PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Indezine News Released

Offers, Kits, Conversations, and Tutorials – with so much stuff, you may wonder if we plan to include too much content in this issue? In that case you are right — this is indeed a jumbo issue of this newsletter with so much information that we seriously considered holding back some of the content — in the end, we decided to announce all of this stuff because we have more stuff coming up for you next week!

Read our newsletter here.

Filed Under: Ezine
Tagged as: Ezine, Indezine, News, PowerPoint

Newsjacking: Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story…

This post is not about presenting, but when you consider that this is about communicating — then it just happens to be relevant to presenters too! Today, I heard about a new book, downloaded it, read it from cover to cover, and started acting upon what the book’s author taught me — and everything I did happened in a span of less than 2 hours!

Wow — are you wondering if that is even possible? Find out for yourself — the book is called Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage, and is authored by David Meerman Scott.

Found out about the book from a blog post by Nick Morgan earlier today — and this has to be among the best books I have read. I do love the fact that David did not write a 200-page book on this topic — all the content is straightforward and written in plain English. The stories and analogies are first rate, and the book gets you from the starting point to end point very convincingly and directly.

At this point of time, I am guessing you want to know what Newsjacking means? According to David, newsjacking is the process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business.

Here are my favorite quotes from the book:

Newsjacking is powerful, but only when executed in real time. It is about taking advantage of opportunities that pop up for a fleeting moment, then disappear. In that instant, if you are clever enough to add a new dimension to the story in real time, the news media will write about you.

To succeed at newsjacking—or fend off a newsjack—you must be prepared to act within the hour, day, night, or weekend. And that entails risk. Your shot on goal may open up at the end of a long day when you are tired and irritable, or when you have had one too many drinks.

This book is available on Amazon (as a Kindle book) for instant download — no conventional paper books of this title have been published yet.

Filed Under: Reviews
Tagged as: Book Review

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Select and Deselect Shapes

PowerPoint follows the process of selection, then action for any slide object on a slide. If you cannot select an object, then you cannot do anything to modify it in any way. Although this tutorial explains how you can select shapes on a slide, the process works the same way for any other slide object.

Learn how to select and deselect single and multiple shapes in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2011
Tagged as: PowerPoint 2011, Shapes, Tutorials

Considerations for Designing PowerPoint Backgrounds

By Claudyne Wilder

Many people do not know that you can create more than one slide master in PowerPoint 2002 and 2003, and even your own slide layouts in PowerPoint 2007 and 2010. Do you use these features?

You have an opportunity to create a new company background — or maybe even several. Answer these questions before getting started:

1. Will you have just a title at the top of each slide, or will the slides have both title and subheading?
2. Will you show charts that fill the whole slide?
3. Will you have slides with text and pictures together?
4. Will you put your logo on every slide? Is that company policy? Is it really needed?
5. Will you put your customer’s logo on certain slides?
6. Will the presentation be divided into product categories? Do you want different slide looks for each of the products? How will you carry through one central look even with different slides looks representing different products?

Image: Yay Images

Once you have created several looks, ask yourself these questions:

1. When I look at the slide, does my eye go to a central place? Do I have so many graphical elements that the eye keeps wandering from one to another. Don’t put all these elements on one slide: a busy background with images on it, a title space that has many design elements, a logo that is very large and other design elements as well.
2. Will the design make it easy for the presenter to talk and show off the key points?
3. Are the color combinations attractive and bring the eye into the slide? For example, some yellows, blues, and greens really make people want to look away. Tone down the colors if necessary.

Claudyne Wilder is a guest lecturer at conferences, business shows, and corporate events. She is the creator of three presentation seminars: “The Winning Presentations Seminar,” “The Winning Presentations Sales Seminar;” and “Creating PowerPoint Presentations That Get Your Point Across.” She offers “The Winning Presentations Seminar publicly about six times a year. She also licenses this seminar to companies and consultants to teach.

Do visit Claudyne’s site at Wilder Presentations to learn more.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Guest Posts
Tagged as: Background, Claudyne Wilder, Design, Guest Post, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2007: Control Animation with Advanced Timeline

You already learned how to show the Advanced Timeline for Custom Animation within PowerPoint 2007. The main advantage of using the Advanced Timeline to edit your animation is that you can control the start time, duration, and end time of your animation to the most minute level. You are not limited to the time or speed presets that PowerPoint provides. For example, by using the Advanced Timeline you can animate a slide object very slowly to span over a whole minute or more by just dragging the start and end points of any animation bar outwards in the timeline.

Learn how the control animations with the help of advanced Timeline option in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: Animation, PowerPoint 2007, Tutorials