powerpoint presentation activity

14 Fun & Interactive Presentation Games for Teams and Students

So you've got an audience to energize, students to engage, or a team that needs a little extra fun — playing an interactive presentation game is an easy way to do just that.

We've done the research and found the best of these games for you: we looked specifically for games that are simple to set up, fun to play, and flexible enough to be used with a variety of presentations and audiences. Most of these activities work virtually with Zoom/PowerPoint and can also be used in person.

Which of these 14 presentation games do you like best? Take a look and let us know your favorites:

1. Live Trivia Competition

A great way to ramp up the excitement and engagement is to enable a little bit of friendly competition. Trivia is an easy way to do this—plus, it can be whole-group inclusive and large-audience friendly (if you use the right tools).

Here's a great trivia game you can run with your team, students, or any large audience. It's already created for you with questions and scoring built in to make it even easier:

Here's how to play:

• Make a free account here: https://slideswith.com/  
• Click the slide deck and copy it. 
• Launch the trivia game by clicking "Start Event."
• Invite your group to join in and submit answers using their mobile devices (show the winners automatically).
• Interact and play during your presentation!

This trivia game has questions on many topics to keep your audience's attention and appeal to everyone. It only takes 10-15 minutes to play, so it's a great game for long discussions! Also, this interactive activity is free for up to ten participants and is totally customizable.

2. Sing and Swing 

To really liven up your group, encourage your listeners to play Sing and Swing. This activity is best for long presentations because it boosts energy, creates a fun, light-hearted environment, and makes people laugh a lot. 

Here's how to play: 

• Before your presentation, pick a well-known song and rewrite the chorus (replace parts of it with words and phrases from your presentation) 
• When you're ready to play, show the song on your screen. 
• Invite your audience to sing it with you!

If you have a fun group or a class of energetic students, consider adding choreography to engage your audience even more. 

3. 20 Questions

If you want a presentation game that requires your listeners to talk more than you, 20 Questions is the one to play! A classic and simple activity, this game immediately boosts engagement and gets people laughing. 

Here's how to play: Have someone put an appropriate image or word on the screen behind you (this can be an audience member you trust or a colleague or co-presenter). To make things more fun, put on a blindfold so that everyone knows you can't cheat. From there, ask 20 "yes or no" questions to guess what's displayed on the screen. Your group should respond "yes" or "no" to guide you to the correct answer. 

4. Scavenger Hunt Challenge

To get your audience out of their seats, a scavenger hunt challenge is one of the best interactive games for presentations. It'll immediately energize your audience , team, or students while giving them a fun way to learn.  

There are tons of in-person and virtual scavenger hunt ideas you can use to dive deeper into your topic or help everyone learn about one another. But if you want a ready-to-play game that you can instantly launch without having any tech skills, here's a fun one to play: 

• Use an email address and password to create a free account here: https://slideswith.com/ (a free account guarantees up to ten people can play at no charge). 
• Click the game and press "Copy and use this slide deck." 
• In the top right corner, click "Start Event."
• Ask listeners to join the game by using their mobile devices to scan the QR code. Players should continue using their mobile devices to submit answers to questions.
• Have everyone start hunting for items! 

This activity is a particularly fun game because it's a photo-hunt, show-and-tell challenge! That means your audience will not only get out of their seats to find items, but they'll also get to take pictures and share and discuss photos of what they find. This conversational element will help engage your group! 

5. Group Word Clouds

Whether you're speaking to team members, students, or conference-goers, this activity lets you ask questions and get your listeners' thoughts on specific topics. 

This game is the perfect way to start your presentation, especially if you're discussing something with a wide range of opinions or are unsure how much your listeners know about a certain subject. Group Word Clouds is also beneficial if you want to do a quick meeting pulse or know how your listeners feel going into your presentation—understanding their energy levels and mood can help you adjust (if necessary) to get maximum engagement and excitement.

To enjoy this activity, keep things simple by using a tool that already offers a ready-to-play Group Word Clouds game. Here's a popular one you can launch immediately: 

• Create a free account by entering an email and password here: https://slideswith.com/  
• Click the game and then copy it (the button to do so is right underneath the slide deck).
• Press "Start Event" in the top right corner. 
• Tell participants to play by scanning the QR code. 
• Create word clouds and have fun!

This interactive game only takes 5-10 minutes to play, so it's a fast, fun way to engage your audience and feel out the room. Players can use their mobile devices to answer questions. This activity is also free for up to 10 people and is easy to personalize.

6. The Get to Know You Game

This activity is one of the best presentation games if you have a small group that doesn't really know each other. The Get to Know You Game is a creative way to do introductions, and it's really simple.

Here's how to play the game: Before the event, ask group members to bring a favorite song or item to the presentation (you can do this by emailing them). When you're ready to play, ask each person to introduce themself, present their song or item, and explain why they picked it. For those sharing a song, have them play it on their phones before they explain why it's their favorite. 

7. Live Poll Questions 

When you have a large group, it's not easy to find ways to boost engagement—but poll questions are the solutions, especially when they're live and interactive. With this unique setup, large groups engage by answering questions and seeing their answers displayed in a fun way. 

Your job is to make sure you actually find a game that showcases responses uniquely to captivate your group. For a quick and great option, here's a popular icebreaker activity that promises to display responses using fun formats like word clouds, donut charts, live graphs, and per-player: 

• Create an account for free to access the game:  https://slideswith.com/  
• Click the slide deck and press the button to copy it. 
• Look in the top right corner of the deck and press "Start Event."
• Invite your group to play the game. They only need to use their mobile devices to scan the QR code. 
• Start polling your audience!

This activity is one of those fun presentation games everyone will want to enjoy, so invite all of your team members and students to participate. This game can accommodate up to 250 players and takes 5-10 minutes to complete. Tell your group to use their mobile devices to submit their responses. 

8. Assumptions 

This interactive game is a great way to break up your presentation to see who's paying attention and who can answer questions pertaining to your topic. 

• Ask your audience to stand up (for virtual presentations, make sure everyone's video is on). 
• Show true or false statements on the screen one by one. 
• Tell people to raise a hand if they think the statement is correct and sit down if they think it's incorrect.
• Continue until one person is left standing.
• Award the winner. 

This activity can be as short and challenging as you want. Also, if your presentation is long, you can play multiple rounds to break up your speaking time and test your audience throughout your discussion.  

9. Controversial Questions 

Want to see where your audience, students, or team lands on controversial topics? Then, energize your presentation with a fun, creative game called Controversial Questions. This activity has prompts that inspire lively debates, so it's a great way to get your group excited and chatty. 

However, to maintain a positive environment, make sure to find a tool that offers an office-friendly, classroom-friendly, and conference-friendly game. You don't want to sour the mood by creating uncomfortable division during your presentation. To make sure this game is fun and light-hearted, here's a popular one that's suitable for all audiences and ages: 

• Sign up for a free account by inputting an email address and password here:  https://slideswith.com/pricing  
• Click the game and press the button that says, "Copy and use this deck." 
• Press "Start Event" (the button is in the top right corner). 
• Have participants join the fun by asking them to scan the QR code with their mobile devices. 
• Get controversial and play! 

This interactive game for presentations asks fun (but appropriate) questions like:

• Does pineapple belong on pizza?
• Does the person flying in the middle seat get both armrests?
• Should the toilet roll go over or under? 

Players should use their mobile devices to submit answers. Up to ten people can play for free, and you can customize the game by updating the questions!

10. Word of the Day 

With this activity, you can keep your audience, team, or students engaged throughout your entire presentation. This  game requires listeners to be alert and recognize whenever you say the word of the day. 

Here's how to play: At the beginning of your presentation, tell your group the word of the day (it can also be a phrase if you'd prefer). Say that you'll weave the word into your presentation and that your audience must shout it out whenever you mention it. 

11. Mini Activity: Group Icebreaker

Whether you're doing an in-person or virtual presentation, you need to warm up your audience to get things started on a positive note. The best way to do that is with a quick icebreaker game. 

However, make sure your questions are fun, positive, and engaging. You can easily do this by finding a game that already has the best icebreaker questions included. Here's one that's ready to play (and requiring no tech skills to launch): 

• Input an email address and password to make a free account here: https://slideswith.com/  
• Click the deck and copy it (press "Copy and use this deck). 
• Click the button in the top right corner that says "Start Event."
• Invite participants to play by asking them to scan the QR code. 
• Break the ice to warm up your audience!

Your group should use their mobile devices to submit responses to poll questions. Also, this game accommodates up to 250 players, but only ten people can join for free.

12. Process of Elimination 

This activity is one of the best games for presentations because it's simple yet fun and great at helping listeners get to know each other. You can play it at the beginning of your presentation or in the middle to give your group a chance to stretch their legs. 

• Before your event, create a list of "yes or no" questions. 
• Once you're ready to play, tell your group to stand up (if you're doing a virtual presentation, make sure everyone's video is on). 
• Ask each question one by one. 
• Tell attendees to stand if their answer is "yes" and sit if their answer is "no." 

The questions can relate to your topic or be totally random. Also, if you'd prefer to thin out the number of people standing, you can take a creative twist and ask your questions by saying something like this: "Stay standing if (insert scenario)." When phrasing each question this way, the game will end with one person standing. To acknowledge the winner, you can give them a round of applause or award them a prize. 

13. Conference Opener Icebreaker 

If you're speaking at a big conference, you need an interactive game for presentations that can get everyone involved and ensure every voice is heard. To achieve these goals, you should create an icebreaker game that works for large groups . 

Using an easy, intuitive template is the best step to take. That way, you don't have to start from scratch or spend hours making your game. For a template that requires no code or tech-savviness to build on, here's the best option: 

• Sign up by making a free account here: https://slideswith.com/  
• Click on the game. On the next page, click the button to copy and use the deck. 
• Customize the template using the instructions HERE . 
• During your presentation, press "Start Event" in the top right corner. 
• Ask the group to use their mobile devices to scan the QR code and join the fun. (Also, make sure participants use their mobile devices to submit answers.) 
• Play and engage your audience!  

This template has fun, interactive features built in to keep your large audience engaged. Those features include polls, word clouds, and ratings. Just make sure you sign up for a paid plan to accommodate the large number of people in your group—the free account only works for up to ten players. 

14. Two Truths and a Lie 

This classic game is a fun, energizing way to help your listeners get to know one another. It's perfect for small in-person or virtual groups and is an ideal activity for the beginning of your presentation. 

Here's how to play: Pick any topic (for the purposes of this article, the topic will be "movies"). In no particular order, say two movies you've really watched and one you haven't watched. Ask your audience to guess which statement is the lie. The winner picks the next topic and says two truths and a lie. 

Be Memorable With Presentation Games

Oftentimes, people forget presentations within a week or even days, and that's because the discussions are boring. But you don't work hard preparing a presentation for it to be forgotten. If you want your message to stick, all you have to do is make it enjoyable without being corny.  

If you want to be remembered and actually get people engaged, you need to make your presentation fun and enjoyable, without coming off as corny or desperate to please. Ivan Dimitrijevic, 10 Secrets of Making Every Presentation Fun, Engaging, and Enjoyable

Luckily, the interactive presentation games in this article are unique and exciting—they're far from corny. So, use them for your upcoming presentations to make your messages compelling and memorable. 

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Blog > The 10 best PowerPoint Games to play in Workshops, Classrooms & Presentations

The 10 best PowerPoint Games to play in Workshops, Classrooms & Presentations

01.01.20   •  #fun #game #powerpoint #presentation.

In our last blog post, we talked about tools and tips on how to boost the audience engagement in your presentation. One of our recommended ways to do so was to play games, as they release tension and function as a fun element that lightens the mood. That’s why today we are going to list the Top 10 best games to play in your presentation.

1. Would you rather

Is it a game that everyone knows already? Probably. But did we have to include it on the list because it is just perfect for playing with your audience? Definitely. The game is pretty much self-explanatory – You give your attendees two (or more) scenarios and they have to choose which one they’d rather experience. Combining the Would you rather – question with your presentation topic is usually very easy, but we also thought of some questions you could use for any topic (e.g. as an icebreaker, to get to know your audience a little better, to ask about their opinion or just as a fun element in between). You can let your audience vote by letting them raise their hands or by using an interactive poll tool such as SlideLizard .

• Would you rather A. travel back in time OR B. travel to the future OR C. stay in the present
• Would you rather A. have a long lunch break now OR B. have a short break and finish early
• Would you rather A. be able to read minds OR B. be able to fly OR C. be able to turn invisible
• Would you rather A. receive a letter from Hogwarts OR B. join Frodo on his journey OR C. Hog-what?
• Would you rather A. never be able to go on Social Media again B. never be able to read a book again

2. Charades

The popular game is not only great for your family’s game-night, but also for your presentations and workshops. Prepare a few cards that have words related to your presentation’s topic on them, let some volunteers in your audience draw and act them out. The rest of the audience has to guess the word. You can be sure that these terms and the associated performances will never be forgotten!

Small Trivia quizzes are perfect for checking and manifesting the audience’s knowledge at the end of your presentation. Instead of repeating and summing up what you have already said, you can let your participants test their knowledge right away. However, you can also use a quiz in the beginning to test your audience’s existing knowledge about a topic. But there are not only trivia quizzes: Questions about personality can also be interesting and work well as an ice breaker in the beginning. Again, we recommend a tool for poll creation, as that is the easiest way to conduct quizzes. In a recent article we listed 50 great questions (a mix of personality and trivia) , that you could use for your next presentation! And if you're a fan of quiz game shows, we also got a full Who wants to be a Millionaire PowerPoint template for you to download for free! You'll see how it looks like in the following video (be sure to turn up your sound!):

PowerPoint can be used for way more than most people know. Even we were amazed by people on the internet who created extensive games by animating content using PP. We don’t want to go that big today, but we are going to provide you with a free-to-download template of memory. You only have to add it to your presentation and customize the pictures or terms you want under the cards. Download free PPT Memory Template

5. Two Truths and a Lie

Here is another game that is just perfect when you play it with interactive poll tools. It is great for getting the audience to know you as a presenter better. Think of a fun, interesting or astonishing fact about yourself, and then invent two fake ones. Your attendees have to vote which statement they think is true. Be prepared to see some very surprised faces in your audience!

6. PowerPoint Karaoke

PowerPoint-Karaoke is the perfect improvisation game. Players are confronted with a set of slides they have never seen before and try to give a presentation as convincingly as possible. If you want to know all about this game and get some slides you can use for playing, check out our detailed blog post on PowerPoint-Karaoke .

