Five Ideas for Writing Better Content for PowerPoint

You may create the best PowerPoint slides, and populate them with amazing visuals, but unless you put in the same amount of thought into what you write, you may end up with slides that do not have the impact you may have desired.

Let's explore what Kevin did. He took a dozen slides from his older presentations and then copied a few slides from the decks created by his friends and colleagues. He did not forget adding an opening and a thank-you slide, and he thought he was done. But as you may imagine, creating such presentations is no better than adding a tick mark for a task that's poorly done. You did achieve the tick mark, but you rarely achieve anything else. To be successful in your presentations, you clearly need to do a lot more. And there's nothing better than exploring how you can write better content for PowerPoint.

So, are there some magical ideas that you can use to write better content? Sure enough, there are many ideas but the "magical' part will only occur after you have written some amazing content for your slides. Here are five ideas that will help:

1. Hire Someone

This has got to be the easiest one. You can hire someone to write your slide content. As with everything else, the quality of the content you receive depends upon how much you are ready to pay, plus also your luck in finding someone who is seriously good at this task.

There are several agencies that you can find online to write content for your PowerPoint slides.

2. Start from Scratch

The other option is to start from scratch, and this option makes sense even if you want to hire someone else eventually. Why? Because if you start making some notes, you will help evolve a better idea of what you need. Sharing these notes with someone else, or even using these notes to proceed on your own can be of great help.

So, what do you put in these start-from-scratch notes? Jot in anything that can make a difference, add your thoughts and ideas, and even pen down notes of backup plans. Some doodling can help too, and this is one reason why these start-from-scratch notes should be in the analog format, as in pen on paper. If you need to share these notes digitally, click a picture on your camera phone and email it to yourself or someone else.
Image: Pixabay

3. Create an Outline

Use your notes to create an outline. What's the difference between jotted notes and an outline? Whereas notes can be scribbled, non-linear, and organic in nature, an outline is organized, sequential, and structured. Your content may be the same as what you start with, but an outline is the evolution of your notes.

At this point in time, if your thoughts are still flowing, don't stop them. It's perfectly acceptable to have a long outline because many professional brainstormers also come up with and accept ideas at this stage. But these ideas are more evolved and focussed, and add more value to your existing content.

How do you know if you ended with a proper outline? Here are some tell-tale signs:

• Your later content builds upon your previous content.
• Each part of your content relates to a slide or even sets of slides.
• Your content is easy to understand, and a person who is looking at the outline for the first time finds the content logical and simple.

Do note that your outline can be analog, as in pen on paper, but it is perfectly acceptable and even recommended that the outline takes the form of a text file, a Word document, or even an email. Heck, there are people who create their outlines in Excel!

4. Balance the Details

Once you have a proper structure in place, feel free to reorganize the content. You may want to move the content somewhat earlier in your presentation, or you may even want to move it backward. Make sure that any changes you make improve the flow of the content.

You can also determine placeholders now for your non-textual content, such as for pictures, charts, tables, diagrams, videos, etc.

Check spelling and grammar, and also explore sentence-formation. Divide long sentences into smaller sentences or phrases. Change longer passive content into directly-addressed active content. Remove repetitive words, and discard unnecessary adjectives.

If you need to submit your outline for approval, do create variations for some slides so that your superiors have an easier time choosing one variation over the other.
Image: Pixabay

5. Check Again

Well, now that you have written some content for your PowerPoint presentation, you are in possession of what professionals will use multiple names to describe: storyboard, script, outline, content, structure, etc.

But this is not the time of resting on your laurels. Before you proceed further and import such content into PowerPoint to create slides, it is a good idea to start checking your content, from the beginning to the end. You will be surprised that there will always be a small improvement that you missed out earlier. It is only after many repetitive revisions that you can create some amazing, crisp content.

It is also a good idea to show this content to a few other people to get an unbiased view and some suggestions for improvements.

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