Top 100 Mistakes When Delivering a PowerPoint Slideshow

Do you want to avoid some of the most common and annoying errors when presenting with PowerPoint? Here are the top 100 mistakes presenters make.

1. Make excuses for why the slides don't look that great
2. Keep turning to look at the slides and not the audience
3. Turn your whole back to the audience when looking at a slide
4. Never look the audience in the eye
5. Never, ever practice the presentation
6. Actually go up and touch the slide on the big screen
7. Use an annoying laser pen
8. Make crazy little circles with your laser pen
9. Make zig-zags with your laser pen
10. Don't have a story
11. Show lots and lots of slides
12. Don't have clear messages
13. Have plenty of bullets and lists
14. Don't break your deck into sections or "chapters"
15. Have 100 disconnected slides
16. Don't have an introduction that "wows" people
17. Read the slide word for word
18. To make a point read the slide twice
19. Don't close with a strong and memorable ending
20. Don't use examples
21. Make sure you use at least 10 bullets per slide
22. Change colors on each slide
23. Use titles that are just boring facts
24. Make sure your titles are long enough to go to two lines
25. Have no gestures; just stand there with arms dangling down
26. Or, wave your arms around like Marcel Marceau
27. Or don't move at all, or
28. Pace like a lion in a cage
29. Only stay on one side of the stage
30. Talk to just the left side of the room
31. Talk to just the right side of the room
32. Use humor knowing you can't tell a joke
33. Don't modulate your voice
34. Don't emphasize any words
35. Have no transitions from slide to slide
36. Don't connect any of the ideas from any slides
37. Put a quote on screen and read it word for word
38. Talk very fast
39. Talk very slow
40. Walk with your hands in your pant pockets
41. Fold your arms
42. Never sound passionate or interested in your own material
43. Don't ask any questions
44. Never engage the audience
45. Don't use stories or anecdotes
46. Hold onto a podium or dais
47. Hide behind the podium
48. Memorize your slides and sound like a robot
49. Never use images or pictures on your slides, just lots of text
50. Make the text so small people in the back can't see it
51. Make an excuse about small text, "I know you can't read this..."
52. Use lots and lots of charts and graphs
53. Put two or three charts on one slide
54. Have at least a dozen data points on a graph
55. Use different fonts
56. Never proofread your slides, have spelling and grammar errors
57. Talk about something else that is not on the slide
58. Ramble and get off your topic
59. For a 1-hour presentation, have 60 slides
60. For a 30-minute presentation, have 30 slides
61. For a 15-minute presentation, have 15 slides
62. Be sure to insult the audience's intelligence
63. Use lots of outdated facts and figures
64. Use lots of animations, especially twirls, fly-ins and spinning words
65. Add cheesy annoying sounds to your fly-ins and spins
66. Look over the heads of the audience
67. Don't ask rhetorical questions
68. Never have an agenda
69. Keep referring to "him" and "he," especially if females are in the audience
70. Use the PPT wizard; never vary the slide style or make your own template
71. As you describe ideas on a slide, jump around, don't order your thoughts
72. Use really small images that don't enlarge well
73. Make sure the images are of the poorest quality
74. Use the images your brother-in-law took from his vacation
75. Never buy classy stock photos
76. Be sure your slides don't reinforce your words
77. Use as many builds as you can pack in
78. Make sure the transition builds are different for each slide
79. Chit chat and say thank you to 20 people before you begin to speak
80. Make sure your slides are really crowded
81. Never tell the audience how long you will speaking
82. Skip over ideas and tell people you're running late
83. Point to a slide with your middle finger
84. Point at the audience with any finger
85. Use lots and lots of flash animation
86. Don't have a clear purpose
87. Talk a lot about you and your company and never talk about the audience or their needs
88. Use a screen shot of a web page so no one can read it
89. Insert poorly shot videos
90. Insert videos with muddled sound
91. Never tell listeners what your presentation is about
92. Always choose dark text on a dark slide background or
93. Light text on a light background
94. Use lots of word art and slanted text
95. Use child-like clip art and lots and lots of cartoons
96. Never repeat the agenda so people can follow your ideas
97. Be more concerned about your data than telling a good story
98. Avoid visuals at all costs
99. Always go over, never under you allotted time
100. Never ever be conversational-just drone on and on

The best PPT advice? Have a compelling conversation with the audience; don't rely on slides--rely on a good story that will have meaning for the audience.

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