7. Where do you stand?

For the game “Where do you stand?”, your attendees will actually have to stand up. Therefore, it is only convenient if you have enough space. If you want to get your participant’s opinion about something and get them to move a little, look no further! Create an imaginary line across the room. One end stands for one opinion, the other end for the exact opposite opinion. Your attendees can now place themselves on this line wherever they like (right in the middle, on either end or somewhere in between). You can then even interview people on the line (it is always interesting to choose two from opposite sites) and learn about their views. If you’re a little overwhelmed now, here are some examples you could use for this game:

Attention – you can of course ask about political or more controversial topics, but that may escalate and turn into a fight, which is not the purpose of the game or your presentation.

8. Describe That

Let your audience draw from cards with words on them and then describe it for the other attendees. It is basically like charades, but with words instead of acting. Some may find that too easy. In that case, you can either choose terms that are extremely hard to describe or add some “Taboo-words” to the card that can’t be used for describing.

9. True and False

Have you ever heard a crazy, bizarre fact where you didn’t think that it could be true? Perfect. You can use it in the well-known “True and False”-Game. You pick out a fact (ideally something related to your presentation topic) and then let your audience vote (you know – via an interactive poll tool like SlideLizard ) if they think it’s true or not. A tip for making statements false: Change little things about the them, like numbers, dates or names or use common misconceptions and see how many of your attendees buy into them, e.g. “Bulls are enraged by the color red” (which is false, bulls are simply enraged by movement, not specific colors).

10. The never-ending sentence

The never-ending sentence is a great game that incorporates many of your attendees and awakens their brain cells. It is perfect for keeping up their engagement and interest, especially for long presentations or workshops when you feel like some people are getting a little tired. Simply start by saying a word – it can be related to the presentation’s topic if you want – and ask a person in your audience to repeat that word and add another one – the next person to repeat those two words and add another one as well , and so on, until a sentence forms. As it gets longer the game gets a lot more difficult, because there is a lot more to remember and to repeat. The sentence can’t be ended, it has to be continued until someone makes a mistake (or until the last person in the room has added a new word). We promise that you will be left with a lot of fun, creative, and straight-up weird sentences that will make your audience laugh a lot.

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About the author.

Pia Lehner-Mittermaier

Pia works in Marketing as a graphic designer and writer at SlideLizard. She uses her vivid imagination and creativity to produce good content.

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Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Presentations > How to create an inspirational PowerPoint presentation

How to create an inspirational PowerPoint presentation

Creating an inspirational PowerPoint presentation involves more than just putting together slides; it’s about crafting a moving story that resonates with your audience and leaves a lasting impact. See how you can elevate your material to truly call your audience to agree with you or ask for action.

What is an inspirational presentation?

Easy and effective PowerPoint tools make it simple to assemble a compelling slideshow. You can choose from creative templates , make animated shorts , or implement video clips via Clipchamp .

However, PowerPoint works the best when you imbue it with a narrative that has the power to captivate. Whether you’re trying to motivate and uplift your audience, offer encouraging advice, or ask them to act or change their perspective, an inspirational presentation carries the same motivational speaking skills as a sales pitch.

Therefore, the key to a successful inspirational presentation is to deliver a clear, impactful message that is both engaging and memorable. Structure your presentation as a narrative, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. To elevate the storytelling qualities of your presentation, introduce a conflict or challenge and describe the journey of overcoming it. While not every topic that you choose to inspire others will involve a conflict, an inspirational presentation will nonetheless conclude with a resolution that leaves your audience inspired.

Tell your story with captivating presentations

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How to inspire others with your presentational skills

Any good presentation begins with a strong outline . The outline of your presentation should adhere to your goals:

• To persuade people to share your point of view.
• To present something new or give a new perspective on something old.
• To inspire, motivate, and call for action or change.

Keep these goals in mind when you begin outlining. Start your outline with a strong theme that aligns with the message you want to convey. This should be relevant to your audience and your objectives and serve as the backbone of your presentation in guiding the narrative and supporting your message.

Use motivational quotes and visuals

Sprinkle your presentation with quotes from leaders and famous thinkers that align you’re your theme. Pair these quotes with compelling visuals to enhance their impact. Keep in mind that in a presentation that uses visual aids, these quotes are the “icing on the cake” of the message you’re trying to convey; they can serve as powerful reminders of the key points you want your audience to remember.

Share success stories

Incorporating success stories that are related to your topic can convey a sense of success to your audience. Stories of achievable potential can provide examples on how the concepts or strategies you’re sharing can help benefit your audience. This can make otherwise abstract ideas more tangible—and therefore achievable.

Engage your audience

Audience interaction—in the form of quizzes, can make your presentation more memorable. Include questions to ponder, prompt discussions, or incorporate quick activities that reinforce the message. This engagement makes the experience more dynamic and personal for the audience, increasing the impact of your presentation.

Brush up on presentation skills

The key to an inspirational presentation is to balance the use of visual aids and public speaking skills. This can be easier said than done, of course—which is why it’s vital to learn how to practice your presentations , incorporate humor and wit into your speech, or overcome the fear of public speaking that plagues an estimated 73% of the population.

Creating an inspirational presentation requires thoughtful preparation, a balance of visual aids and speaking, as well as a creative approach. By following these guidelines, you can develop a presentation that not only informs but also inspires and motivates your audience.

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9 interactive ideas for squashing boring PowerPoint presentations

Sometimes you have to present a PowerPoint in a bad time slot. Think middle of the day, middle of the week, and middle of the quarter. Everyone is in the middle of three different projects. You watch them type away on their laptops as you tap through your slides.

Times like these are when you need a strong context switch to get everyone zeroed in on your PowerPoint. One way to engage the audience from the get-go and set a strong tone for the rest of the presentation is to ask an interactive question right at the start. For example, in a presentation on customer research, open with, “Why do you think people use our product?”

Everyone has a few minutes to respond in silence on their devices before you launch into the PowerPoint proper. By then, they would have set aside all their distractions and started thinking only about the topic at hand. You can use this and other interactive PowerPoint ideas to get the audience hooked on what you’re saying – and ensure they understand it all when you’re done.

Try these interactive PowerPoint ideas yourself. Sign up for Poll Everywhere today.

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An icebreaker signals that this will be interactive

Start your PowerPoint slide deck with a friendly icebreaker to introduce interactivity early in a low-stakes way. It always takes people longer to respond to your first activity. Best to engage your audience early in order to save time later in your presentation.

Icebreakers are often used to help people get to know each other. But you can incorporate them to get people thinking about your PowerPoint topic as well.

Present your icebreaker before your presentation begins to give attendees something to do as they find their seats or file in from other meetings. The sooner people start responding, the more time you will save. Then, hold back on showing the responses to the open question or the winner of your PowerPoint games until after the main presentation material. Leverage the felt anticipation among the crowd to carry their attention until the very end.

Read more: 50 fun and fresh icebreaker questions to kick off your next event

Let the audience tell you what they need to know

Sometimes you don’t know how familiar the audience is with the topic you’re presenting. Should you start at the beginning, or dive into the details? Should you speak broadly, or specifically?

The easiest way to find out is to ask. Let the audience tell you what they want to know, or what they already know, with a choose-your-own-adventure style question.

There are a few ways you can do this—try a ranking activity, for example. Make each response a different topic that could be discussed in your presentation. Then, ask the audience to rank those topics from most to least important. Not only will the results show you what the audience wants to hear about most, but you’ll incorporate a different visual element into your presentation design.

If you prefer, you can even send this question out and begin gathering responses before your presentation to help with preparation. Use a shareable response link to make it as easy as possible for people to respond.

Get better questions, minimize distractions with Q&A

Most of us at Poll Everywhere start a presentation with these instructions, “The retro is now live at this URL. Please drop in your questions there.” At any point, if someone has a question that doesn’t need to be addressed right away, they can go to that URL and type it in. These questions are then shared and discussed at the end of the presentation.

This helps you minimize interruptions and ensure you reach the end of your presentation within the allotted time. It also helps the audience by giving them a discrete way to offload questions and refocus on what you’re presenting (instead of holding onto that feedback till the end).

We use the Poll Everywhere Q&A activity as the catch-all for questions and feedback. But our project managers have created a system that uses Q&A for their entire sprint retrospective meetings.

Read more: How to run an inclusive retrospective meeting

Ask attendees to complete a survey to improve retention

Ask attendees to complete a survey before they leave your presentation. This is especially helpful for lengthy, content-rich presentations to a large audience. Putting in the effort in advance really pays off when you see the constructive feedback that comes in as a result.

At Poll Everywhere, everyone dedicates a few hours each month to customer support. The Customer Support team periodically runs workshops to bolster our CS skills, and they always cap off the event with a survey. Completing this survey is an efficient way of reviewing what was presented, and gives whoever ran the workshop a clear indication of how the material was absorbed.

Poll Everywhere includes an example survey with general presentation-feedback questions. However, you can edit those questions, or simply start from scratch.

Use videos to mix up the flow of your presentation

With all these quizzes and questions , you might feel like your PowerPoint is turning into a game show. If you need to give the audience (and yourself) a break, slot in a quick video. Videos are an easy way to vary the flow of your presentation without losing the audience’s attention.

Poll Everywhere lets you easily and reliably insert YouTube, Vimeo, and other videos into PowerPoint. All you need is an internet connection. Copy and paste the video’s URL when using the Poll Everywhere slideware app and that video will appear as a slide in your PowerPoint deck.

Create shareable artifacts from your presentation

There are two ways to go with this idea: practical or fun. On the practical end of the spectrum, you have the summary slide. This slide, typically found at the end of a PowerPoint, sums up everything presented into a few, succinct bullet points. Export the slide as an image and email that image out to all the attendees in a follow-up email.

On the fun end of the spectrum, you have screenshots of your Poll Everywhere activities. Maybe you created a live word cloud with the audience, or asked them to submit their thoughts and feelings on a certain topic. You can export those activities as screenshots and drop them into a follow-up email as well. They make for a nice, subtle reminder of your interactive presentation .

Enable anonymity for frank or sensitive feedback

Kansas youth pastor Cam Brennan used a Poll Everywhere Q&A to facilitate questions on sex and dating from youth group students at his church. He made sure to enable anonymity for the Q&A so that student’s responses couldn’t be traced back to their source. With this added layer of privacy, students were free to speak their minds without feeling embarrassed in front of their peers.

“Going into the night I had no idea what to expect,” said Brennan. “Using Poll Everywhere was a great way to encourage our students to ask the questions they really wanted to ask, without having to raise their hand and ask it in front of everyone else. I’m convinced that had we done it ‘the old-fashioned way’ the night would have been a flop.”

Anonymity is available for all Poll Everywhere activities. You never know what common trends you’ll uncover when the audience feels comfortable sharing their thoughts.

Competitions tap into the audience’s competitive side

As mentioned, one way to engage your audience is to distribute a survey after your presentation ends but before they leave. Another fun way to recap the session is to use Poll Everywhere Competitions . This activity is a live trivia contest you create and the audience plays together, live, all within PowerPoint.

Base each question on something you presented. A leaderboard between questions will keep track of who retained the most information. Extra points are awarded for the fastest responses.

One major upside to using a live competition — as opposed to an asynchronous survey — is you can speak to the results in the moment. See a lot of people miss one question? Pause and take a moment to speak to that point some more before continuing the competition. At the end, a shower of confetti accompanies the final leaderboard revealing the winner of your competition. It makes for memorable presentations, to the say the least.

Read more: 25 funny poll questions to brighten anyone’s day

Bake interactivity into your presentation ahead of time

Sometimes, even when you give people every opportunity to speak up and interact, they just won’t take the bait. Help them open up by seeding bits of interactivity into your presentation ahead of time. It’s worth the effort when you consider all the benefits of using live polls during your talk.

For example, if you know your presentation is going to include a Q&A session at some point, ask a trusted colleague to ask a specific question at that time. That way, when the Q&A starts, you know at least one person is asking something – and that’s usually all it takes to open the flood gates and get other people talking as well.

On the flip side, if you’re using a Poll Everywhere Q&A, and people are responding on their personal devices, you can still seed questions and comments ahead of time. Just drop them in after you create the Q&A. When the audience loads it up, they will see your submissions, which should give them a better idea of what to write themselves.

Get started with Poll Everywhere

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11 Interactive Presentation Games to Win Easy Engagement in 2024

Lawrence Haywood • 08 April, 2024 • 17 min read

So, how to make a presentation engaging? Audience attention is a slippery snake. It’s difficult to grasp and even less easy to hold, yet you need it for a successful presentation.

No Death by PowerPoint, no to drawing monologues; it’s time to bring out the interactive presentation games !

Bonus : Free game presentation templates to use. Scroll down for more👇

These 11 games below are perfect for an interactive presentation . They’ll score you mega-plus points with colleagues, students, or wherever else you need a kick of super-engaging interactivity… So let’s check out those exciting presentation formats!

Table of Contents

• #1: Live Quiz

#2: What Would You Do?

#3: key number, #4: guess the order, #5: 2 truths, 1 lie, #6: 4 corners, #7: obscure word cloud, #8: heart, gun, bomb.

• #9: Match Up

#10: Spin the Wheel

#11: q&a balloons, interactive powerpoint presentation games – yes or no, frequently asked questions.

Host Interactive Presentation Games for Free!

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More Interactive Presentation Tips with AhaSlides

• The Complete Guide to Make a Presentation Interactive
• Interactive Presentation Ideas to Enliven Work/Hangout
• Interactive Presentation Techniques

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#1: Live Quiz Competition

Is there any event that hasn’t been immediately improved with some trivia?

A live quiz is an evergreen, ever-engaging way to consolidate your presentation’s info and check the understanding of it all amongst your audience. Expect big laughs as your audience competes fiercely over who was listening to your presentation the most complex.

Here’s how to play:

• Set up your questions on AhaSlides – the free quizzing software .
• Present your quiz to your players, who join by typing your unique code into their phones.
• Take your players through each question, and they race to get the correct answer the fastest.
• Check the final leaderboard to reveal the winner!

Learn how to set up your presentation quiz for free in just a few minutes! 👇

Put your audience in your shoes. Give them a scenario related to your presentation and see how they would deal with it.

Let’s say you’re a teacher giving a presentation on dinosaurs. After presenting your info, you would ask something like…

A stegosaurus is chasing you, ready to snap you up for dinner. How do you escape?

After each person submits their answer, you can take a vote to see which is the crowd’s favourite response to the scenario.

This is one of the best presentation games for students as it gets young minds whirring creatively. But it also works great in a work setting and can have a similar freeing effect, which is especially significant as a large group icebreaker .

