How do you prepare your presentations? Are you still using PowerPoint?
With so many alternatives around these days, it might be time for you to jump ship and take your presentations to the next level. Read on to find out why.
What makes an effective presentation?
The best presentations tend to make the best use of the relationship between a presenter and their audience. Presenters need to fully consider the audience's needs in order to capture their interest, develop their understanding of the topic, inspire their confidence, and deliver the information they want to convey.
Regardless of the topic at hand, a great presentation will take time to plan, develop, and practice to deliver it effectively.

Many ingredients need to be thrown into the mix when developing a good presentation, but some of the most important ones are the following:
- Develop, and achieve the objectives of the presentation. What do you want your audience to understand? What action do you want them to make? How can you persuade them to take that action?
- Presentations should include relevant information and be delivered in an appropriate style for the proposed audience. Will the audience be experts in the field? If not, what information about the subject would they want to know about that is relevant to them? For example, if you are pitching to potential investors, they may only care about the ROI and not necessarily know about the finer points of a project.
- The presentation should take into consideration the venue at which the presentation will be delivered. Will it be in a small office? Or a large lecture hall? The latter will tend to have a more formal atmosphere, the former less so.
- It should fulfill any remit assigned to it if any. This is critical as it is the main purpose of the presentation.
Once you've planned for the above, where relevant, you will next need to choose the main points of the presentation. Often, your actual time delivering the presentation will be limited, so try to "stay on target".
If you make any claims, like statistics, etc, you are really going to need to back them up with some supporting information. But not all information is equal -- you will need to be picky about which best support the point you are making.
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With the points to be delivered ironed out and the supporting information in hand, you will next need to work on the flow of the presentation. Linking statements like "Because of this, we can say or do this..." are very useful.

One of the most critical things to get right about presentations is the opening. It is the first point of contact with your audience and their reaction will usually dictate how the rest of the presentation is received.
Think of it as a mini-presentation within the larger one, where you want to grip the audience's attention. Likewise, the conclusion for the presentation is also of great importance.
Use it to hammer home the main messages and, if relevant, trigger a call to action from them (e.g. fund my startup).
With all these elements in place, take some time to review and practice it until you feel confident it is the best it can be. Ask yourself some honest questions like "is it too long?", "does it actually sell the idea?", etc.
It would also be nice if the slides look nice too. That is where presentation creation software and tools come in very handy.
What is the best program to make a presentation?
When you think of presentation software you can be forgiven for immediately thinking of Microsoft PowerPoint to get the job done. While a very capable product, it is far from the best on the market.
Often, presentations prepared using PowerPoint can feel labored, and frankly lackluster. That is where other presentation tools might be a better choice for delivering that "killer" sales pitch.
Some notable examples include, but are not limited to:
- Decktopus
- Visme
- Haiku Deck
- Pitcherific
- Canva
- SlideCamp
- Powtoon
- VideoScribe
- Prezi
All of the above are excellent alternatives to PowerPoint, but there is one among them that really stands out -- Decktopus. Why is this "new kid on the presentation creation tool block" really worth taking the time to explore?
What is Decktopus and why do you need it in your life?
Market research has found that most speakers tend to spend around 8 hours creating a new presentation, with the majority of them also using the same slide deck for each and every one. Most of their time, it has been discovered, was spent figuring out how to summarize information on each slide, as well as, laboring over the graphic design of them.
This is especially true with some of the most popular presentation tools on the market, where users were overloaded with options, styles, and themes. For most presenters, there is simply too much choice when designing slides by themselves.

This is where Decktopus is, quite literally, the next generation in presentation tools. An innovative online platform, Decktopus allows its users to save their precious time and reduce their stress levels while producing stunning and gripping presentations effortlessly.
Its user interface builds on the knowledge of experts in the industry to help you to seamlessly create presentations, including business proposals, homework, presentations, startup pitches, investor updates, client reports, brochures, sales decks, and many more.
Beyond actually writing the content, Decktopus pretty much does everything else for you. It automatically creates the design, alignments, font and photo size, color theme, etc to make your slides look the very best they can be. Not only that, but any changes to the main style of one slide are automatically applied to all others in the deck -- pretty neat.
All you have to worry about is actually writing the presentation. But, you also get some help on this front.
Decktopus' platform offers content suggestions using its intelligent engine to recommend quotes, royalty-free images, and even gifs. Its premium service also tags on video tips to really take your presentation to the next level.
But wait, there is more, "no other presentation tool allows you to access the complete set of product functionalities without downloading an app. With our browser responsive mobile support interface, we let our users view, create, and edit presentations- app free."
What makes Decktopus different from the competition?
Decktopus, because of the innovative approach it takes to presentation creation has a few inherent advantages over its competition. These include, but are not limited to:
- It allows for rapid presentation creation. Unlike others, like PowerPoint, you don't need to create slides from scratch. Decktopus, more or less, fully automates this process letting you spend time on the things that actually matter -- the content.
- Decktopus' huge free library helps you enrich your presentation without spending hours surfing the net for the best images, gifs, and other visual elements of your presentation.

- Decktopus' platform also offers a set of pre-prepared templates for various types of presentations from Startup pitches to team meetings. These templates contain all the major elements a presentation on these topics are expected to include.
- All of Decktopus' presentation templates have been designed by professional graphic designers. While you can tinker with some of the settings, you can rest assured they main look will be visually stunning and engaging.
- Being an online tool, Decktopus is supported on most kinds of devices. This means it easy to share, collaborate, and edit/store your presentation to view anywhere in the world with an internet connection. You can also download it as a PDF for those rare occasions where internet coverage is less than adequate.
For these reasons, and more, Decktopus might just be the presentation creation tool you've always dreamed of. Why not check out their product today?
For our very own Interesting Engineering followers, here is a special 25% discount link (or use IEPROMO discount code) for Decktopus’ annual Pro subscription for only $6/month (billed annually).
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