what is interactive video presentation

Guide to interactive content

How to create interactive content: A practical guide

How to create awe-inspiring interactive documents, what is interactive content plus 6 examples, what is an interactive presentation and how is it different.

If you haven’t heard, interactive content is all the rage. It can provide context and clarity, cutting through the noise of the modern digital environment. It can also provide a repository of material for many departments across the enterprise: sales, marketing, HR, and creative.

How do you create interactive content? We’ll tell you.

Step 1: Decide what you want to say and how you want to say it.

Easy enough? Well… You see, interactive content requires you to think differently about the traditional content creation process. When pulling open that Word doc and typing away, you typically construct your thoughts linearly: one word after another.

However, interactive content forces us to think about two things: the multimedia we can use to develop our thoughts, and the ways in which users will, ahem, interact with that media. That is, a book reader will go from one line to the next, beginning at the top left and reading down to the bottom right, page after page. But if there’s a navigable table of contents, she may just skip right over that one amazing insight you had on page 4. You need to account for that behavior.

So, while this first step may seem simple enough, trust us, it just isn’t.

Here are a few more tangible ways to break down this ominous step.

Understand how users consume digital content.

Over the last several decades, the leading firm researching the digital user experience has been Nielsen Norman Group. The NN Group has developed many studies and experiments to test everything you can think of on the web and how people respond.

For example, in one of their most famous studies tracking eye movements, they were able to determine that people on the web read in F-shaped patterns . That is, they read the first headline and a paragraph, and then scan mostly headlines from there down. NN Group has many ( many ) articles like this gathered in categories like “ Writing for the Web .” For the uninitiated, this is a great place to start getting inside the minds of your viewers.

Create content dynamically, not linearly.

Along similar lines, users in a digital environment click around from page to page by what interests them (using what NN Group and others call “ information scent ”). This means you have to think about your content as a system and not as a linear, logical program. Of course, knowledge is stackable — you have to learn algebra before calculus — but not everything is built that way.

Take this piece of content as an example. You really don’t need to read the content in Step 1 to understand Step 2, nor even Step 1A before 1B. If you’re familiar with how users read on the web, skip right on over to the next thing.

More tactically, imagine if the user you’re trying to reach watched the video you placed on one slide before reading what you wrote. How would that change your content? What about if they watched it after? These are important questions to ask yourself before finalizing your content.

Guide the user with clear actions.

Our brains are like machines. They need fuel to function. Sometimes they get overwhelmed with too many operations or too many inputs. That’s why when you’re talking to someone while you’re driving, you usually turn down the music or stop talking while making a left-hand turn in a busy intersection. Your brain focuses its attention, diverting resources to ensure its survival.

A reader on the web is no different. Their brains get overwhelmed with big blocks of text or too many buttons. But clear, simple text and cues help alleviate this strain to focus on what you want them to. There’s even research to suggest that a certain line length or height can put readers at ease .

Let’s say you want the user to read this paragraph before watching the video or listening to the audio track. Why not say, “Read this first” in big, bold letters? Similarly, using animations, descriptive links, and clear calls-to-action (CTAs) can reduce the cognitive load of your users.

Step 2: Use the right media to help convey your ideas.

With linear, traditional content like a PDF or Word document, you have only words and pictures at your disposal. Yet with interactive content, you can use animated graphs, videos, audio clips, and more to further develop your arguments. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities, but also a whole new world of challenges with arranging your ideas.

Know the context of the content.

In the science of hermeneutics , you learn that you read an email differently than you read a poem. You expect certain things within an academic essay that you wouldn’t expect in a podcast. And so on. The context of the medium has a lot to do with the content itself. This is what Marshall McLuhan meant when he wrote, “ The medium is the message .” 

Consider what your readers will have seen first. Are they coming to your piece after they’ve seen some introductory video, or an email, or is it part of a larger series of blog posts or some other content? This informs how you want to build the content and how to use which medium.

For example, let’s think of how to use a video in your interactive content. A video can help illuminate a vivid point of your writing, or it can summarize a lot of written material in a short space. This is the best use of video within interactive content. Say you want to use a video as an aside, nestled beside a scroll function of 300 words of text. A two-minute video in this case is much better than a 15-minute video — the former can illuminate or summarize while the latter is long enough to be its own piece of content. Viewers may forget what you’re writing and focus only on the video content.