• Create a brainstorming slide and write your scenario at the top.
• Participants join your presentation on their phones and type their responses to your scenario.
• Afterwards, each participant votes for their favourite (or top 3 favourites) answers.
• The participant with the most votes is revealed as the winner!

No matter the topic of your presentation, there’s sure to be a lot of numbers and figures flying around.

As an audience member, keeping track of them isn’t always easy, but one of the interactive presentation games that makes it easier is Key Number .

Here, you offer a simple prompt of a number, and the audience responds with what they think it refers to. For example, if you write ‘ $25′ , your audience might respond with ‘our cost per acquisition’ , ‘our daily budget for TikTok advertising’ or ‘the amount John spends on jelly tots every day’ .

• Create a few multiple-choice slides (or open-ended slides to make it more complicated).
• Write your key number at the top of each slide.
• Write the answer options.
• Participants join your presentation on their phones.
• Participants select the answer they think the critical number relates to (or type in their answer if open-ended).

If keeping track of numbers and figures is challenging, it can be even tougher to follow entire processes or workflows explained in a presentation.

To cement this information in your audience’s mind, Guess the Order is a fantastic minigame for presentations.

You write the steps of a process, jumble them up, and then see who can put them in the right order the fastest.

• Create a ‘Correct Order’ slide and write your statements.
• Statements are automatically jumbled up.
• Players join your presentation on their phones.
• Players race to put the statements in the correct order.

You might have heard of this one as a great icebreaker, but it’s also one of the top presentation games for checking who’s paying attention.

And it’s pretty simple to do. Just think of two statements using the information in your presentation, and make another one up. Players have to guess which is the one you’ve made up.

This one is a great re-capping game and works for students and colleagues.

• Create a list of 2 truths and one lie covering different topics in your presentation.
• Read out two truths and one lie and get participants to guess the lie.
• Participants vote for the lie either by hand or through a multiple-choice slide in your presentation.

The best presentations are ones that spark a bit of creative thinking and discussion. There’s no better presentation game for evoking this than 4 Corners.

The concept is simple. Present a statement based on something from your presentation that’s open to different points of view. Depending on each player’s opinion, they move to a corner of the room labelled ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’, ‘disagree’ or ‘strongly disagree’ .

Maybe something like this:

An individual is shaped more by nature than nurture.

Once everyone is in their corner, you could have a structured debate between the four sides to bring different opinions to the table.

• Set up the ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’, ‘disagree’ and ‘strongly disagree’ corners of your room (if running a virtual presentation, then a simple show of hands could work).
• Write some statements which are open to different opinions.
• Read out the statement.
• Each player stands in the right corner of the room, depending on their view.
• Discuss the four different viewpoints.

Live word clouds are always a beautiful addition to any interactive presentation. If you want our advice, include them whenever you can – presentation games or not.

If you do plan to use one for a game in your presentation, a great one to try is Obscure Word Cloud .

It works on the same concept as the popular UK game show Pointless . Your players are given a statement and have to name the most obscure answer they can. The least-mentioned correct answer is the winner!

Take this example statement:

Name one of our top 10 countries for customer satisfaction.

The most popular answers may be India, USA and Brazil , but the points go to the least mentioned correct country.

• Create a word cloud slide with your statement at the top.
• Players submit the most obscure answer they can think of.
• The most obscure one appears most diminutive on the board. Whoever submitted that answer is the winner!

Word Clouds for Every Presentation

Get these word cloud templates when you sign up for free with AhaSlides!

For Ice Breaking

For Testing

This one’s a great game to use in the classroom, but if you’re not looking for presentation games for students, it also works wonders in a casual work setting.

Heart, Gun, Bomb is a game in which teams take turns to answer questions presented in a grid. If they get an answer right, they either get a heart, a gun or a bomb…

• A ❤️ grants the team an extra life.
• A 🔫 takes away one life from any other team.
• A 💣 takes away one heart from the team who got it.

All teams start with five hearts. The team with the most hearts at the end, or the only surviving team, is the winner!

• Before starting, create a grid table for yourself with either a heart, gun or bomb occupying each grid (on a 5×5 grid, this should be 12 hearts, nine guns and four bombs).
• Present another grid table to your players (5×5 for two teams, 6×6 for three groups, etc.)
• Write a figure stat (like 25%) from your presentation into each grid.
• Split players into the desired number of teams.
• Team 1 chooses a grid and says the meaning behind the number ( for example, the number of customers last quarter ).
• If they’re wrong, they lose a heart. If they’re right, they get either a seat, gun or bomb, depending on what the grid corresponds to on your grid table.
• Repeat this with all the teams until there’s a winner!

👉 Get more interactive presentation ideas (interactive PowerPoint ideas) with AhaSlides.

#9: Match Up – Interactive Presentation Games

Here’s another quiz-type question that can be a great addition to your roster of presentation games.

It involves a set of prompt statements and a set of answers. Each group is jumbled; the players must match the information with the correct answer as quickly as possible.

Again, this one works well when the answers are numbers and figures.

• Create a ‘Match Pairs’ question.
• Fill out the set of prompts and answers, which will automatically shuffle.
• Players match each prompt with its answer as fast as possible to score the most points.

If there’s a more versatile presentation game tool than the humble spinner wheel , we aren’t aware of it.

Adding the random factor of a spinner wheel might be just what you need to keep engagement in your presentation high. There are presentation games you can use with this, including…

• Choosing a random participant to answer a question.
• Choosing a bonus prize after getting an answer correct.
• Choosing the next person to ask a Q&A question or give a presentation.
• Create a spinner wheel slide and write the title at the top.
• Write the entries for the spinner wheel.
• Spin the wheel and see where it lands!

Tip 💡 You can choose the AhaSlides spinner wheel to use your participants’ names, so you don’t have to fill in the entries manually! Learn more interactive presentation techniques with AhaSlides.

This one’s a great way to turn a regular end-of-presentation feature into a fun, engaging game.

It’s got all the hallmarks of a standard Q&A, but this time, all the questions are written on balloons.

It’s a super simple one to set up and play, but you’ll see how motivated participants are to ask questions when it involves balloons!

• Hand out a deflated balloon and a Sharpie to each participant.
• Each participant blows up the balloon and writes their question on it.
• Each participant bats their balloon to where the speaker is standing.
• The speaker answers the question and then pops or throws away the balloon.

🎉 Tips: Best Q&A Apps to Engage With Your Audience | 5+ Platforms For Free in 2024

So, how do you feel about AhaSlides’s creative ideas for presentations? Being by far the most popular presentation tool on the planet, you may want to know if there are any presentation games to play on PowerPoint.

Unfortunately, the answer is no. PowerPoint takes presentations incredibly seriously and doesn’t have a lot of time for interactivity or fun of any kind.

But there’s good news…

It is possible to directly embed presentation games into PowerPoint presentations with free help from AhaSlides.

You can import your PowerPoint presentation to AhaSlides with the click of a button and vice versa , then place interactive presentation games like the ones above directly between your presentation slides.

💡 PowerPoint presentation games in less than 5 minutes ? Check the video below or our quick tutorial here to find out how!

What are the benefits of playing interactive presentation games?

⁤Interactive presentation games boost engagement, participation and knowledge retention. ⁤⁤They turn passive listeners into active learners by incorporating elements like live polls , idea board , quizzes, word clouds and Q&A .

How do you make a presentation interactive with games?

– Match your content: The game should reinforce the topics being covered, not just be random entertainment. – Audience considerations: Age, group size, and their knowledge level will inform game complexity. – Tech tools & time: Consider tools like AhaSlides, Mentimeter Alternatives , Kahoot , etc., or design simple no-tech games based on the time you have. – Utilise appropriate questions, including icebreaker games questions or general knowledge quiz questions

How can I make my presentation more engaging?

Making presentations more engaging can be a challenge, but there are several techniques you can use to make your presentation more interesting and memorable, including (1) start with a strong opening (2) use lots of visual ads and (3) tell attractive story. Also, remember to keep it short and sweet, and of course, practice a lots!

Lawrence Haywood

Former ESL teacher and quiz master converted to the wild slide. Now a content creator, traveller, musician and big time slider preaching the good word of interactivity.

Tips to Engage with Polls & Trivia

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Blog Marketing 15 Interactive Presentation Ideas to Elevate Engagement

15 Interactive Presentation Ideas to Elevate Engagement

Written by: Krystle Wong Aug 04, 2023

As attention spans continue to shrink, the challenge of engaging audiences in a short timeframe has never been more significant. Let’s face it — grabbing and keeping your audience’s attention can be quite the challenge, especially when time is ticking away. But fear not, I’ve got the perfect solution: interactive presentations!

Believe it or not, creating an interactive presentation is easier than you might think. In this guide, I’ll show you how to effortlessly turn ordinary slides into captivating experiences with 15 interactive presentation ideas that will leave your audience begging for more. From quirky polls and fun games to storytelling adventures and multimedia magic, these ideas will take your presentation game to the next level.

Venngage is a game-changer when it comes to empowering interactive presentations. With just a few clicks, users can customize their favorite presentation templates , add multimedia content and create immersive experiences that leave a lasting impact. Whether you’re a seasoned presenter or a newcomer, get started with Venngage to elevate your presentation game to new heights of engagement and creativity.

Click to jump ahead:

What is an interactive presentation?

15 ways to make a presentation interactive, 7 best interactive presentation software, what are some common mistakes to avoid when creating interactive presentations, interactive presentation faqs, how to create an interactive presentation with venngage.

An interactive presentation is a dynamic and engaging communication format that involves active participation and collaboration between the presenter and the audience. Unlike traditional presentations where information is delivered in a one-way manner, interactive presentations invite the audience to interact, respond and contribute throughout the session.

Think of it as a two-way street where you and your audience have a friendly chat. It’s like playing a fun game where you ask questions, get live feedback and encourage people to share their thoughts. 

To make a good presentation , you can utilize various tools and techniques such as clickable buttons, polls, quizzes, discussions and multimedia elements to transform your slides into an interactive presentation. Whether you’re presenting in-person or giving a virtual presentation — when people are actively participating, they’re more likely to remember the stuff you’re talking about.

Interactive presentations leave a lasting impression on the audience. By encouraging active participation and feedback, interactive presentations facilitate better understanding and knowledge retention. Here are 15 innovative 5-minute interactive presentation ideas to captivate your audience from start to finish:

1. Ice-breaker questions

Start your presentation with intriguing and thought-provoking questions or a fun icebreaker game. These questions should be designed to pique the audience’s curiosity and encourage them to think about the topic you’ll be covering. By doing so, you create an immediate connection with your audience and set the stage for a more engaged and attentive audience.

For example, if you’re giving a business presentation about management and leadership training, you could ask audience questions such as “What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received, and how has it impacted your career?”

2. Live polling

Incorporate live polls during your presentation using audience response systems or polling apps . This allows you to collect real-time feedback, opinions and insights from active participants. Live polling encourages active participation and involvement, making your presentation feel like a collaborative and interactive experience.

3. Q&A sessions

Encourage the audience to ask questions throughout your presentation, especially for pitch deck presentations . Address these questions in real-time, which fosters a more interactive and dynamic atmosphere. This approach shows that you value the audience’s input and promotes a two-way communication flow.

4. Clickable buttons

Add clickable buttons to your slides, allowing the audience to navigate to specific sections or external resources at their own pace. For example, you could include links to your social media accounts or extra reading materials in your education presentation to give further information about the topic and get your students engaged.

By providing this autonomy, you empower the audience to explore areas of particular interest, creating a more personalized and engaging experience through your interactive slideshow.

5. Storytelling

Incorporate anecdotes or personal stories related to your topic. Storytelling is a powerful way to emotionally connect with your audience, making your presentation more relatable and memorable. A little storytelling along with a set of creative slides draws the audience in and keeps them engaged as they follow the narrative.

6. Interactive charts and graphs

Use interactive charts and graphs that respond to user input to make your presentation interactive. For instance, allow the audience to click on data points to view more detailed information or to change the displayed data series. Creating charts with interactive visuals help the audience interact with the data, fostering better understanding and engagement.

7. Animated infographics

Add animations to your infographics, making them visually dynamic and progressive. Animated infographics reveal information gradually, keeping the audience curious and attentive. This transforms complex data into an easily digestible and engaging format.

Venngage’s extensive library of infographic templates is a powerful tool to visualize data and elevate the interactivity of your presentations. Personalizing the visuals ensures a cohesive and professional look throughout your interactive presentation. The templates are highly customizable, allowing you to adjust colors, fonts, and styles to match your presentation’s theme and branding. 

8. Gamification

Introduce an interactive quiz, puzzles, or challenges related to your presentation content. Gamification adds an element of fun and competition, motivating the audience to participate actively and boosting their learning experience. Here are some gaming presentation templates you could use. 

9. Virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR)

If applicable, leverage VR or AR technologies to provide immersive experiences. These interactive presentation tools transport the audience into a virtual or augmented environment, making your presentation more captivating and memorable.

10. Collaborative whiteboarding

Get your audience involved in your presentation by utilizing digital whiteboards or collaborative tools to brainstorm ideas collectively. This fosters teamwork and creativity, enabling the audience to actively contribute and feel a sense of involvement in the presentation.

11. Hyperlinked text

Keep the information in your slides minimal with a simple presentation and incorporate hyperlinks to direct viewers to relevant websites or blogs , resources, or additional information. This encourages self-exploration and gives the audience the opportunity to delve deeper into topics of interest.

12. Role-playing

Engage the audience in role-playing scenarios to explore different perspectives. Role-playing promotes active learning and helps the audience relate the content to real-life situations, enhancing their understanding and retention.

13. Embedded videos

Include video clips in your slides to provide visual explanations, demonstrations, or interviews. Videos add a dynamic element to your presentation, enriching the content and keeping the audience engaged.

14. Audience-generated content

Encourage the audience to contribute ideas, stories or examples related to your professional presentation . Audience-generated content fosters a sense of ownership and involvement, making the presentation more interactive and personalized.

15. Slide transitions

Use slide transitions to create smooth animations between slides. Well-planned transitions maintain the audience’s interest and keep the presentation slides flowing seamlessly.

Interactive elements aside, enhance your presentation with these guides on how to summarize information for a captivating presentation and how to make a persuasive presentation to captivate your audience. 

If you’re looking to create engaging and interactive presentation slides that captivate your audience, these presentation software options are sure to elevate your game:

Prezi is renowned for its dynamic and non-linear presentation style, enabling users to craft visually stunning and interactive presentations. With an array of templates and animation effects, Prezi enhances audience engagement, making your presentations more captivating and memorable.

