The second part of this blog post about the 10 most common mistakes when presenting with PowerPoint focuses on shortcomings often observed when giving slide presentations. Make sure you avoid these mistakes and you'll leave a positive impression on your audience.

1. Reading

Most people are probably aware that reading from presentation slides is a no-go and leads to monotony and boredom for the audience. It is strongly recommended to paraphrase the content in your own words and use the slides only as a cheat sheet, if at all.

2. Digression

At the same time, what you say shouldn't deviate too much from the message of your presentation. The slides serve as a visual guide for your audience. If you stray too far from the topic while speaking, the key points in your PowerPoint presentation will lose their impact and cause confusion.

3. Omit many slides

Sometimes time gets tight and you need to shorten your presentation spontaneously. In that case, you'll have to omit some slides – that's perfectly fine. However, you shouldn't fill your presentation with slides you don't actually intend to show and are only including "just in case" for potential in-depth questions from the audience.

Slides for such eventualities should, if at all, be placed at the end of the presentation. Constantly clicking through slides during your presentation makes you appear unprepared to the audience. Furthermore, this can create curiosity or expectations about content that your presentation ultimately fails to address.

4. Leave already processed slides in place.

Consider this scenario: Your last discussed slide is still projected onto the wall, even though you don't need PowerPoint at that point in your presentation, for example, because you're conducting an exercise with your audience. This unnecessarily puts you in a competitive situation with your presentation, namely for the audience's attention.

Although the displayed slide has already been discussed, it still catches the audience's eye as a visual focal point. Therefore, consider during the planning phase of your presentation when you will turn off the projector or "pause" your presentation with white or black slides.

5. Don't take any breaks

During your presentation, feel free to pause for a few moments. This gives your audience the opportunity to absorb the content of the slides and to make thoughts or notes.

To convince and win over your audience, it's not enough to simply avoid these pitfalls; there's more to an outstanding PowerPoint presentation. But by avoiding these shortcomings, you'll give your presentation a significant advantage in the competition for your audience's attention.