That’s why this is the first rule in choosing media: Know the context of where your content lives, which will determine how you express yourself.

Use multimedia like salt: sparingly.

To continue the point above, you’ll want to use multimedia that’s on the shorter side, depending on what you’re trying to get across. Longer media begin to take on a life of their own, which users can easily view in another format, like on YouTube or on Spotify as they drive to work.

Putting an even finer point on it, you’ll also want to use multimedia very sparingly, to expand on a topic that can’t be adequately covered with text alone. This could be a short video or audio clip, a gif, or an image. It should enhance the content, not distract the viewer from it. We’ve seen some interactive content authors throw in all the media they can find that’s relevant to their topic. But, as the saying goes, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Find multimedia assets with the right permissions.

Not all content can be used as you find it on the web. Much of it is copyrighted, while other content is in the wrong format. Copyright infringement is a big deal for content creators, and it’s critical that you respect and cite their work. After all, that’s how they earn a living. We’ve seen too many people simply Google the image they’re looking for and slap it into their content, but that can violate copyright laws.

However, you can Google an image you’re looking for as long as you filter for usage rights. After you search on Google and click on Images, click on Tools just below the search bar. Then you can filter using Creative Commons licenses. This allows you to use the media within the Creative Commons framework.

You can also Google “license-free stock photos or videos.” You’ll find results like Unsplash , Pixabay , and Storyblocks . The latter allows you to pay a subscription for licensed images, videos, and audio assets for your interactive content. There are plenty of other sources out there — just make sure you’re using content that you’re actually allowed to use!

Step 3: Design the content with your favorite design tool.

Once you know what you’re saying, how you’re saying it, with the right media to support it, now you have to bring it to life. Use Adobe, Sketch, or Figma to create your layouts and graphics for the piece. Sound intimidating? You can also use Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, and Google Slides to create interactive experiences.

View guides, Resources, and the Tiled University to get started.

Creating interactive experiences can be really tough if you’re just starting. That’s why we publish resources to help you get started, from the big picture to the tiny details. So, before you get started on your next project, take a scroll through our Resources page to see webinars, tips, and other content that will help you take your content to the next level.

If that doesn’t have what you’re looking for, dive deeper into Tiled University to see courses, lessons, webinars, and more to build your own content.

Additionally, each design tool has its own resources for helpful hints if you get stuck:

From there, the only limit is your imagination.

Start with a template.

If you’re like most people, you’ve stared at a blank canvas or document for far too long wondering where to begin. We get it. Creating interactive content is hard. But the good news is that you can start with a template! You may not know what to say, but at least it’ll look nice.

Kidding aside, a good template does more than just look nice. It can also give you a structure for arranging your ideas. Many of the resource pages listed in the previous point have similar structures given your setting.

For example, most presentation templates start with a title slide, then an agenda, team members, and problem and solution slides. Whether you need a pitch deck, a quarterly update, newsletter, brand guide, or something else, starting with a template from the resources pages of each design tool is the best way to get started quickly.

And the best part? You can integrate your design files with Tiled’s interactive content editor.

Export, share, and revise.

Once you’ve viewed the resources, picked a template, and composed your piece, you’re ready to export and share your interactive document. There are a few ways to do this. You can either export the file as is to be read in your favorite design or presentation tool, you can send a shareable link to your team, you can broadcast the presentation with specific people, or you can embed the file into a web page.

After sharing your creation, you may need to edit it. It’s the worst feeling when you’ve completed a beautiful PDF document only to realize there’s a major typo on page 3. Oh well. What’s done is done. Similarly, a PowerPoint is editable, but if you’ve already emailed the file over to your boss, that’s the version they have, not the one you’re editing. You need a way to edit the master file that everyone sees. With interactive content platforms, you can do just that, and every edit you make will be live for the rest of the team to see in real time.

Finally, analytics and insights based on users’ behavior with the content can be even more important than your research before you started (see Step 1). You may think that theoretical users will behave one way, but your actual users may behave completely differently based on your actual content. It’s crucial for content creators to adapt to their audience, not the other way around. Editing in real time with shareable links gives you the ability to adapt your content to produce the most engagement over time.