2. Mentimeter

Mentimeter serves as an audience response system, empowering real-time interaction during presentations. Users can create interactive polls, quizzes, word clouds and more, allowing the audience to respond using their smartphones or other devices. This fosters active participation and provides valuable feedback instantly.

3. Google Slides

Google Slides is a free cloud-based presentation software that not only offers collaboration features but also enables real-time interactions. It includes add-ons and third-party integrations to further enhance interactivity, making it an excellent choice for collaborative and engaging presentations.

4. Microsoft PowerPoint

PowerPoint, a classic presentation software, has evolved to incorporate more interactive features like live captions, real-time collaboration and interactive elements such as quizzes and forms. With its familiar interface and versatile functionalities, PowerPoint remains a reliable choice for interactive presentations.

5. Prezentor

Prezentor caters to sales-oriented presentations focusing on interactive storytelling and data-driven content. It offers analytics to track audience engagement and behavior during presentations, allowing you to fine-tune your approach and keep your audience hooked.

6. Opinion Stage

Opinion Stage is a visual and interactive data collection tool designed to engage and excite audiences whether sitting in a lecture hall, participating in a live Zoom, or watching an on-demand webinar. The Opinion Stage tools are simple and intuitive, making it easy to create attention-grabbing quizzes, surveys, and polls in minutes. A great way to spice up any presentation, encourage audience participation, and collect authentic feedback.

7 . Venngage

Venngage stands out as a versatile design tool that facilitates the creation of interactive infographics, data visualizations and presentations with ease. Offering various interactive elements and animations, Venngage empowers you to craft visually appealing and engaging presentations effortlessly.

With these interactive presentation software options at your disposal, you can unleash your creativity and deliver presentations that leave a lasting impact on your audience. So, go ahead and make your presentations interactive, captivating and memorable!

For more presentation software options, check out this blog on the 12 best presentation software for 2023.

Creating interactive presentations can be a game-changer for engaging your audience and enhancing your presentation skills, but steering clear of common pitfalls is essential. Here are some key mistakes to avoid when crafting your interactive presentations:

1. Overloading with interactivity

While interactivity is fantastic, bombarding your audience with too many interactive elements can backfire. Strive for a balanced approach that enhances engagement without overwhelming your listeners.

2. Ignoring audience relevance

Failing to tailor interactive elements to your audience’s interests and preferences can lead to disconnection. Make sure your interactions resonate with your specific audience for a more meaningful experience.

3. Not testing interactive elements

Skipping thorough testing of interactive features before showtime can spell disaster. Avoid technical glitches by diligently testing all interactive components in advance.

4. Poor timing and pace

Timing is everything, especially with interactive activities. Ensure seamless integration by planning your key points and the timing of your interactive elements carefully.

5. Lack of clear purpose

Every interactive element should serve a purpose and contribute to your presentation’s objectives. Don’t add interactions just for the sake of it — ensure they add value and align with your message.

6. Failing to engage beyond interactivity

While interactive elements are powerful tools, remember that content is king. Combine your interactive features with compelling storytelling and valuable insights to create an immersive and impactful presentation.

Incorporating animated slides into your interactive presentations enhances the overall appeal and interaction, turning an ordinary presentation into an engaging experience. Try it out with one of our animated presentation templates to get started. 

How do you start an interactive presentation?

Begin by grabbing the audience’s attention with an intriguing question or a surprising fact, setting the tone for a dynamic and engaging session.

Which type of presentation is the most interactive?

Workshops and seminars are often the most interactive types of presentations as they encourage active participation, discussions and hands-on activities.

How can interactive presentations enhance audience engagement?

Interactive presentations foster a two-way communication flow, involving the audience through polls, quizzes, discussions and multimedia elements, leading to increased interest, attentiveness and better retention of information.

What are some common interactive elements to include in a presentation?

Common interactive elements include clickable buttons, hyperlinked text, polls, quizzes, interactive charts, multimedia content and audience participation activities.

Can interactive presentations be used for educational purposes?

Absolutely! Interactive presentations are highly effective for educational purposes as they promote active learning, encourage critical thinking, and provide real-time feedback and knowledge exchange opportunities.

Need inspiration on how to give an engaging presentation ? Here are 120+ presentation ideas you could use. 

Venngage makes it easy for anyone to infuse interactivity into their presentations. From clickable buttons and hyperlinked text to interactive infographics and dynamic charts, Venngage offers a diverse range of interactive elements to captivate and engage the audience. Here’s how you can make your presentation more fun and interesting with Venngage:

• Sign up or log in to Venngage to access the platform.
• Choose a presentation template or start with a blank canvas to begin designing your interactive presentation.
• Add and edit slides in the Venngage editor to structure your presentation content effectively.
• Customize the design by selecting themes, fonts, colors and backgrounds to match your style and branding.
• Use interactive elements like buttons, links, pop-ups and hover effects to engage the audience during the presentation.
• Enhance engagement by incorporating interactive media such as videos and audio clips.
• Preview and test your entire presentation to ensure everything works smoothly before presenting it to your audience.
• Save your interactive presentation on Venngage and share it online or download it in various formats for presenting purposes.

Well, I hope these 15 5-minute interactive presentation examples can help unlock a new level of audience engagement for your next presentation. From fun quizzes and interactive storytelling to multimedia magic and gamified challenges, the possibilities are endless. So, don’t be afraid to experiment, tailor the ideas to suit your audience members and let your creativity shine.  

That said, remember to strike a balance and keep the interactivity purposeful and relevant. Some common mistakes to avoid when creating interactive slides include overloading the presentation with too many interactive elements and failing to align the interactive elements with the overall presentation goals and content. 

Got it? Great. Now let’s turn that boring presentation around!

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How to Give an Interactive PowerPoint Presentation in 2023

Presenting online is tough, yes. You can’t really connect with your audience. You often don’t even know whether those mute faces listen to you at all.

That’s why it’s important to go the extra mile and make your presentation interactive. 

But that’s easier said than done, right?

Being for 7 years in the game of interactive presenting, I’d like to share some of my tips on how to activate your audience , create meaningful interaction, and facilitate it during your talk.

Get inspired by these (or some of these) tips for delivering a  truly interactive PowerPoint presentation.

• Play music or do some chit-chat while waiting
• Welcome people and properly introduce the topic
• Explain how people can interact with you
• Involve the audience from the very start
• Re-engage your audience every 5-7 minutes
• Use polls to trigger a discussion
• Take advantage of Zoom’s interactive features
• Simplify your slides: One idea/visual per slide
• Play around with virtual backgrounds
• Use breakout sessions for peer-to-peer learning
• Turn tedious numbers into a quiz
• Invite a sidekick
• Run mid-way Q&A sessions
• Give your audience something tangible to leave with
• Run a short feedback survey at the end

1. Play music or do some chit-chat while waiting

Often it takes a couple of minutes before everybody jumps on a call. While you’re waiting for the rest of the crew to join, you can play some music in the background to set the mood and talk to the people who have already tuned in. “Has anyone discovered a good recipe lately?” or, “Did you do anything cool this weekend?”

You can share music during your Zoom call easily by clicking the ‘ Share computer sound ‘ checkbox.

As people are joining, you can also prompt them to turn on their cameras and unmute themselves for the time being, so that you can all see and talk to each other.

💡 Use icebreaker polls to strike up conversations while you’re waiting for others.

2. Welcome people and properly introduce the topic

Once everybody’s aboard, welcome your participants warmly, thank them for joining you, and tell everyone what you will be talking about today. You can even add an agenda slide to your presentation so you map out the whole session to your audience in advance. In the virtual environment, it’s even more important to navigate people through the talk.

3. Explain how people can interact with you

Always check that everyone understands the technical side of things – otherwise, people may not know how to interact with you. Tell them what tools you’re going to use during the presentation and explain how they can use them.

It’s all about setting the right expectations: Do you want your participants to share comments via Zoom or Webex chat? Sure, tell them that. Explain how Webex or Zoom reactions work in case not everyone is familiar with them. If you expect verbal input from your participants, ask them to use the ‘Raise hand’ feature, so you can call on them if they want to contribute.

Are you going to use live polls throughout your presentation? Explain how people can vote in a poll or contribute with their ideas.

4. Involve the audience from the very start

Now that you’ve made it clear to your audience that you want and expect them to actively participate in the upcoming session, it’s time to give it a trial run.

Start a conversation with them right off the bat. For instance, I was recently a guest at an online fireside chat series called ‘Living Online’, run by our former Head of Education and a great moderator, Zuzana.

Before she dived into the topic, she collected insights from the audience. She ran a series of polls, asking people, “How much has the online world changed your life?” or, “What helps you find a balance between the real and the online world?”

This way, she made the talk more about the audience, as opposed to just streaming information one way (while making sure people are familiar with the tech).

5. Re-engage your audience every 5-7 minutes

Keep the momentum and motivate your audience to “talk” to you throughout your presentation. Even if it is just in a non-verbal way.

We recommend using live polls or other forms of interaction every 5-7 minutes to pull people back in and involve them in a conversation.

Prepare several poll questions for your audience beforehand, and spread them out throughout your talk.

Is there a content-heavy part of your presentation that might be tough for your audience to process? At the end of it, use a rating poll to ask your audience how well they understood.

Are you about to propose an argument? Before you do, ask your audience what their viewpoint on the topic is first. (You can use live polls here too.)

Take inspiration from our Head of Internal Comms, Silvia, who – before giving a word to our CEO Peter who’d walk us through September highlights – began by using a word cloud to source highlights from the team.

6. Use polls to trigger a discussion

Live polls are invaluable for collecting real-time input from your audience. You can use that input effectively for starting a discussion.

For example, during our latest strategy meeting with our Brand team, I really needed to know whether the strategy points I presented to my team made sense, and I wanted to build up a discussion around them.

After each of the three presented areas, I ran a rating poll: “On a scale of 1-6, how important is this area in order to achieve our goals?”

When votes came in, I commented on the results and whenever there were votes lower than 6, I asked: “Okay, who put 5/4? Can you please share your thoughts with us?”

This really changed the game for me, because I collected some invaluable insights from my colleagues that would otherwise have remained uncovered. Very often, people don’t share until you nudge them a little.

Read also: 7 Interactive Poll Ideas for Your PowerPoint Presentation

7. Take advantage of interactive features

Encourage your participants to ‘Raise hand’, use emoji reactions, or chat. Your meeting participants are probably not going to use them heavily unless you encourage them to do so.

I often use emoji reactions for fast feedback: I ask people to press thumbs up as an indication that they understand or agree, or to express that they like something with a clapping emoji or the heart symbol.

8. Simplify your slides: One idea/visual per slide

Make sure your slides are visually appealing. When listening to someone speak online, the last thing you want is to read huge bodies of text on slides. So don’t copy-paste the whole script of your speech. Use just one idea, one sentence, one topic, or one number per slide.

Where appropriate, support what you’re saying with an image, a graph, a gif, or even a meme. Do you want to show a video during your presentation? Make sure it’s really short because a video, no matter how entertaining, is yet another piece of content your audience consumes passively.

9. Play around with virtual backgrounds

Using a virtual background when presenting online can save the day if you need to quickly hide a messy kitchen or any trespassing relatives.

But, there’s more to it. You can tie it to the topic of your presentation and thus strengthen the message you’re trying to convey. For example, ever since our CEO Peter used climbing El Capitan as a metaphor for our company strategy, he uses an El Cap photo as his virtual background as a reminder for all of us that we still have a mountain to climb.

Need another great use of a virtual background? Pick a funny picture and use it as an icebreaker. For example, in several meetings, I put up a picture of a naked man chasing a wild boar, and believe me, there’s no better icebreaker !

People usually laugh and ask me why I picked this very image – it’s priceless to start a meeting with a smile on people’s faces!

Read also: 18 Best Virtual Icebreakers For Your Zoom Meetings

10. Use breakout sessions for peer-to-peer learning

This tactic is magic, especially with longer presentation types such as during all-company meetings, workshops, or training.

Propose a discussion topic or a challenge. Give your audience 1-2 minutes to think about it, before splitting them into smaller groups so that they can share their thoughts together and brainstorm solutions.

This is a great interactive exercise that helps you break the monotonous flow of one-way content broadcast and allow for some peer-to-peer learning.

You can also collect the learnings of your audience to include them in the presentation. For example, you can run an open text poll where you collect everybody’s key learnings and then display them on the screen. Let’s say you have asked your audience to discuss your company priorities. Try a word cloud such as: “Submit which priorities you discussed in your group.”

11. Turn tedious numbers into a quiz

Presenting company updates or business results can get quite tedious and your audience may easily start zoning out.

Turn it around and present your numbers in a form of a quiz .

For instance, before you reveal the number, say something like: “Before we look at the numbers, why don’t you guys have a guess at how well we did?” Then run a poll with multiple options and wait for your participants to cast their votes.

You can use this technique on multiple occasions. Our CEO, Peter, usually does this at our end-of-year all-hands meetings when he presents our business results such as revenue, sales, or a number of Slido events.

12. Invite a sidekick

Virtual presenters are superheroes that need to juggle multiple tools. And every Batman needs Robin. Consider inviting another speaker to deliver the presentation with you.

It will freshen up your talk and break the stereotype of only one speaker talking. On top of that, she/he can also help you with technicalities such as keeping an eye on the chat or troubleshooting any technical issues.

You can take turns in presenting the content or even give your presentation in the form of a conversation between the two of you. This way, it’ll be even easier for you to involve your audience in the talk, as they’ll be joining what already feels like an ongoing discussion.

Having a sidekick is invaluable if you’re running a Q&A round at the end of your presentation – they can help you manage questions from the audience.

13. Run mid-way Q&A sessions

Always make sure to leave space for Q&A – answering questions from the audience is one of the most important engagement points. Your participants will have a chance to dive deeper into the topic of your talk, and eventually, learn much more from your presentation.

Don’t wait until the end, but review the questions as they come in and take the most relevant ones continuously throughout your presentation (e.g. after each content block). If there are any outstanding questions, address them in the Q&A round at the end.

For example, during our recent product event , our Project Managers, Juraj Pal, Martin Srna, and Mario Ceselka, ran several Q&A rounds after each product announcement that they made. (Almost 350 questions came in! This is why it’s priceless to have a sidekick.)

They also encouraged people to use upvotes, so the most popular questions can jump to the top and be answered with priority.

14. Give your audience something tangible to leave with

As you move towards the end of your talk, it’s good practice to reiterate the main message of your presentation to give your participants one concrete takeaway to remember.

