Visual Impact in Presentations, Part 3: Time-Saving Strategies & Tool Tips for Building Your Slides

The blog is back after a summer break!  Part 1 in this blog series talks about prerequisites for assembling any presentation and how to get visual impact when you make slides with just text & no graphics.  Part 2 helps you make data slides that are insightful, informative, and NOT misleading.  

Today, we’ll wrap up the series with tips that help you save time while executing what you learned, including some handy features in PowerPoint and Google Slides.

When to invest more time in your slides

We need to consider the ROI for our time when building slides.  What’s the goal of the presentation & who is the audience?  It can make sense to spend a lot of time on slides:

• For a high-stakes meeting

• For a presentation to executives

• If you expect to reuse them

But, for recurring meetings, we often can’t afford to spend much time (especially if the meetings are daily or weekly).  

Apply automation to recurring meeting slides

We can bring 3 types of automation to our presentation preparation process:

1. Templates

2. Scripting / Instructions to your future self

3. Data automation / PowerBI

Templates are great for recurring meetings with similar content expectations each time.  Invest some time up front to create a clear and impactful layout, then no need to reinvent the wheel after that.

If you’re very technical & the information you need can be slurped through scripts to produce the presentation you’ll report, that’s great!  If you’re the type of person who associates Python more with animals than with your computer, you can still write yourself a “script” - some folks call it a Standard Operating Procedure - clear detailed steps that help you compile what you need quickly (even if you’re in the 3pm slump and only half your brain is awake).

If the data that you need to present comes out of databases (such as Jira) where you can get live visualizations through easy widgets, it’s well worth setting those up to pull the latest charts.  Some companies have PowerBI set up, which can enable sophisticated dashboards based on the live database.

PowerPoint & Google Slides features that save time

Assuming you’re not building your slides during the meeting when you need to present them (Part 1 of this series helps with that!), if you have perfectionist tendencies, opening up a presentation building tool can be a black hole for your time.  You can save time by learning how to use:

• Alignment & distribution menus

• The animation/motion pane

• The selection pane (PowerPoint)

It’s much better to see what this looks like live in the tools, so I’ve created YouTube videos that walk you through these features.  Check out:

• Aligning & spacing objects in PowerPoint & Google Slides

• Managing multiple animations in PowerPoint & Google Slides (covers Animation/motion & selection panes)

Conclusion

With the right approach and the right tools, creating impactful slides doesn’t have to be a huge time sink. By combining strong fundamentals (Part 1 of this series), clear and solid data slides (Part 2 of this series), you’ll be able to build presentations that are both persuasive and efficient to create/reuse.

The next time you prepare for a meeting (whether it’s a quick weekly update or a high-stakes executive briefing) you’ll know where to invest your effort, how to avoid common pitfalls, and how to leverage tools that make the process smoother.

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