Give your ideas the tools they’ve been waiting for.

The old ways of communicating limit your imagination with flat text and boring slides. Your storytelling craves a more innovative, engaging experience that amplifies the power of every medium at your fingertips. Your audience, whether for sales and marketing, creative directing, or employee empowering, demands something fresh. Reimagine what content can be with Tiled, an interactive content platform built for the new age of communication. Our no-code story builder lets teams create, share, and edit their content anywhere, anytime, with actionable analytics to scale their impact. Leave behind the static past and rewrite the future.

At Tiled, we help enterprises create engaging experiences easily.

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What is an interactive presentation and how is it different? ‍

In the world of work and education, presentations are a way of life. As the learning landscape continues to grow into one that leans into digital and touchscreen experiences, the need for more dynamic and engaging presentations is expanding with it. However, with these changes also come higher content expectations from audiences.

The days of sitting in a classroom or conference room and learning through a well-designed PowerPoint or PDF are long gone. Well, they’re long gone if you actually want to keep your audience engaged and actively learning from your content. Though there’s a difference between interactive presentations and interactive content, which we’ll explain more later, you’ll see that there is some overlap.

These days, if you want to really reach your audience, you have to go beyond a PowerPoint. Cognitive research shows that to be truly effective, you’ll need to take a multimedia approach . That is, tailor the content to your target audience, source high-quality imagery, develop a compelling story, and implement high-quality design . Traditionally, presentations have included a speaker moving around a whiteboard or slide deck, drawing on the board or using a pointer for the deck, keeping the audience’s attention. 

Yet the world has changed. Now presenters are talking heads on the other side of a screen, using static text and images to communicate to a dulled audience who’s been staring at a screen for hours already. 

Your audience expectations have elevated thanks to high-quality, immersive presentations and consumer content, the likes of which you’d find in a TED talk or Apple keynote. Thankfully, however, content and presentation tools have risen to the occasion. Enter the era of the interactive presentation.

What is an interactive presentation?

In the simplest terms, an interactive presentation is precisely what it sounds like: a presentation you can interact with, complete with multi-dimensional media. They often incorporate web-style functionalities like navigation, hyperlinks, and hotspots. For example, in an interactive presentation, you have the freedom to click on content and have an action occur, such as a video, animation, or popup box.

However, as simple as that may sound, it’s just the beginning of what an interactive presentation can do. Interaction fundamentally changes the way you can engage with your audience. It turns a passive experience into an authentic conversation that benefits everyone involved.

Is an interactive presentation different from interactive content?

Interactive content includes videos, image sliders, animations, polls, and more. An interactive presentation is the means used to combine and bundle multiple types of interactive content all in one place to present to an audience, often in real time. With an interactive presentation, you can combine interactive content with storytelling and questions to engage your audience.

Why do we need interactive presentations?

Preferences and expectations have changed: Today, viewers simply expect innovative companies to present information in a highly engaging, multimedia style no matter the device, location, or time. But there are other benefits to interactive presentations.

Interactive presentations increase engagement.

Interactive presentations allow you to go from talking to your audience to talking with them. Neuroscience research shows that by using interactive presentations, your audience immediately has the motivation to stay engaged and participate . That is, an interactive presentation allows you to navigate in a nonlinear fashion : You can ask the audience what they want to talk about, and the navigation options enable you to jump directly to the content that is most interesting to the audience without disrupting the natural flow of the presentation.

Additionally, asking audience members to participate helps them tune in and bring back those whose attention may have drifted off. Interactive presentations will allow you to include audio and video files. Through an interactive presentation, you can include deeper content within each section and create a greater understanding of what you want to convey.

Interactive presentations encourage team building.

Making a presentation interactive adds surprise, delight, and fun. Getting interactive also makes it easy for team members to break the ice, connect, and work together. Getting away from a traditional lecture is also a welcome break from the monotony of a regular workday. Interactive presentations can contain video, audio, polls, and even games. Using these types of interactive content makes the presentation fun, encourages team-building, and fosters innovation. Not only will your audience absorb and retain more of your information, but they’ll also enjoy doing it. It’s a win-win. 