You can make the ending interactive as well: Ask your audience to think about what they’ve just heard, then run a poll asking your audience: “What are you taking away from this presentation?” or, “What one thing resonated with you the most during this presentation?”

15. Run a short feedback survey at the end

Don’t forget to ask your audience for feedback. We’re always ready to rate our Uber drives or meal deliveries in order to help improve the experience. Why should presentations be any different?

Feedback is the best way for you to learn and find out what you can do better next time. Combine classic star rating with an open text poll so your participants can write more elaborate comments as well.

Two to three questions will suffice – you don’t want to wear your audience down with too long a survey (plus, you’ll boost the response rate!). Here’s an example that you can use:

• How would you rate today’s presentation? (Rating)
• What did you like most about this presentation? (Open text)
• Is there anything that could be improved? (Open text)

Over to you

Actively involving your audience in your content is key if you want to make your online presentation more interactive and engaging.

Using polls, quizzes, and collecting questions from your audience is one of the easiest ways to create more interaction during your talk.

With Slido for PowerPoint , you can add polls to your presentation and present seamlessly – all from one place. Watch this video to see how Slido for PowerPoint works. Click below to try it.

Add live polls directly to your PowerPoint presentation.

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Basic tasks for creating a PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint presentations work like slide shows. To convey a message or a story, you break it down into slides. Think of each slide as a blank canvas for the pictures and words that help you tell your story.

Choose a theme

When you open PowerPoint, you’ll see some built-in themes and templates . A theme is a slide design that contains matching colors, fonts, and special effects like shadows, reflections, and more.

On the File tab of the Ribbon, select New , and then choose a theme.

PowerPoint shows you a preview of the theme, with four color variations to choose from on the right side.

Click Create , or pick a color variation and then click Create .

Read more: Use or create themes in PowerPoint

Insert a new slide

On the Home tab, click the bottom half of  New Slide , and pick a slide layout.

Read more: Add, rearrange, and delete slides .

Save your presentation

On the File tab, choose Save .

Pick or browse to a folder.

In the File name box, type a name for your presentation, and then choose Save .

Note:  If you frequently save files to a certain folder, you can ‘pin’ the path so that it is always available (as shown below).

Tip:  Save your work as you go. Press Ctrl+S often or save the file to OneDrive and let AutoSave take care of it for you. 

Read more: Save your presentation file

Select a text placeholder, and begin typing.

Format your text

Select the text.

Under Drawing Tools , choose Format .

Do one of the following:

To change the color of your text, choose Text Fill , and then choose a color.

To change the outline color of your text, choose Text Outline , and then choose a color.

To apply a shadow, reflection, glow, bevel, 3-D rotation, a transform, choose Text Effects , and then choose the effect you want.

Change the fonts

Change the color of text on a slide

Add bullets or numbers to text

Format text as superscript or subscript

Add pictures

On the Insert tab, select Pictures , then do one of the following:

To insert a picture that is saved on your local drive or an internal server, choose This Device , browse for the picture, and then choose Insert .

(For Microsoft 365 subscribers) To insert a picture from our library, choose Stock Images , browse for a picture, select it and choose Insert .

To insert a picture from the web, choose Online Pictures , and use the search box to find a picture. Choose a picture, and then click Insert .

You can add shapes to illustrate your slide. 

On the Insert tab, select Shapes , and then select a shape from the menu that appears.

In the slide area, click and drag to draw the shape.

Select the Format or Shape Format tab on the ribbon. Open the Shape Styles gallery to quickly add a color and style (including shading) to the selected shape.

Add speaker notes

Slides are best when you don’t cram in too much information. You can put helpful facts and notes in the speaker notes, and refer to them as you present.

Click inside the Notes pane below the slide, and begin typing your notes.

Add speaker notes to your slides

Print slides with or without speaker notes

Give your presentation

On the Slide Show tab, do one of the following:

To start the presentation at the first slide, in the Start Slide Show group, click From Beginning .

If you’re not at the first slide and want to start from where you are, click From Current Slide .

If you need to present to people who are not where you are, click Present Online to set up a presentation on the web, and then choose one of the following options:

Broadcast your PowerPoint presentation online to a remote audience

View your speaker notes as you deliver your slide show.

Get out of Slide Show view

To get out of Slide Show view at any time, on the keyboard, press Esc .

You can quickly apply a theme when you're starting a new presentation:

On the File tab, click New .

Select a theme.

Read more:  Apply a design theme to your presentation

In the slide thumbnail pane on the left, select the slide that you want your new slide to follow.

On the Home tab, select the lower half of  New Slide .

From the menu, select the layout that you want for your new slide.

Your new slide is inserted, and you can click inside a placeholder to begin adding content.

Learn more about slide layouts

Read more: Add, rearrange, and delete slides

PowerPoint for the web automatically saves your work to your OneDrive, in the cloud.

To change the name of the automatically saved file:

In the title bar, click the file name.

In the File Name box, enter the name you want to apply to the file.

If you want to change the cloud storage location, at the right end of the Location box, click the arrow symbol, then navigate to the folder you want, then select Move here .

On the Home tab, use the Font options:

Select from other formatting options such as Bold , Italic , Underline , Strikethrough , Subscript , and Superscript .

On the  Insert  tab, select  Pictures .

From the menu, select where you want to insert the picture from:

Browse to the image you want, select it, then select Insert . 

After the image is inserted on the slide, you can select it and drag to reposition it, and you can select and drag a corner handle to resize the image. 

On the slide canvas, click and drag to draw the shape.

Select the Shape tab on the ribbon. Open the Shape Styles gallery to quickly add a color and style (including shading) to the selected shape.

A horizontal Notes pane appears at the bottom of the window, below the slide.

Click in the pane, then enter text. 

On the  Slide Show  tab, select  Play From Beginning .

To navigate through the slides, simply click the mouse or press the spacebar.

Tip:  You can also use the forward and back arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the slide show.

Read more:  Present your slide show

Stop a slide show

To get out of Slide Show view at any time, on the keyboard, press Esc.

The full-screen slide show will close, and you will be returned to the editing view of the file.

Tips for creating an effective presentation

Consider the following tips to keep your audience interested.

Minimize the number of slides

To maintain a clear message and to keep your audience attentive and interested, keep the number of slides in your presentation to a minimum.

Choose an audience-friendly font size

The audience must be able to read your slides from a distance. Generally speaking, a font size smaller than 30 might be too difficult for the audience to see.

Keep your slide text simple

You want your audience to listen to you present your information, instead of reading the screen. Use bullets or short sentences, and try to keep each item to one line.

Some projectors crop slides at the edges, so that long sentences might be cropped.

Use visuals to help express your message

Pictures, charts, graphs, and SmartArt graphics provide visual cues for your audience to remember. Add meaningful art to complement the text and messaging on your slides.

As with text, however, avoid including too many visual aids on your slide.

Make labels for charts and graphs understandable

Use only enough text to make label elements in a chart or graph comprehensible.

Apply subtle, consistent slide backgrounds

Choose an appealing, consistent template or theme that is not too eye-catching. You don't want the background or design to detract from your message.

However, you also want to provide a contrast between the background color and text color. The built-in themes in PowerPoint set the contrast between a light background with dark colored text or dark background with light colored text.

For more information about how to use themes, see Apply a theme to add color and style to your presentation .

Check the spelling and grammar

To earn and maintain the respect of your audience, always check the spelling and grammar in your presentation .

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20 Interactive Presentation Games

• Employee Engagement , Event Planning , Leadership Techniques

Meetings and conferences can be painfully tedious and dull. So much so that the phrase “Death by PowerPoint” has made it into our lexicon. According to Thomas Sowell , an American political economist and commentator, “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.”

But if the problem with meetings is that they tend to be boring, the solution lies in finding ways to better engage and entertain your audience. You probably know the feeling of sitting in a meeting, trying to pay attention while one person drones on for an hour.

Even if the purpose of the meeting is to train, disseminate new developments, or even get everyone up to speed on weekly goals, engaging your audience creates a motivation to pay attention.

That’s why interactive presentation games are a great way to re-energizing meetings by involving audiences in the presentation. Interactive presentation turn passive listeners into active participants. Games allow the attendees to learn new skills, think of solutions within a short time period, and solve problems together.

‍ MeetingPulse equips your team with the tools and resources to create engaging events. With that in mind, here’s our guide to a few popular interactive presentation games.

‍ Related: Creating a Positive Organizational Culture while working remote

1. Project Jeopardy

This game is designed to make the presentation of reports more fun and interactive. The lead person on the report creates cards that have answers from the report.

For example, the card reads “25%.” The rest of the team is supposed to ask the correct question corresponding to the “25%” answer on the card. The question could be something like, “What was the company revenue growth for the quarter?”

‍ How to play: Give everyone the URL to your MeetingPulse meeting. Display the question on your screen and create multiple choice answers or leave it open-ended. The answers will pop up on the administrator’s screen in real-time, and you can share the answers to see how many people got it right.

2. Idea Box Game

The Idea Box game is excellent for brainstorming meetings where employees can share ideas about a project or product . It helps get the creative juices flowing and might even lead to some usable prototypes. Instead of having one speaker after another speak about their idea, having a team create an idea box creates a space for collaboration to further spark innovation.

‍ How to play: Use the MeetingPulse brainstorming tool to have teams vote and collect feedback about the products. Have each attendee log in to your MeetingPulse link — a virtual Idea Box. Give small groups thirty minutes to brainstorm, then allow submissions.

At the end of the exercise, each team should have the product name, features and functions, marketing taglines, and other vital product details.

Once each team has completed their box they’re invited to share it with the rest of the team who finally vote for the best box. Their ideas will appear on the screen right away, and participants can upvote or downvote in Reddit-style fashion and even submit emoji reactions.

3. The Introduction Game

This game is ideal for a new group of team members meeting for the first time on a mutual project or new hires joining a team. Give the new hires a chance to introduce themselves in an unforgettable manner.

‍ How to play: Ask the new members to bring a personal item or a favorite song. During the meeting, introduce them by letting their song blare for a few minutes on the sound system and then ask them to say something about themselves. If you’re using the personal item, ask them to talk about the item and what it means to them.

4. The talking stick

This activity makes sure that anyone who has a contribution not only gets to do so, but also that they get to speak uninterrupted. Using the talking stick is a great, rapid-fire way to focus the meeting on deep and meaningful contributions.

‍ How to play: Form a circle and make sure everyone’s seated. Before the discussion begins, everyone should agree that the moderator has the power to choose whoever speaks next. Once a member finishes talking, they should put the stick back in the center for the next person.

Use the MeetingPulse audience feedback capability to gain insight right away. Choose up to four emojis and allow your audience to react as they listen to new ideas.

5. Telephone game

The telephone game is used typically as an ice breaker or to liven up a group after a couple of mind-numbing presentations. While it doesn’t really work with a very large group, a sizable number like 10 to 15 people is just right.

‍ How to play: The meeting leader whispers the latest company marketing strategy used to the person on their left who is then supposed to relay the message to the next person and on and on until the last person gets the message.

The last person then gets to tell the rest of the team the final message, and you can compare it to the primary message from the lead.

6. The trivia competition

You can use this game to test the attendees’ trivia knowledge of the company or of general business trends . Create a trivia competition where the members play for points and the winner gets a prize. Project the points for everyone to see the winner.

‍ How to play: Formulate questions related to the company and use them for the trivia test. You can use MeetingPulse to create the questions, and set the timer to begin the game together. To add an extra touch of fun, include images with your multiple choice questions. Visuals add to the level of engagement and give your meetings an extra edge.

7. Fill in the phrase

Check out Meeting Pulse for Cool and creative ways to make polling questions and Quizzes!

‍ This game requires participants to fill in blanks on a survey or report. The survey or report should not be complete until the end of the presentation. This game rewards audiences for listening, and you can even provide some sort of prize.

‍ How to play: Create a report for attendees that has blanks. As you continue with the presentation, invite them to fill in the blanks from the information you are giving. Not only does the audience remain engaged, but they retain crucial information better.

‍ MeetingPulse integrates with Powerpoints , so you can use our single answer polling feature to play this game and display the results directly in your PowerPoint presentation.

8. Word of the day

Have a word of the day game as part of your presentation or meeting. It can be a phrase or a word.

‍ How to play: The presenter should weave the word or phrase into their presentation and the audience acknowledges its use by shouting back. The word must come from the team and not the presenter. This activity keeps everyone alert. Sometimes shouting can be distracting in the middle of a meeting.

In this case, use the MeetingPulse emoji feature, and everyone can submit ? when you use the word “key learnings.”

9. The 20 questions game

You get 20 questions to help you identify a picture that you can’t see, but the audience can. The audience can only lead you with yes or no questions. Use this game to liven up the audience.

‍ How to play: The audience will choose a picture that you can’t see. Have someone submit a photo and display it on the MeetingPulse user dashboard. Get blindfolded and begin to ask questions regarding the picture. You get only twenty questions to get it right.

If you’re an advertising agency, you can use this test your employees’ memory and see if they remember what you worked on. To keep track of all the questions and responses, have the audience choose “yes” or “no” by using a polling tool instead of having them shout it out.

10. Call and response

This game keeps the audience focused. The leader in the meeting calls out a phrase randomly during their presentation and the audience responds to it .

‍ How to play: Agree on the action to be taken every time the phrase is called out. The second the presenter calls out the word, your audience can dance, clap or just rise and seat. Alternatively, they can respond with a phrase, word, or an emoji using MeetingPulse.

11. What would I have done?

In this game, ask each member of the team what their alternative career would be. The point of the game is to open up to each other and foster conversation.

‍ How to play: Each member writes down their alternative career and waits their turn to reveal. The audience collectively asks “What would you have done?” and the selected member responds explaining why they chose that alternative. This is another great game you can play virtually, especially if you’re working with a big team.

With MeetingPulse , you can find out everyone’s alternative career and even get some statistics.

12. Fabulous flags

In this game , team members draw things that matter to them on their flag. This is known as the personal flag game, and it’s an excellent ice breaker activity.

‍ How to play: Everyone gets 10 minutes to draw objects or symbols that represent something meaningful in their lives. Each person gets two minutes to explain the items on their flag.

13. Botticelli

Similar to 20 questions, this game also tests your trivia. You keep in mind a person, place, or thing, and the audience has to guess. The game is a bit more complex because the player can talk back to the audience and distract them from the name.

‍ How to play: The audience asks leading questions to which the player responds with a yes or no. If they ask a specific question like “Does the celebrity’s name start with B?” then the player can respond with “It’s not Brad Pitt.”

