Storytelling Techniques to Boost Your PowerPoint Presentation

Storytelling Techniques to Boost Your PowerPoint Presentation

One of your earliest memories might be about someone reading bedtime stories before you sleep. Even though most of the stories were not as fascinating as the anime One Piece, those were enough to satisfy our young souls.

Now, we might not be as interested in bedtime stories as we used to be when we were kids. Even now, we might think it is tedious and tiring. However, don’t you know that we still love reading a story even as an adult nowadays?

Yes, we all still love reading a story, but we are used to hearing different kinds of stories as adults. Have you ever watched TED? Just deny it as hard as you can, but that’s a storytelling program wrapped neat and nicely for adult audiences.

Long story short, our secret desire to read a story may become your primary weapon to boost your PowerPoint presentation. However, to fulfill those potentials, you need to know the whole story about it first. So here is the article that you need storytelling techniques to boost your PowerPoint presentation.

The science of storytelling to boost your PowerPoint presentation

Storytelling is more than just a way to put babies to sleep. Uri Hasson, a Neuroscientist at Princeton University, once researched how our brain responds to being read a story. The scientist used MRI to scan the brain activity of participants who listened to a story.

In that research, Hasson found that the brain activity of the storyteller and the listener synched up. Please read it carefully because the study discovered that two different humans’ brains were synchronizing with each other.

The reason for that is mainly because we like to create our movies in our minds. Like when we are reading a book, we make our visual imagery of what we read. But listening to a story doesn’t require you to read.

The same visual imagery thingy also happens when you are on the other side of the mic. When you are telling a story, you must process some information.

“When you’re describing things in a story, you are creating visual imagery that engages you in multiple ways,” said Pamela Rutledge, Psychologist, and Director of the Los Angeles-based Media Psychology Research Center.

Why present with storytelling?

After knowing about the effect of storytelling on our brain, let’s bring this conversation one step further about putting it into something practical. In this case, it is about making storytelling a part of a sour PowerPoint presentation.

Luckily, we don’t need to learn how to integrate storytelling with PowerPoint presentations. It might sound strange, but actually, what we are selling or delivering in our PowerPoint presentation is a story. The better our story is, the better our audiences’ response to our presentation.

Still don’t believe that most of our presentation is storytelling? Now try to create a presentation that tells only facts and data. Is that something that you used to present? Of course not, all the time, what you did while giving a PowerPoint presentation was storytelling.

Stating facts and data alone will make your presentation dull and too boring. No one would want to listen to your presentation, and even if some are forced to do that, they will immediately forget every word you said.

But like not every single cow is wagyu, not every storytelling can boost your PowerPoint presentation. To increase the quality of your presentation, you have to add some extra effort to make your storytelling presentation a massive leap toward success. That’s why you need to master some special storytelling techniques.

The techniques you need to master

According to Sparkol, there are many storytelling techniques you can try to help you boost your PowerPoint presentation. However, each one has its strength and weakness because it is built for different occasions and purposes.

Here are the techniques you can try:

1. Monomyth Technique:

 This is the technique that Disney used to tell the Lion King story to us. It features a hero required to leave their safe zone, walk on a harrowing journey of the unknown, and someday come back stronger by multiple times.

2. The Mountain:

This technique is almost similar to the monomyth technique, but it is more suitable for dramas or something with extra drama. You put the suspense in one point, but the buildup is linear.

3. Nested Loops:

This technique can boost your PowerPoint presentation if you can find at least two correlated stories. Using this technique, you layer your stories one over another to hide the core story you want to deliver.

4. Sparklines:

This technique compares two different conditions. It can be the difference between our utopic world and real-world conditions, suitable for a persuasive presentation.

5. In Medias Res:

Burn, burn, burn! This technique allows you to ‘burn’ your audiences’ passion and spirit before getting to know the pathway that leads to that condition. So first, you put all the suspense in front, and later you have to explain the path you got there.

6. Converging Ideas:

Have you ever watched Love? This technique of storytelling is the same as how the movie plays.

7. False Start:

This storytelling technique employs a turn of events in the middle of a predictable story. In other words, you put a huge plot twist in the middle of the game. This technique is preferred by many, but only a few can execute it flawlessly. Maybe you are one of the few.

8. Petal Structure:

In this technique, you will have to tell many different stories, but you basically will only have one core. Have you ever read The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho? Yeah, this technique is the same as that.

So, which technique are you going to choose for your next presentation? First, make sure you know when to select storytelling techniques to boost your PowerPoint presentation that you need to choose.

When am I allowed to present with a specific storytelling technique?

The first thing you need to do before using storytelling to boost your PowerPoint presentation is to structure your presentation. For example, you cannot just tell Jack and the Beanstalk story out of nowhere because your audience will get confused.

You should also really plan your story well, connect it with the problem you want to solve, associate your account with the strength of your product, and make it enjoyable even though the main point in the presentation is your brand or product.

Do not forget that an excellent presentation is hugely affected by the ability of the presenter. So do not put too many things in your slides for storytelling, and use them to support your story. Just make your PowerPoint presentation as creative as possible, and you can present without too many slides.

Don’t hesitate to use videos or illustrations to support your presentation, but choose wisely that can keep your story. The addition of those features will help you a lot to get the audience’s attention and maintain it concentrated on your presentation.

If you are still hesitating about anything, ask for peer review from your friends. Remember that you can train your presentation skill with trials and errors, and it is better to show your errors in front of your peers instead of company CEOs.

Storytelling that can boost your PowerPoint presentation

Storytelling is a skill that you need if you want to increase your PowerPoint presentation. But to make it a significant boost to your PowerPoint presentation, you need to accompany your storytelling with a creative PowerPoint design.

Thus, if you are asking about what kind of storytelling that can boost your PowerPoint presentation, the answer is the one that can work perfectly well with your PowerPoint slides. In addition to the personality you show to your audience, both aspects are the holy triangle of an impactful PowerPoint presentation.

Storytelling is not the most crucial aspect of your presentation, but it is a skill that many people often forget to improve. For example, look at Cisco Systems which used to deliver only fact-heavy presentations and didn’t get the feedback they wanted.

After the company decided to be more audience-friendly and use storytelling to tell the audience about its journey from smaller businesses, a significant sales boost followed. You need to humanize your story and let the PowerPoint presentation slides do the things you have not covered.

See also:

11 Practical Ways to Boost Creativity in Design

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Customers or Users’ X Design Skills

10 Best Music PowerPoint Templates to Make You Jazzy

Talking about creative PowerPoint slides to accompany your storytelling…

…RRGraph Team can help you with that! With years of experience taking care of big companies’ PowerPoint presentation slides, our team has the prerequisite to create suitable PowerPoint presentation slides and bring your slides to the next level.

We recognize that storytelling techniques to boost your PowerPoint presentation are essential. Thus we will always work on your slides like we are creating a new sequel to Harry Potter. However, we will not make it that long.

If you find it difficult to believe, look at how we worked on our portfolio. You will be able to witness how we deal with our clients’ briefs and take care of every single story they want to deliver, even though it can be as complicated as Game of Thrones.