Interactive presentations make learning easier. 

Distraction is common in presentations. Even the most compelling speaker can struggle to try to keep a large group engaged with just slides and images. It’s easier to remember the content of a presentation when you’re actively participating in the experience. Imagine the difference between reading about communication versus working through an exercise. You’re much more likely to feel comfortable with the tools and information you’ve learned after putting them into practice in a safe space.

Furthermore, better engagement leads to better information retention. No matter what kind of presentation you’re delivering, interactivity brings concepts off the screen and into real life.

Interactive presentations allow for personalized delivery. 

Adding interactive elements to a presentation makes it feel more thoughtful and personalized to your audience. Creating that personalized connection is vital to keeping audiences engaged and informed. You can also add interactive elements into an existing presentation for a customized feel. It also empowers your audience to ask questions, offer feedback, and actively participate.

Ways to use interactive presentations

Elevating your training programs through touchscreens, animations, games, and other interactive elements helps teams onboard or learn information and take action for sustained behavior change.

Conferences

Conferences are often filled with multiple days of boring PowerPoint, PDF, and Google Slides presentations. Can you imagine how refreshing it would be to walk into a conference session and have a chance to move, speak, and participate? As we’ve said before, not only will an interactive presentation make your content more engaging, your session attendees will retain what they’ve learned better as well. 

Website or microsite

Websites need interactivity to lead the user around the page and into the other pages. By providing interactive content throughout, you’ll more deeply engage your audience than with static texts and images.

Leave-behinds

This is a bit of a misnomer, but a “leave-behind” we’re thinking of is an interactive asset you can add to your follow-up email after a conversation with a prospect, customer, or new employee. Imagine the context and clarity you can create by using interactive content to keep the conversation going.

Internal communications

Employees are inundated with communications from every level of the organization. Interactive content can help internal leaders drive adoption for an initiative, take an action, or provide further information.

How can I make my presentation interactive?

With the rapid growth of interactive presentations comes a multitude of new technologies to help you create them. Today’s interactive presentation software offerings make it easy to create an interactive presentation yourself with no need for development skills.

How can interactive presentation software help make my presentations easier?

Much of the media you encounter today comprises various media types, like audio, video, gifs, and more. However, including these media in traditional presentation software is often clunky and unintuitive. Interactive presentation software, on the other hand, makes adding these to your presentations easy and effective.

Professional visual aids

According to a study by venngage.com , 65% of professionals at 2018 Marcom conferences designed their own presentations and relied heavily on imagery. Additionally, over 90% of a person’s daily processed information comes from visual receptors . Interactive presentation software makes it easier to get to a professional and well-designed visual experience that goes far beyond bullet points.

Editable templates

If you’ve ever used PowerPoint or Google Slides before, you know that they provide users with some limited themes and templates. However, today’s interactive presentation software often includes dozens of templates with customizable features built to make interaction easy without having to learn to code. And these aren’t just for PowerPoint users but also for Adobe XD, Sketch, and more, making designers’ lives easier than ever. That way you already have the right formats and media — all you need to add is your branding and company voice.

Intuitive tools

Learning new technology can feel like a daunting addition to your presentation planning. However, editing tools for interactive presentation software are intuitive and straightforward to use. Content creators have less of a learning curve because most of their time will remain in their design tool of choice, from Adobe XD, InDesign, and Photoshop, to Sketch, Figma, PowerPoint, Google Slides, and more. When you combine this with the extensive collection of templates available, you’ll end up with something personalized and professional, and feel ready to drive the results you’re looking for.

Interactive scrolling

Another great feature to add to your content experience is to scroll through other content within the page. Users don’t have to leave the experience. Instead, they can just continue to scroll and explore the content at their own pace. 

Interactive functionality also lends itself well to infographics and animation, and it’s definitely more engaging than a static image or PDF. An in-page scrolling feature also lets you build multi-dimensional components. Elements like scrolling make your presentation feel more like touchscreens and social media feeds that audiences already use and enjoy. 

Data and analytics

Data-driven insights have become a crucial part of how organizations innovate and optimize the work experience. Interactive presentation software is not only an excellent tool for creating engaging content quickly, but it’s also excellent at collecting data and helping you develop and evolve both your content and your presentation style.