This game is logistically easy to plan because all you need to do is formulate the poll questions and integrate them into your PowerPoint with MeetingPulse .

14. Candy introductions

This is a game that allows people to get to know each other while enjoying some sweet treats. It’s excellent for training sessions where participants are complete strangers, providing general topics for introductions that employees can elaborate upon further.

‍ How to play: The participants choose different types of candy from a bag and use each to represent different topics about themselves during the introduction. They can talk about family, career, hobbies, unexpected characteristic and dream destinations.

15. Crazy job interview

In this game, one participant tries to convince the others why they would be the best for a certain job. They have to expound on qualities given by another player and how those qualities make them a good fit.

‍ How to play: The participant is given a career, like a supermodel. Then they are given random phrases like “angry with the queen” or “intellectually incompatible” and they have to use these phrases to explain why they would be great at being a supermodel.

16. The elimination game

The elimination game helps participants to get to know each other, using a series of questions to find out the most common and most rare similarities amongst people within your company.

‍ How to play: The whole room is asked to stand up. The leader then asks elimination questions like “how many are attending this conference for the first time?” That group gets to sit down. The next is “remain standing if this is your fourth consecutive attendance.” The rest of the group sits down. And the elimination questions continue.

17. Would you rather

This is a fun game to liven up the room, giving participants two choices of something they can do. They have to choose the lesser evil.

‍ How to play: The player is given a question with two very bad or very good outcomes. For example, if the employees are afraid of heights, ask, “Would you rather go sky diving or bungee jumping?”

If you want to play this game with a large group of people, you can use MeetingPulse to get answers in real time. This game can also provide valuable insight for you. For instance, you can ask, “Would you rather have a breakfast spread or small desserts for our next meeting?”

18. Anagrams

‍ Think up a word and have everyone else try to figure it out. Expect some hilarious answers as everyone chips in.

‍ How to play: Jumble up the letters but ensure that they create a five or six letter word anagram when correctly aligned. Only the presenter should suggest the word, and the activity should be timed. People can submit their answers live on MeetingPulse .

19. Two truths and a lie

The players get to tell two truths and one lie about themselves and the audience deciphers which one is the lie.

‍ How to play: The player chooses a topic, like “career.” They tell two real facts about their career and one lie. The audience then decides which statement is false and why they believe that.

20. Choose the Agenda

In this activity, the participants choose the agenda of the meeting instead of being told what it is. This allow them to address burning issues.

‍ How to play: Participants are invited to submit their agendas, which are shared by everyone and then voted on. The one with the most votes becomes the main agenda for the meeting. This gives participants control over the meeting as well.

You can use MeetingPulse’s brainstorming tool with the upvoting feature for this!

Final Thoughts

Now that you know some of the best interactive presentation games, you’re ready to host your next event with new and creative ways to keep your audience engaged. MeetingPulse is a great tool and resource for you to make your presentations more memorable and — dare we say it — fun.

‍ Related: 25 Fun Poll Questions to Ask Your Audience

Get started with MeetingPulse today!

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12 Top Team Building PowerPoint Topics

By: Grace He | Updated: May 11, 2023

Here is our list of the best team building PowerPoint topics .

Team building PowerPoint topics are ideas for presentation slides that teach about and foster team building. Examples include the goals of team building, team building topics, and five-minute team building activities. The purpose of these PowerPoints is to teach audiences about the benefits of team building and have them conduct some team building exercises.

Team building PowerPoint presentations are similar to virtual team meeting ideas , online team huddle ideas , and out-of-the-box team meeting ideas .

This list includes:

• team building PowerPoint
• team building presentations
• team building PowerPoint presentation
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List of team building PowerPoint topics

When writing a PowerPoint on team building, it is important to create engaging slides. This way, audience members will want to focus on your presentation and implement your team building tips. To learn about the top subjects you can cover in your team building presentation, check out these team building slide ideas.

1. What is team building?

To start, some folks may not even be familiar with the idea of team building. Depending on your industry and your employees’ backgrounds, they may have never gotten the chance to bond with their team members. In that case, explaining what team building is creates a strong foundation for future interactions.

Here are some topics your slides can cover:

• Definition of team building
• Who can participate in team building
• Benefits of team building
• Examples of team building activities

At the end of this session, you can host a team building activity as an example. After sharing this info with your team, be sure to keep hosting regular team building activities. That way, employees can experience the many benefits of these exercises.

Learn more about the history of team building .

2. How to do team building

Staff members may be excited to get the team building experiences rolling, but they may not know where to begin. In that case, hosting a presentation on how to host these exercises may be beneficial.

• General event planning tips
• How to focus games and activities on your team’s needs
• Types of exercises teams can try
• When to schedule team building activities
• How to make team building accessible for all members

After this session, consider asking attendees to take what they learned and plan a team outing together. This plan could be hypothetical, or you could implement it at the end of the meeting. As a bonus, planning an activity together counts as a team building experience!

For more information, check out these articles on the team building process and team building elements .

Get our free team building toolbox

• icebreaker games
• bingo cards

3. Goals of team building

Generally, team building activities are fun and exciting. However, if you set up clear expectations beforehand, then members may get more out of the event than a little relaxation. Thus, consider sharing some slides about the overall goals of building strong teams.

• Reiterate company missions, goals, and culture statements.
• Brainstorm what skills your team could improve on.
• Discuss how games and exercises foster different skills.
• Outline how chosen events can improve said skills.

Ultimately, team building is a great way to get to know colleagues better. However, depending on your chosen exercises, these sessions can develop techniques that staff can apply to the workplace.

Here is some more information on the goals of team building .

4. Importance of team building

Some organizations may be new to team building, so it may be helpful to share why it is important to integrate it into your routine.

• Helps coworkers bond
• Teaches soft skills like communication and problem-solving
• Prevents stress and burnout
• Acts as a reward after team successes
• Promotes workplace diversity and understanding
• Demonstrates team’s strengths and weaknesses
• Fosters innovation and employee engagement
• Increases overall productivity

Team building is one of the most essential aspects of leading a successful organization, and sharing this with your staff may encourage participation.

Read more about the importance of team building .

5. How to build strong teams

Building strong teams does not end after the hiring phase. While selecting the right candidates for the job is important, continuing the professional development process after hiring is equally essential. Sharing information with your leaders on building strong teams can help improve the organization at its core.

• Diversifying your talent pool
• Encouraging open communication
• Offering professional development opportunities
• Fostering a caring and collaborative environment
• Cultivating soft skills

Hiring smart employees is a great foundation for a strong team. However, maintaining and improving that strength is where true success lies.

Learn more about how to build a strong team .

6. The power of teamwork

Colleagues will all be familiar with the adage that teamwork makes the dream work. However, knowing motivational phrases and putting them into practice is different. Thus, sharing why teamwork is essential to success is a great idea.

• Increases productivity and efficiency
• Encourages innovation and creativity
• Leads to improved work-life balance

Understanding the importance of teamwork can create excitement about team building and group projects. This excitement can lead to improved efficacy and culture.

To learn more about the power of teamwork, check out these articles on the benefits of team building activities and teamwork books .

7. Team building topics

Team building can cover a wide range of subjects, making it a versatile tool that can fit any team’s size and needs. When discussing team building topics, you can get a read on your staff and see what aspects interest them the most. Thus, you can find new ways to build your team that they will find engaging.

• Diversity, equity, and inclusion
• Training courses
• Games, icebreakers, and activities
• Comedy and storytelling
• Communication skills
• Company culture
• Giving and receiving feedback

Team building can take many forms, so presenting several subjects can help you narrow down the best avenues for your staff.

For more team building topic ideas, check out these lists of team building trends and team building examples .

8. Five-minute team building activities

Some folks think team building is a huge time commitment, but even hosting five-minute activities before a meeting is a huge step. Gathering several ideas into a presentation is a great way to have team building ideas prepared at any time. Plus, you can find out what interests your team most.

• Icebreaker questions
• Employee-guided pep talks
• Five-minute trivia
• Show-and-tell
• Meditation or yoga

Many five-minute team building exercises require little to no preparation, making these a great addition to any workday.

To learn more about quick team building activities, check out these articles on one minute games , minute to win it games , and 5 minute team building activities .

9. Team building skills

Team building activities can foster a whole host of skills, which is one of the factors that makes them so valuable. If folks regularly participate in these exercises, then their knowledge will improve.

• Written and verbal communication
• Active listening
• Adaptability and resilience
• Time management
• Conflict management
• Organization and planning

Soft skills are just as important to a worker’s success as hard skills, and team building is a great way to boost these techniques.

Here are some more team building skills .

10. Team building activities

Companies can choose from a whole host of team building activities, from minute to win it games to week-long retreats. Presenting some of these ideas will help leaders gain an understanding of their team’s interests in smaller and larger events.

• Meal ideas, like lunch and learns, potlucks, and barbecues
• Mindfulness activities, like yoga, meditation, and nature walks
• Crafty activities, like pottery, painting, and office decorations
• Party planning, like holiday celebrations, birthday parties, and retirement parties
• Games, like video game tournaments, puzzles, and cup stacking
• Recurring activities, like book clubs, movie nights, and happy hours
• Longer events, like conferences, workshops, and retreats

No matter which activity you choose, your team will appreciate the opportunity to relax, learn, and connect.

Check out these articles on office team building activities , unusual team building activities , and leadership games and activities .

11. Team building workshop

Team building workshops are a great way to facilitate learning. Even within the category of workshops, there are several categories you can choose from depending on your needs. Alternatively, you can craft your own course and present it through PowerPoint.

• Types of team building workshops
• Benefits of attending workshops
• Workshop goals
• Team building activities and games

Educational courses are an essential part of professional development. Team building workshops range from relaxed fun to serious skill building, so you can find a workshop for any occasion. As a bonus, many premade courses come with a certificate of completion, bolstering your team’s qualifications.

To find the perfect team building workshop, check out this list of team building training courses and workshops .

12. How to be a team player

The ultimate foundation of team building is creating a group of effective team players. Presenting staff with information on collaborating will improve communication and productivity.

• Proactively helping when needs arise
• Willingness to step in
• Communicating clearly
• Working well with others
• Leading a team or project
• Self-awareness and taking feedback

Overall, team players are the backbone of successful enterprises, so educating your workforce on these techniques is crucial.

Check out more information on good team player characteristics .

Presenting a PowerPoint about team building can help facilitate the conversation about why team building is important, how to do it, and what you can learn from it. These team building presentations can act as a first step to introduce the concept of team building to your staff, or they can be a continuing education on activities you already do. No matter why you present about building teams, these ideas should help you foster a strong workforce.

Next up, check out our lists of lunch and learn topics , TED talks for team building , and annual company meeting ideas .

Book wildly fun team building events with expert hosts

FAQ: Team building PowerPoint presentations

Here are answers to common questions about team building PowerPoint presentations.

What are team building PowerPoint presentations?

Team building PowerPoint presentations are speeches that leadership can give to staff members about elements of team building.

Why should you use team building PowerPoint presentations?

Using team building PowerPoint presentations is beneficial because it can introduce your team to the concept of team building, share its benefits, and help you learn what your team may be interested in.

What are some good team building PowerPoint presentation topics?

Some of the best team building PowerPoint presentation topics include the importance of team building, the power of teamwork, and how to be a team player.

Author: Grace He

People & Culture Director at teambuilding.com. Grace is the Director of People & Culture at teambuilding.com. She studied Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, Information Science at East China Normal University and earned an MBA at Washington State University.

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People & Culture Director at teambuilding.com.

Grace is the Director of People & Culture at teambuilding.com. She studied Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, Information Science at East China Normal University and earned an MBA at Washington State University.

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Interactive templates

The best free interactive google slides and powerpoint templates.

All links are set and shapes ready to drag and drop! So you can just add your content and start interacting with these awesome free templates!

Unleash the wild fun in your classroom with this FREE PowerPoint Template and Google Slides Theme. Liven up your classroom with a touch of the jungle!  This free downloadable theme features adorable monkeys swinging through lush green backgrounds and bright banana trees.   It’s more than just cute though – this theme is […]

Cute Monkeys, mini theme and subtraction drag and drop activity.

Get ready for some St. Patrick’s Day cheer with a free memory game template for Google Slides and PowerPoint! This festive template features charming clovers and lucky golden coins. It also includes a handy agenda slide and three different layouts specifically designed for creating memory games. Personalizing the game is […]

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a Fun Memory Game!

Free syllabus template for Google Slides and PowerPoint to inject personality into your class introduction. Forget about boring old paper syllabus, this free template is the perfect way to communicate the overview of your class, define expectations and responsibilities in an appealing way. It features a notebook with linked tabs […]

Interactive Notebook free syllabus template.

Free syllabus template for Google Slides and PowerPoint to inject personality into your course introduction. Forget about boring old paper syllabus, this free template is the perfect way to communicate the overview of your class, define expectations and responsibilities in a stylish way. It features file folders with linked tabs […]

20XX Syllabus template, free for Google Slides and PowerPoint.

Empower Your Productivity with this free teacher dashboard, for Google Slides and PowerPoint. The planner is all set up and ready to use. Simply click on the slides to start adding your notes and plans. You can easily add more slides by duplicating or copying and pasting existing ones. To personalize your […]

Teacher Dashboard. August 2024 – July 2025 FREE digital planner for teachers.

Free PowerPoint template and Google Slides theme. Customizable yearly planner template for teachers. I enjoyed so much creating the first two planners (Katie and the School Planner) that I decided to create a new one. By popular demand, this time, I started the week view on Monday, and even though […]

Teacher Digital Planner – July 2024 to July 2025 version.

Free animated and interactive traffic lights template for Google Slides and PowerPoint. Engage your students and set clear expectations with this fun and free animated traffic light template! Whether you’re using Google Slides or PowerPoint, you can use this template to establish guidelines for different activities in your classroom. For […]

Make Your Classroom Flow Smooth with this Interactive Traffic Light Template!

Organize Your Digital Life with This Pastel-Colored Ring Binder, free for PowerPoint and Google Slides. This free digital ring binder, available in editable formats for PowerPoint and Google Slides, is the perfect tool for streamlining your digital life. With its eight customizable tabs and easy navigation, you can keep your […]

Free Digital ring binder with pastel colors editable in PowerPoint and Google Slides.

Empower Your Productivity with My Personal Dashboard, free for Google Slides and PowerPoint. The planner is all set up and ready to use. Simply click on the slides to start adding your notes and plans. You can easily add more slides by duplicating or copying and pasting existing ones. To personalize your […]

My personal Dashboard, free 2024 digital planner.

