it again, depend on who it's for and where you're goingto present and stuff like that? Because surely there has to be some that arereally hard to read if you're in an event like Crook Park down in Dublin oreven sitting looking at your computer screen. I mean, some people sign up forWebinars and they watch them on their phones. Let's be honest here, it's tiny,so I'm dying to know.
I like some of the more clean fonts. Okay, and I agree withwhat you said there, etc. So you've got fonts like Calibri Times New Romancomic sounds. I mean, they're all it's the same as using the same which thestandard PowerPoint one. So I would definitely stay away from those becauseyour presentations are looking different. It's going to just look likeeverybody else's haven't bothered to put your branding on it. What I do find isthat not everybody's branded fonts work well in PowerPoint. So you might havehad a designer do lovely logo, lovely colour palette, come up with some reallynice fonts for you. But sometimes in PowerPoint they don't work very well, theymight be too narrow. So, again, I had one recently that I was working with andI popped the fonts in and I looked at them and said, that absolutely doesn'twork, it's just too narrow. So you couldn't really read it very well. Itprobably looks quite nice on maybe other social media that just didn't work inPowerPoint at all. So I tend to go for quite clean fonts, nothing too fancy.But again, it depends what you're doing.
It depends what kind of impact you want to get that's one ofthe people are exactly, yeah, I think OpenStand is a nice one that works quitewell. I think that's one of the top some font specialists or designers havedone a list of the best ones for PowerPoints. I think open sand comes up therequite high.
I wanted to ask, would having a box or a shade behind someof these thinner fonts help accentuate it on the side? Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
And funnily enough, that is a technique that I use, Mel, when, let's say you have an image that you find that captures a concept that you want to get across, and there might be change in contrast in that image, so there might be light and dark in that image and you want to put text across that. So I would often either put an outline around a text or there's a glow option. Probably familiar with these yourself, but you can put a glow effecta round it and you can change the colour glow.
I remember the shadow that we used to do.
Use that in PowerPoint, though, because the infographics, itworks quite well the shadow one, but the glow works well. I think a lot ofpeople don't realise the standard glows are gawdi. They're yellow, blue, green,orange. They don't look very nice.
Microsoft colours
Yeah, exactly. But even if you have your branding colourspalette in there, it still doesn't seem to pick that up for the glow. But ifyou pick other colours, you can pick, say, a white glow or a black glow, andthat would then help emphasise the text. It could work on the thinner it couldwork on the thinner fonts. I have to try that.
You've given us so much information here today, Fiona, andwe're very grateful for that. How do people get in touch with you?
Best place to get in touch with me is on LinkedIn. So if yousearch for Fiona Walsh and PowerPoint, you will definitely find me if yousearch for that on LinkedIn, and it's a good place to follow me or connect withme, because I share a lot of videos on tips and tricks, what you can do inPowerPoint, and they're all very simple things as well. So that's the bestplace, I think, to find me and connect with me.
And just in case people are confused with the accent, youare in County Cork, so if it pops up, that she's in County Cork. She is that one.
Yes, I am the one in County Cork.
Well, that's it for today, guys. Thank you so much, Fiona.Thank you, everyone, for listening. And we'll be back next week with more marketing. Until then, bye bye.
Bye bye, guys.