While it’s impossible to measure how long a group of people listen in a conference room or open a PowerPoint or PDF attachment, interactive presentations let you collect data on this and more. You can measure clicks, scrolls, and other metrics that can help you continually craft better and more effective presentations. Depending on what software you use, you can even gather all of that information without leaving the platform. 

Now that you’ve seen all the advantages of an interactive presentation and how easily interactive presentation software can help you bring them to life (without any code!), the only limitation to your presentation is your imagination.

What is Interactive Content? Plus 6 Examples 

You have likely heard the phrase “content is king.” This sentiment still holds true. However, there have been a lot of advancements and innovations in the content space. As more and more brands look to engage with their customers through storytelling, “interactive content is king” feels like a more apt phrase to describe the state of content marketing in 2021.

Brands have continually raised the bar for quality content while customers simultaneously expect more and more from their branded interactions. This has led to a rapid increase in the creation of quality interactive content across the marketplace. At this point, just 5% of produced content creates 90% of engagement . That means all content is not equal: Supercharging your top 5% of assets can supercharge your engagement.

What is interactive content?

Interactive content is content that audiences actively engage with. Rather than just passively digesting a video, website, or white paper, interactive content elevates the content experience with personalized interactions. This dynamic content keeps audiences focused on your message while also becoming immersed in your brand.

What are some examples of interactive content?

There is a wide variety of interactive content types. A few examples of interactive content can include e-books, sales decks, onboarding materials, and more. Interactive elements like surveys, infographics, and more also improve the experience and provide meaningful context. There are many different options, so selecting the right one for your organization takes some thought. That’s why it’s important to think through your business needs and goals, and then choose the type of content that will work best to help you achieve those goals. Here’s a closer look at a few different kinds of interactive content:

E-books are publications specifically built for the web. It’s like an interactive PDF but has fewer limitations and usually operates more smoothly across browsers and platforms. An e-book can contain myriad impressive interactive elements like video links, case studies, or animation. On top of all that, e-book technology can improve reports, studies, and white papers by increasing engagement and allowing users to explore information as they choose. In short, why use an interactive e-book rather than a PDF? Because customers and prospects are evaluating lots of different solutions, and you want to have differentiated content that leaves a lasting impression.

See an example of a microapp e-book.

Video has long been the best way to get a viewer’s undivided attention on the internet. Even as new technologies emerge, video remains a tried-and-true way to create high-engagement media. The key is to craft a compelling story that viewers will want to follow until the end. Sparking that curiosity is a mix of finding the best hook, appropriate production, and a strong sense of your audience. Additionally, adding a video within an interactive document can provide context, summarize surrounding material, or simply engage the viewer with another medium.

See an example of using video in a microapp.

Quizzes and polls

Surveys and polls have been a key piece of audience engagement ever since the days of paper magazines. Quizzes and polls feel fun to users as they acquire useful or entertaining information in exchange for sharing data. That’s part of why quizzes are a tried-and-true method for engaging with audiences. This style of content works best as a way to facilitate feedback and capture new user data while keeping the audience engaged. It’s much easier (and more effective!) than methods like email surveys or follow-up calls. 

See an example of a microapp quiz.

Interactive infographics

Infographics combine illustrations, icons, and graphics to create compelling and thematic visualizations of facts and data. Infographics make complicated facts and figures more digestible by using animation, typography, and story to bring data to life. Currently, 60% of B2B companies are already using this format, and similar trends are visible in HR departments, education, non-profits, and more. Interactive infographics are usually single, long-scroll web pages commonly developed in HTML5. Interactive infographics take the clarity of a data visualization a step further. As a result, the reader can better understand the story behind your data and is much more likely to engage with any content.

See an example of data brought to life in this microapp.

Landing pages

Landing pages are a lead generation and conversion staple. However, you can increase their effectiveness by taking an interactive approach to the content on the page. From animation to video, the right content at the right time can trigger audiences to type their information into a form field to become a lead.

See an example of a landing page with a microapp here.

Why is interactive content important?

E-books, infographics, and blog posts are already valuable tools for educating and communicating with your audiences. Adding interactive components make these tools more attractive to your customers through the power of delight and entertainment. And that’s just the beginning. Here are a few reasons that leaning into interactive content is worth it.