Kickstart your year with this brand-new digital planner, free for Google Slides and PowerPoint. All links are set, and text boxes are ready for your notes and plans. To add more slides, simply duplicate (or copy and paste) existing slides, ensuring you retain the embedded links. Personalize your planner: Click Slide > Edit theme […]

Free 2024 digital planner for Google Slides and PowerPoint.

Free PowerPoint template and Google Slides theme. Customizable yearly planner template for teachers. I adapted the Edu Planner (July to July) for one of my virtual friends, so in case someone wanted to use it from January to December, or for those in the southern hemisphere, here it is. To […]

Teacher Digital Planner – 2024 January to December version.

Bring Family Histories to Life! Free Interactive Family Tree Template for Google Slides & PowerPoint. This long-awaited interactive family tree template is here to make learning about ancestry engaging and fun for your students. Easy to use, engaging to explore: Benefits for students: Tips: No more static family trees! This […]

Free interactive Family Tree template for Google Slides and PowerPoint.

Celebrate the holiday season with this free Gingerbread Christmas template for PowerPoint and Google Slides! This festive template features a gingerbread-themed design, complete with houses, cookies, candy, and a little bit of frosting. It also includes an agenda slide, a certificate, and a “Decorate the Gingerbread Man Cookie” activity. Ideal for: Features: Download Now […]

Gingerbread Christmas: A Free Template for the Holidays.

Interactive Choice Board free template for differentiated learning for PowerPoint and Google Slides Students have different ways of learning and also showing what they know. With this choice board you can add different activities and levels tailored to your students’ needs. You can add up to 3 choices with different […]

Interactive Choice Board template for differentiated learning.

Free interactive choice board template and agenda for Google Slides and PowerPoint. A simple and interactive choice board for any subject plus an agenda slide. The board was inspired by an Instagram puzzle feed and I chose a colorful scheme that can be modified by editing the theme and changing […]

Free Interactive Choice Board template and agenda.

10 Interactive Presentation Ideas for Organisers & Speakers

It’s easy to create a simple PowerPoint presentation. You write the content, add some images, and add the information to your slides. And voilá — a presentation.

But in a world with endless content at our fingertips, is a simple PowerPoint presentation enough to hold your audience’s attention? After all, most people tune out of PowerPoint presentations after 10 minutes .

So, you need to ensure that your presentation holds your audience’s attention.

Every part of your presentation needs to be crafted with your audience in mind to keep them interested in what you’re saying. This is where interactive presentations can help.

In this article, we’ll show you what an interactive presentation is, why they’re important, and 10 ways to make your next presentation more interactive and fun for your audience. 

What is an interactive presentation? 

An interactive presentation is when the audience actively participates and engages with the speaker and the content being delivered. For example, instead of reading a monotonous PowerPoint presentation, you can make it come alive by interacting with your audience and getting them involved.

Engaging your listeners works both in-person and online. Think of activities, discussions, or technology that encourage your audience to take part in some way. The aim is to make the presentation more fun and memorable.

Why are interactive presentations important for event planners and speakers?

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons interactive presentations are important from the perspective of the people involved in organising and executing the event.

To engage your audience 

Engaging the audience from the offset is a great way to keep them interested throughout the rest of your presentation. 

Put yourself in the shoes of an attendee for a second. 

You’re at a presentation where the speaker runs a quick poll at the beginning of the presentation. Everyone in the audience uses their phones to submit their answers to the poll, and then the speaker discusses the results as part of the presentation. 

How would you feel in this situation? Would it pique your interest for the rest of the event and make you feel more engaged? Would it draw you out of your Instagram scrolling?

By playing an active role in the presentation, you’re instantly a part of it. It grabs your attention and keeps you focused on the rest of the talk. 

To enhance learning and retention 

When participants are more engaged, they’re likely to retain information longer. Take a look at this academic research as an example. 

The study compares long-term memory retention between active and traditional learning. Active learning is a learning method where students participate in discussions, problem-solving, and other activities. Traditional learning is the old-fashioned set-up where students sit in a classroom and listen to the teacher. 

The study found that participants who took part in active training had higher test scores one month after the training session than those who received traditional training.

In other words, active learners had better long-term retention of the new information.

To build trust

Interactive presentations help you capture your audience’s attention and build a connection with them right from the start. And when attendees feel connected to the speaker, they’re more likely to trust them and listen attentively.

It could be something as simple as a question-and-answer session with the speaker and the audience.

By encouraging the audience to participate, speakers show that they value their listeners’ thoughts and opinions.

This can help establish a relationship between the presenter and the audience, which is beneficial in a variety of events — from educational lectures and conferences to sales presentations and pitches. 

10 interactive presentation ideas that’ll engage your audience

Take a look at these 10 interactive presentation ideas that’ll hook your audience and build rapport. Plus, we’ll show you how to use these ideas in your own presentations. 

1. Start with an icebreaker

An icebreaker breaks down barriers and makes everyone feel more relaxed at an event (or in any other professional setting).

Here are a few icebreaker examples you might want to include in your next presentation: 

• Two truths, one lie. Everyone tells two truths and one lie about themselves, and everyone else has to guess which statement is the lie. 
• Survivor. You create a fictional emergency scenario (like being stranded on a desert island) that everyone has to figure out how to escape.
• The perfect vacation. Participants get into pairs and describe their ideal vacation to each other. Then, they must each describe their partner’s trip to the group as best they can. 

Although icebreakers are a simple way to get your audience involved in your presentation, they’re better suited to small groups. With too many people, it can be pretty overwhelming. 

Fortunately, an online game like Quiplash from Jackbox Games can help you run an icebreaker for a large group. 

Using Jackbox TV , participants can use their phones to take part in an online icebreaker. You create the questions, and everyone has a chance to submit an answer.

2. Use interactive video 

Interactive video gives your audience a visual medium to engage with and breaks up the monotony of delivering a slide-by-slide PowerPoint presentation. 

There are a couple of ways to incorporate interactive video in your presentation: 

• Use a digitally interactive video. A digitally interactive video allows the audience to click or tap certain elements. For example, if you’re delivering a presentation about health and safety in the workplace, you can use an interactive video to get your audience to click whenever they spot something that requires attention. All participants will need access to a phone or digital device to do this. 
• Stop and start an existing video. Use an existing video and ask the audience to raise their hands when spotting certain things. You could ask the audience to watch a video with workplace scenarios and raise their hand when they spot something unacceptable. A clip from The Office would be a fun and entertaining example to use here!

3. Use visual aids to get your audience involved 

Visual aids can make your presentation more persuasive and more effective at getting people to take action. They can also help participants retain information for longer, as this quote from Dr. Lynell Burmark outlines: 

“Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about seven bits of information […]. Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched.”

When delivering an interactive presentation, you can get participants to hold, manoeuvre, and handle the visual aids to make it even more engaging. 

Imagine that you’re trying to deliver a presentation about the history of marketing. To make it interactive, you might ask some audience members to stand along a timeline to represent different events in the marketing history timeline.

You could even turn it into a puppet show. A presentation would certainly be a unique take on visual aids in a presentation, which is sure to create a memorable (and funny) experience!

4. Encourage people to take part in a narrative

Engage with your audience by creating a narrative around your presentation, then asking them to take part in it.

For example, if you’re presenting to a room full of baristas, you could start your presentation by telling a story about your experience with coffee. Then, you can ask for their input to build the narrative or ask them to share their own experiences. As a result, they’re taking part in the presentation by contributing to the story.

Take a look at an example from across the pond — the Drunk Theatre Improv Show in California as an example of engaging the audience in your narrative.

At the Drunk Theatre Company’s shows, the audience and the performers collaborate to create the story. As a result, the audience becomes part of the show, which makes it more entertaining.

Pro tip: A compelling and interactive story can hook your audience and engage them for the entire presentation. So, try to weave the narrative through the entire event to keep people interested.

5. Host a Q&A with the audience

People’s attention spans naturally dwindle over time. In fact, a study from King’s College London found that almost half of people think that their attention spans are shorter than they used to be.

With a closing Q&A, you can re-engage with your audience and give them a chance to have their questions answered.

Here are a few tips for hosting a Q&A:

• Set clear expectations. Explain the purpose, format, and guidelines for the Q&A session at the beginning to make sure guests know what to expect and how to participate.
• Create a safe and respectful environment. To encourage people to take part, foster an atmosphere where participants feel comfortable asking questions without fear of judgement or criticism. To do this, make sure that you (or the event speaker) answer questions with sincerity and consideration.
• Repeat or paraphrase questions. Help other attendees understand questions by repeating or rephrasing each question before answering. That way, you can make sure everyone has the clarity and context to understand your answers.

Pro tip: Have someone in the venue available to head over to the audience and offer a microphone. If you’re doing the event online , be sure to select people to ask questions to avoid everyone talking simultaneously. 

6. Involve the audience in a panel discussion 

You can host an interactive panel discussion to run a lively debate by running a continuous Q&A session throughout the panel.

Here’s how it works:

• The event speaker lets the audience know they can continually ask questions throughout the event via an online platform like Eventbrite’s , which integrates with the most popular video conference tools.
• Participants submit questions (anonymously if they wish) for the panel to discuss.
• Questions keep coming in throughout the event based on where the topic of conversation goes.

By hosting your panel discussion this way, you give the audience some control over the discussion, which makes them feel fully engaged in the conversation.

Pro tip: Be sure to notify the audience beforehand that there’ll be an interactive panel so they have their phones available for the event. You can also use Eventbrite’s events management platform to communicate with attendees before the event to let them know.

7. Ask the audience questions

Ask the audience questions and get them to raise their hands depending on which answers they agree with. It doesn’t take much preparation, but it still involves the audience and holds their attention, which is what you’re trying to achieve.

Think about a tech event as an example. An event host might ask participants what topics they think are the most important in tech in the current year. The host provides some options and asks everyone to raise their hands based on what they agree with. 

After everyone has raised their hands, the speaker will discuss the results with the attendees as part of the presentation. 

Pro tip: Make sure you word the question clearly so everyone can easily participate. Don’t leave it open to interpretation, as this might prevent people from taking part. Plus, it could have a negative impact on their focus and how much they trust the speaker. 

8. Run a poll 

Ask participants to take part in a live poll and share the results as part of the presentation. This will help your audience feel involved and give them a chance to share their thoughts and opinions. 

For example, if you’re hosting an event about remote work, you could create a poll about people’s perceptions of remote work. This could include questions like:

• Are you more productive working at home? 
• Do you miss the office environment while working at home? 

Then, when everyone answers these questions, you can present the results and discuss them with the audience.

If you’re wondering how to run live polls during an event, take a look at Mentimeter . This platform lets you create interactive poll questions and easily share the results during your presentation.

Pro tip: Set a timeframe for people to complete the poll to make sure it doesn’t create a lull in the presentation flow. You should also be prepared to discuss the results off the cuff, as there might be some trends you weren’t prepared for.

9. Have participants use augmented reality

If you really want to create a memorable and engaging presentation, consider using augmented reality (AR).

Let’s say you want to show your audience a new product. With AR, you can design the product before the presentation and allow everyone to view it on their mobile devices — in the exact room you’re presenting in. 

You can also use it to create games and make presentations more fun for everyone. Just take Pokemon Go as an example. With this game, people can go to different locations to ‘catch’ new Pokemon with their phones. You can use a similar concept to create an activity or game during the presentation or as part of a break.

Take a look at Adobe Aero to find out more about how to use AR and how it can help you create an unforgettable experience for your guests. 

10. Consider running an unconference 

Unlike having a pre-set schedule, an unconference involves attendees deciding all of the topics of discussion, making it an engaging and compelling event. 

Let’s say that the topic for your unconference is ‘digital marketing in 2024’. The attendees want to discuss artificial intelligence, influencers, and social media. You consolidate their suggestions, and then attendees can take part in discussion groups.

Have a look at Venquis ’ Tackling AI & Diversity agenda as an example:

• What diversity means to us
• Unlocking diversity in tech jobs
• Why data teams thrive, IT struggles
• Attract & retain diverse talent
• Build a diverse talent pipeline
• Redefining work for inclusivity.

They leave all the discussion slots open for the attendees to decide on the topic and then have a roundtable discussion for each topic. 

Pro tip from Eventbrite: This type of event can be tricky if you’re doing it for the first time. Do a trial run with your event team members to make sure you know how the process works and what you need to do at every stage. 

Turn your interactive presentation idea into reality

If you’re planning to host a presentation, consider incorporating interactive presentation ideas like the ones we’ve described above. This will boost your audience engagement and ensure your event remains in your attendees’ memories for years to come.

To streamline your organisation’s process, use Eventbrite to plan your event . With our event management software, you can sell tickets, communicate with attendees, and track the performance of all your events in one location.

Are you ready to grow your next event?

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about the author

Noelle Buhidar

Noelle Buhidar is the Global Head of Content Marketing at Eventbrite and former Editor-in-Chief for The Real Deal by RetailMeNot. She's passionate about helping event organizers plan events, market to the right audiences, grow their businesses, and sell more tickets. When she's not at work, she's likely at a concert — either in her hometown of Austin, TX, or another city (experiencing live music in new places is one of her favorite ways to get to know local culture). She lives by the mantra, "Give me experiences, not stuff." And that motto is what fuels her purpose in and outside of Eventbrite.

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Home Blog Presentation Ideas 10+ Outstanding PowerPoint Presentation Examples and Templates

10+ Outstanding PowerPoint Presentation Examples and Templates

Nobody said it’s easy to make a PowerPoint presentation . There are multiple design decisions to consider, like which layout is appropriate for the content you have to present, font pairing, color schemes, and whether to use animated elements or not. 

Making these choices when working under the clock is overwhelming for most people, especially if you only intend to make a report more visually appealing. For this very reason, we curated a selection of 11 good PowerPoint presentation examples categories in different niches to give you insights into what’s valued and how to take your presentations to a professional quality. All the templates used on each case will be linked for easy access.

Table of Contents

General Guidelines for Professional-Quality PowerPoint Presentations

Business pitch powerpoint presentation examples, marketing plan powerpoint presentation examples, company profile powerpoint presentation examples, quarterly/annual results presentation examples, project proposal presentation examples, training presentation examples, change management presentation examples, industry analysis presentation examples, financial planning examples, inspirational presentation examples, academic presentation examples, final words.

Before introducing our presentation slide examples, we need to discuss a list of factors that transform an average slide into a professional-quality one. 

Design Principles

For any professional-level slide deck, a consistent layout, color scheme, and font pairing are required throughout the presentation. The slides should remain uncluttered, with proper care of white balance across their composition, and stick to the 10-20-30 rule of presentations ’s concept of one concept per slide. 