Interactive content increases leads and fosters loyalty from customers.

Creating interactive content leads to an overall better customer experience and boosts feelings of brand loyalty across the board. From increasing trust around sharing information, to feeling truly educated, and even being entertained — interactive content just resonates better with consumers. 

Interactive content increases engagement.

Even basic interactive pieces tend to have high engagement levels, simply due to their dynamic nature. When done exceptionally well, research has shown that on average, interactive content receives double the engagement that static content does. While the content may dictate how the user interacts with it, the consumer has a sense of discovery and control that keeps them attentive and interested. Rather than your content acting as a billboard that displays information consumers may or may not see, interactive content acts more like a conversation between you and your audience. Once you give them something of value, they’ll be more likely to continue their customer journey with you. Which brings us to our next point.

Interactive content makes collecting data easier.

Personalized marketing campaigns are quickly becoming the status quo, but to create a robust and targeted plan, you need relevant data. Interactive content is a great tool that makes it easier to capture key information from customers, such as demographic and firmographic information through lead capture forms. Today’s consumers can also be nervous about handing over personal information like email addresses. But by offering a rich, interactive content experience, you’re providing something of value to the customer that makes submitting personal information feel worth it. It feels less risky to share your email address with a company that has created something truly engaging.

Interactive content sets you up for successful testing.

Metrics from passive content can reveal information around scroll depth or bounce rates, but it can’t tell you how much of the content the consumer is actually viewed. Interactive content, on the other hand, works by collecting data while the content is in use. This allows you to measure views, clicks, and interactions with individual elements of your interactive pieces. From there you can test, analyze, and optimize your content around the goals you’re trying to achieve.

Interactive content makes your content better.

As you gather data through your content, you’ll begin to learn about your audience’s content preferences. This makes it easier to refine your content strategy and lean into the tactics that work best for your consumers. This approach to highly targeted content marketing is fantastic at helping you establish trust and authority as well as expand your audience by serving up effective and informative content they’ll want to come back to time and time again. 

How can I start creating interactive content?

Although interactive content creation may seem daunting at first, platforms like this one can do the heavy lifting by offering simple, customizable tools that don’t require development skills. And it’s absolutely worth it. Having a partner or tool that can make your content look and function the way you want is invaluable. 

As you can see, interactive content holds so much potential. It pulls consumers directly into your story, offers them something valuable, and provides you with better insights. If you do it correctly, it can be a catalyst for your business or brand. After you’re done, just take a look at your data, get creative, and watch as your consumers start engaging more and building bonds with your brand.

Communication is tricky. How do you get your message across in a fun and engaging way to ensure readers, customers, clients, or whoever your target audience is retains it long after they hear or read it? It’s time to rethink those flat, two-dimensional resources, switch up your communication game, and look beyond the traditional PowerPoint and Microsoft Word document. How exactly? Two words, my friend: interactive documents. 

What Is an Interactive Document?

Traditional documents and marketing materials have limited space for information and engagement, but interactive documents take it to another level. Let’s start by talking about what makes a document interactive. An interactive document is chock-full of features like video, audio, buttons, page transitions, GIFs, and even podcasts, all neatly tucked inside like a Mary Poppins bag of wonders. It doesn’t stop there. You can even incorporate Google Docs and file sharing so users have a direct connection with the material at hand. The sky’s the limit when it comes to interactive pieces, and depending on which category below you want to address, there’s more than a few documents to consider:

• White papers
• Data sheets
• Research and analyst reports
• Infographics
• Case studies 
• Buyer’s guides
• ROI calculators
• Onboarding and training guides
• Pitch presentations
• Industry/professional best practice guides
• Competitive and cost comparisons
• Sales decks
• Finalist presentations

Employee Experience

• Training playbooks
• Onboarding materials
• Benefits/compensation resources
• Newsletters

You’re probably thinking, great — but how exactly do you make these interactive? Simply put, these six features are what make immersive, engaging content:

• Fillable forms: Especially useful in business, these make the reader an active participant, help collect user data, and contribute to future analytics.  
• Video files: Add life to content and engage readers right off the bat.
• Audio files: Great for samples and a refreshing change from text.
• Buttons: Help you navigate easily and allow users to go at their own pace when reading content like brochures or portfolios.
• Hyperlinks: Direct readers to another section of the document, another document altogether, or separate web address for additional information. ‍
• Photo galleries: Pick images that capture your audience, such as employees in action, relaxing or engaging pictures that evoke emotion, and images that help the reader identify with the content.

Which of these features appeals to you? Now think of your audience. How can you incorporate one or more of these to inspire and engage them? Next up, let’s explore the deeper benefits of interactive documents. 

Why Interactive Documents Are a Must for Your Success

Consider this: 88% of marketing professionals reportedly agree that interactive content separates them from their competitors. Furthermore, another 93% from this same Business2Community survey agree that interactive content is effective when it comes to educating buyers. So they give you a leg up on your competition, educate and engage your staff, and depending on your industry, bring the people to you. What’s not to like? If that’s not enough to convince you, consider these additional top 10 reasons why you need interactive documents, like, yesterday:

• They supercharge your marketing strategy: Take the guesswork out of learning your audience’s wants and needs, and then use interactive documents to generate more leads based on what you find.
• User friendly and more bang for your buck: There’s only so much content you can fit into a traditional PDF, but interactive documents allow you to take a deep dive into data and immerse readers in your content in an engaging and inspiring way.
• Create a lasting impression on readers long after they read it: In the words of the great Maya Angelou, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” What do you ultimately want people to remember and take away after reading?
• Convenience, convenience, convenience: Most attention spans are short. While some readers want all the information, some just want to quickly and easily jump to the information they need. Interactive documents allow you to do both. 
• Take a different approach to feedback: Interactive documents offer an alternative approach to gathering feedback with surveys or just by allowing you to understand where people click, spend the most time, what they ignore, and where they leave. You can then use this data to adapt your content to best meet the customer’s needs. 
• Set the tone for future interaction: Whether it’s a brochure, culture handbook, or quarterly review, when you set the precedent with interactive, engaging, fun content, you pull your audience in from the get-go and keep them coming back for more.
• Boost retention and conversion rates: You heard right. Happy, satisfied readers are not only more likely to keep coming back for more but also move through the sales process.
• Pique their interest and capture the attention of readers: Even the driest subject can be made interesting with the right format if you appeal to your audience and clearly show them what’s in it for them.  
• Increase interaction: Use fillable forms to your advantage and identify prospective client needs and preferences so you’re catering to them right from the start.
• Add an innovative approach to professional documents: Take otherwise dry content and make it engaging and memorable.

Now that you know what exactly interactive documents are and why you need them, let’s take a look at some examples to inspire you.

10 Interactive Document Examples to Bring Down the House

• This Seismic Media Kit captures you from the moment you start watching the intro video. It only gets better from there as users navigate through a series of slides, sure to engage and captivate even the toughest crowd.
• Do you have a culture book? Could it use some updates? Paycor’s culture book is a prime example of how you can bring your company culture to life and leave a lasting impression on your employees from the very first day they start.
• What comes to mind when you hear quarterly reviews? Fun? Engaging? A delight to the eye? Probably not. But what if they could be? Compass Development’s Quarterly Review is sleek, smart, and a refreshing change from the traditional approach to sharing market insights. 
• Say sayonara to boring newsletters and check out this eye-pleasing, interactive, and engaging Paycor newsletter that incorporates videos, GIFs, and audio to engage and inspire staff as they read along.
• Recruit the right people and attract talent with this innovative job recruiting template . With crisp, clear, and easy-to-read content, it will leave your prospects scrolling for more.
• Make onboarding new staff a fun and easy experience with this self-paced, customizable resource guide .
• Revamp your product guide with video, scrolling pictures, and a contact form at the end to help you easily gather user info.  
• Does your presentation need a modern update? Take a look at this webinar template . It’s simple and visually appealing with video, key takeaways, and highlights.
• Case studies are tricky. They can be really good or really boring. Many are text heavy and they’re not exactly the crowd pleasers of marketing. But what if you could change that and engage readers from the onset with a structured and easy-to-read format that makes them want to click through to the very end? Look no further and download this case study template .
• User guides don’t have to be lame. This user guide template does all the work for you with its bright, colorful, and easy-to-follow format.