Contrast between text and background color must comply with web design accessibility standards , meaning to work with a 4.5:1 contrast ratio for normal text, with exceptions for larger text. You can find more information in our article on accessibility for presentations .

A general rule in any graphic design project is to stick with fonts with ample legibility, like Arial, Helvetica, or Calibri. These are known as sans-serif fonts, and they work better than serif ones (i.e., Times New Roman) for larger text blocks.

Avoid using more than two different font families in your presentation; otherwise, the overall design will lose cohesion. Since you ought to ensure readability, the minimum size for body text should be 18pt, opting for larger variations and/or bold text for titles.

Using a combination of font pairing and font sizing helps create a hierarchy in your slides’ written content. For more insights on this topic, browse our article on fonts for presentations .

Color Scheme

Sticking to a color palette selection is one of the first design decisions to make when creating a custom slide deck . Colors have their own psychological impact on presentations, as explained in our article on color theory , so presenters must stick to 3-4 colors to avoid mixing up content in the slides. That being said, the colors have to be carefully selected according to the typical color scheme configurations, and using contrast to highlight key points on presentation slides.

Slide Layout

We can apply multiple graphic design guidelines to create professional-quality presentation slides, but in order to simplify the process, here are the key points to take into account:

• Grids and Guides: Divide your slide into sections using guides in PowerPoint or Google Slides. Then, you can build a grid that helps place elements and catch the viewer’s interest as they follow a logical flow while looking at the slide.
• Whitespace : Empty space is not your enemy. Slides shouldn’t be dense or feel hard on the eyes to read; therefore, work with a minimum of 30% whitespace.

Multimedia Elements

According to our expertise, video presentations and animation effects certainly increase the retention rate of the content you present. This is because they reduce the tiresome 2D presentation layout and add dynamism to the slides. Testing their functionality across different devices is a must to incorporate these elements into your presentation, especially if we consider that not all PowerPoint animation effects are compatible with Google Slides animations . 

Sound can be distracting in many scenarios unless you opt for an interactive presentation and require an audio track for an exercise. Action buttons in the form of quizzes or multiple-choice questions are fine examples of how we can integrate hyperlinks in interactive presentations.

The first professional PowerPoint example we will cover is when creating a problem slide business pitch. This selected business pitch PPT template has a 50/50 image-to-content balance that allows us to add images from our organization (or stick to the corporate placeholder image design) and quickly summarize the issue or need that our business aims to solve.

Remember that the selected colors for the text background area and text color are not 100% pure values—they are slight variations to reduce eye strain, making this slide a perfect choice for any kind of meeting room. Ideally, you can present up to three different problems to solve; otherwise, the text will look too small.

Another fine example of a PowerPoint presentation comes at the time of delivering an elevator pitch . As we all know, this concise presentation format requires a considerable amount of presentation aids to briefly expose each point in the speech under the allotted time frame. In this Revenue Model slide, we can find the answers to typical questions that help us shape the speech, all of them with icons and cues to remember from which areas the information comes.

If we aim to create a sponsorship pitch deck , it is important to bring proof of past sponsorship experiences to build our credibility in front of prospective sponsors. With this best PPT template tailored for sponsorship pitch presentations, we can display such data in an attractive visual format. The neat layout balances whitespace with content, with three distinctive KPI areas to talk about your history in sponsorship experiences. 

Talk about the market segmentation strategies of your marketing plan with this creative infographic template. This slide clearly illustrates that not all examples of PowerPoint presentations follow the same structure in terms of graphics-to-text balance. You can introduce data on how purchasing habits, user status, and brand loyalty influence buying decisions. Present key information about demographic & geographic segmentation and how psychographic information can provide deeper insights into consumer motivations to purchase.

Another PowerPoint example comes in the format of presenting market opportunities in marketing plans . You can list up to four points, which can be extracted from the outcomes of a SWOT analysis or from retrieved data from polls or stakeholders’ insights. The icons are entirely editable, and the crisp layout makes readability much easier.

Marketing agencies can benefit from this presentation PowerPoint example, which illustrates how easy it is to customize the content and repurpose slides for different client meetings. This and the other slides of this marketing plan slide deck allow professionals to discuss their expertise, past projects, and proposals for their target clients. In this case, the agency in question is offering insights on their work ethics through a clean slide layout with icons to flag key areas.

Our next PPT presentation example is suited for a Company Profile presentation in which we have to disclose key financial data. Thanks to the pie chart, presenters can segment revenue streams or do a balance between investments and profit. Additionally, the box placeholders allow us to deepen our knowledge of precise areas of interest.

Organizations who are looking to create a company profile can opt for a one-page arrangement to introduce the team members in charge, the overall services or products, the business model, the market, competitors, and relevant strategy information. The text boxes placed in the right area are a perfect opportunity to highlight KPIs.

In any company profile presentation, we have to introduce the organization’s Mission and Vision Statements. This presentation sample slide allows us to creatively discuss those topics. Including icons, users can summarize the primary aspects of their mission statement in one single, professionally styled slide.

Quarterly reports don’t need to be depicted as boring PDF files. We can work with clean layouts that provide information in an easy-to-follow format that focuses on the core elements of the report. This quarterly report presentation example is perfect for detailed reports as we cover all essentials in a one-page format for an employee’s performance review.

If, instead, you opt for a department-by-department approach, this slide presentation example illustrates two out of four quarters in the annual report. You can compare the product’s performance by production, allowing room to perform further optimizations based on sales behavior.

The construction industry requires a detailed presentation that covers all planned and contingency strategies for a project. Such an approach builds trust in the client, and that’s why we believe this PPT template for contractors is an essential tool for securing business deals. This presentation example template shows how to deliver a project proposal in style with accurate cost estimates.

A generic PPT project proposal template allows us to repurpose the slide for many projects—ideal for agencies, consultants, and academics. With this visual project proposal timeline, you can discuss the different stages of a project, plan for resources (both material and workforce), seek funding, or prepare for contingencies.

Once the project proposal’s core aspects are approved, teams must align efforts for project deliverables, acceptance criteria, and delivery format. This PPT presentation example illustrates a slide in a multi-team meeting to fine-tune aspects of the project deliverables, with an accurate representation of the due date and expected products.

Team training requires a framework in which the objectives of the workshop, coaching, or mentoring programs are laid out for management. HR teams can benefit from this presentation example by summarizing the objectives about missed business opportunities or expansion plans for the organization.

Before even delivering a training program, HR teams discuss the content to cover with the head of each department, mainly to spot any missing area of knowledge required for optimal operations. Presenters can repurpose this slide for that kind of training proposal presentation or the training presentation itself.

Intended for the early planning stages of a training program, this diagram is a well-rounded presentation example of how to discuss all points in one single slide, from the training budget to how to process employee feedback. We can expand each of these six topics in companionship slides.

Companies undergoing change management processes can opt to apply the DMAIC or the ADKAR frameworks to orient the workforce. This presentation slide allows management to compare both methodologies and pick the one best suited for their organization.

Since data sharing is delicate in charge management situations, implementing an information flow diagram is a good practice to orient your team, get the new owners or management the required information, and exchange information between departments.

For change management directed at process optimization, this example slide allows management to stress the importance between the current situation and the expected improved state. This PPT template can also introduce the different milestones per stage and involve the management parties per area.

Startups often present their industry analysis to procure investment from venture capitalists. This industry analysis presentation example showcases a typical FinTech segmentation. Presenters can describe the different types of crowdfunding, credit, and factoring services and provide examples of companies or platforms in each subcategory. They can discuss areas like asset management, payments, and other relevant aspects in detail, with successful stories from referents that helped shape their business model.

STEEPLE stands for Social, Technological, Economic, Ethical, Political, Legal, and Environmental factors. This framework allows us to perform a multidimensional industry analysis in which stakeholders can evaluate the appropriate approaches for venturing into a new business niche, renewing their overall strategy, or pursuing new goals based on recent industry changes, even those we don’t initially acknowledge.

The Gap Analysis concept compares a company’s current status to a desired future state. By doing so, organizations can identify deficits or areas that require improvement in alignment with the future state. Presenters can work with this metaphorical gap analysis template and express the need for a plan that bridges such a gap.

The next example of a PowerPoint presentation is oriented to the financial area, in which a consultant can refer to an organization’s asset management. By Scope, we imply the extent and boundaries of the asset management activities within an organization. It outlines what will be included in the asset management plan and what will not. On the other hand, Inventory points to a comprehensive and detailed list of all the assets owned by an organization. It includes essential information about each asset to facilitate effective management.

In financial presentations, the information must be clearly arranged so decisions can be made easily. In this case, we observe how a financial dashboard template can represent an organization’s relevant KPIs.

Think about TEDx presentations or Pecha-Kucha . They all have one factor in common: quality graphics to talk about inspirational stories. Graphics can feel overwhelming for some presenters, which ends in picking low-quality pictures or stock images unsuitable for the context of your slide deck. For this reason, we highly recommend you implement vector illustrations into your motivational presentation slides. Easy to customize, they are a valuable asset to mix & match PPT templates and create your custom deck.

Aligning efforts toward a common goal requires a powerful visual communication language. Images are easier to retain than words, so imagine adding a storytelling factor and turning a goal into a mountain to conquer. Presenters can work with this mountain PPT template and signal the different milestones to reach prior to fulfilling a significant goal for the company/organization.

Another take in inspirational presentations is when we need to share our success stories with investors or in networking environments to inspire others. With this roadmap PPT template, presenters can go stage by stage and present the key stages that made them reach their success, or even project for expected goals to achieve.

Academic presentations don’t have to look dull or excessively formal. We can incorporate a sleek layout into our slides and use icons to highlight key points. In this case, we observe a project overview for a research project, and the icons represent the main aspects to cover in this research.

A thesis presentation requires properly introducing the methodology to demonstrate the hypothesis. Rather than adding complex figures, we can work with a minimalistic slide design and briefly describe the research methods. This slide deck is suitable for thesis presentations as well as academic projects, research papers , and more.

As we can see, counting with a professionally designed slide deck makes a difference in how your presentation is perceived by the audience. By working with SlideModel PowerPoint templates, we can reuse and repurpose our slide templates as often as required or mix elements from different slides seen in these PowerPoint presentation examples to create uniquely styled slide decks.

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PowerPoint parties are still bringing friends together, one hyper-specific subject at a time

For McCall Mirabella’s 21st birthday party last month, she asked guests to bring only one gift: A PowerPoint presentation.

Mirabella, a TikTok and YouTube personality with over 1.3 million followers across both platforms, assembled her closest friends and asked them to present a slideshow on anything they could think of. The only criteria was “the sillier, the better.”

Her guests delivered. One attendee ranked the attractiveness of 10 animated characters while another humorously explored the disparate stages of being high. Mirabella herself presented her predictions for how long her friends would survive in the Hunger Games (and how they’d meet their violent ends , seemingly a popular template for a PowerPoint party).

Such are the delights of PowerPoint presentation nights, which boomed in popularity during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic but are still charming partygoers (this, in spite of its regular use in corporate offices the world over). Through a silly slideshow, groups of friends get to know each other’s niche interests, secret pastimes and frequently hilarious takes on their friends’ quirks and strengths.

Seeing the people she loves get worked up over assigning each other Taylor Swift songs that match their personalities or fictional crimes that would land them in prison is a joy specific to slideshow-centric parties, Mirabella said.

“They’re so unserious,” she said of PowerPoint nights she’s attended and hosted. “Most of the time, people are left crying from laughing so hard, or bent over wheezing.”

PowerPoint parties got popular during the pandemic, but they’ve delighted friends for years

PowerPoint nights involve little more than an HDMI-compatible TV, a slideshow and a willingness to razz your friends or reveal your hidden passions. The software itself is nearly 40 years old , and it’s since become a staple in many offices and classrooms, but the ingenious PowerPoint party turns the familiar tech into a medium for comedy and comradery.

The concept of the PowerPoint party was formalized in 2012, when three students at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, hosted a “Drink, Talk & Learn” event. Guests of these early parties had to show up with a presentation on the arcane subject of their choice, like the moral alignment of Sonic the Hedgehog character Shadow, per Buzzfeed News .

The theme steadily grew more popular and by 2018, more PowerPoint enthusiasts in the US had caught on. Soon, everyone from software engineers in Seattle to students in Boston were presenting slides on hyper-specific subjects to a small crowd, often with a drink in hand.

In the Harvard Crimson’s account of one local PowerPoint party, a student presented his argument for why King Claudius is the true hero of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” a divisive take if there ever was one. The presenter told the school paper that his zeal for the topic had been relegated to “a rant to my friends up until now. Finally, I can present it to strangers.”

When Covid-19 arrived in 2020 and millions of Americans isolated in their homes, virtual PowerPoint parties became a safe, distanced way for friends to update each other on their lives and provide much-needed levity. Groups separated by the pandemic shared their screens on Zoom or even rallied their housemates to turn an ordinary night in isolation into an opportunity for a private TedTalk.

Tantalizing snippets from these presentations landed on TikTok (users rarely spill the juicy contents of the slideshows beyond their uproarious titles),  inspiring other users to host their own get-togethers. The subjects are typically zany, lighthearted takes on the idiosyncrasies of a group of friends — like how they’d each fare during a zombie apocalypse — and minor passions or dubious theories like the “real” (read: fictional) reason the dinosaurs died .

Since the party format took off in 2020 (and has since amassed over 40 million views on TikTok under related hashtags ), TikTok users have tested crafty new variations of the typical slideshow gathering and polled users on different platforms, like Reddit , for unique suggestions for presentations. Take the host who ambushed their guests by forcing them to present someone else’s PowerPoint on a subject they knew nothing about, like the hapless friend who bluffed their way through a presentation on how to pick stocks. A group in Philadelphia creates slideshows for their single friends to catch fellow singles’ attention. One creative TikTok-er even came out to their family in a PowerPoint on Christmas.

Though Microsoft PowerPoint software isn’t a requirement for these presentations — competing services like Prezi, Canva and Google Slides are also popular — Microsoft issued its own advice for hosting a premier PowerPoint party. Among its suggestions: Take advantage of those wacky transitions so photos can boomerang across the screen and titles can disappear with a click.

Since her cousins introduced her to PowerPoint parties during a sleepover eight months ago, Mirabella’s presentations have only improved in quality and theatricality. Her recent Hunger Games-themed slideshow included multimedia elements like Taylor Swift entering the fictional arena for a brief halftime performance to break up the bloodshed. Her friends voted it the best presentation of the night.

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