Still craving more? Check out even more examples in our showcase .

How to Create Interactive Documents That Make You Stand Out From the Crowd

The answer is simple: microapps. It sounds complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. Not sure what a microapp is? Microapps are interactive digital assets that enable immersive experiences. Ultimately, they connect your brand with your customers, prospects, and employees so everyone can be part of your story. Sure, you could take a stab at it on your own, or perhaps you’ve already downloaded one of the templates previously mentioned. The thing is, microapps allow you to build interactive documents effortlessly so you have more time to invest in your content — and ultimately your people. Consider Tiled’s seven steps as you go about creating:

• Think like your audience: What are the deeper benefits for them? How do you address their struggles? And speak to them in a format that they identify with? Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
• Establish the outcome: What’s your intent? Educate? Train? Buy? And what’s the ultimate end goal? Are you assessing their comprehension if it’s training material or convincing them to take the next step, whatever that may be?
• Create your structure: Think back to the interactive features you can include: videos, graphics, statistics, quotes. What will speak to your audience?
• Be dynamic by default: What interactive features attract people and which ones will you incorporate into your interactive document? Maybe it’s simple, with navigation and galleries, or perhaps you want more videos and/or surveys.
• Make actions obvious: Ensure the next step is clear so it’s easy for the reader to take action. For example, watch this video, click here to continue, etc.
• Improve with analytics: Remember that it’s a team effort. Work with your team to ensure the flow, visuals, words, interactive content, and call to action are obvious. 
• Measure engagement: With microapps, you can track KPIs like open rates and engagement easily and remove the guesswork. 

Learn More and Get Started Today

The idea of creating interactive documents may sound daunting at first, but now that you know how to go about it the right way and have come to realize just how simple the process can be, it’s time to say goodbye to static content. Join the interactive document revolution. Make your people an active part of your story, inspire, and engage them with meaningful content. 

For more resources including webinars, e-books, and other inspiration, check out Tiled’s Resource Library .

Are blogs more your thing? Read up on the latest and greatest food for thought on our blog .

Let’s do this .

Imagine a new world of content.

Everything you need to know about interactive video

Turn your texts, PPTs, PDFs or URLs to video - in minutes.

Interactive videos create an immersive environment for viewers that is proven to increase engagement.

These videos are used in various industries, from marketing to entertainment to education and training. In this blog post, we explore the world of interactivity, looking at:

• What are interactive videos, and why are they useful?
• How is an interactive video different from video interactivity?
• How to create interactive videos.

What is interactive video?

An interactive video combines video with clickable graphics that change the storyline or next scene. They're usually built using gamification principles and are effective at improving engagement. 

Unlike traditional videos limited to only basic playback controls, interactive videos offer:

• Clickable hotspots that reveal hidden information
• Multiple-choice questions that lead to different scenarios
• Clickable links to web pages
• 360-degree environments
• Automatic quizzes and polls at checkpoints

Interactive videos can be just what you need. Like anything from product demos, training, and educational videos to simulation and augmented reality videos. Interacting with the content in an immersive VR environment makes the experience all the more powerful. Even Netflix's Choose Love is an interactive production, as you can see in this trailer:

These videos' engagement elements create an active viewing experience that is more fun and likely to be remembered.

What is the difference between interactive and interactivity videos?

"Interactive" and "interactivity" are used interchangeably in the context of videos and refer to the same underlying concept — videos that allow user interaction beyond playing, pausing, and skipping through the content. However, there's a subtle difference:

Interactive video requires and responds to user inputs, altering the viewing experience. So, the focus here is on direct interaction and viewer engagement. 

Interactivity is a broader concept. It discusses the feature set of interactivity within videos or a video platform. It includes the various tools, technologies, and design principles that make interactive videos possible.

Any video can become interactive if you: 

1) Add interaction features, like branching techniques, quizzes, or clickable hotspots.

2) Ask viewers to make choices that influence the video's storyline or reveal additional information.

What are the elements of an interactive video?

Decision-making options, quizzes, and polls are the most common in interactive videos. Entertainment interactive videos often use branching storylines, clickable hotspots, and drag-to-look-around environments. 

In contrast, training and educational interactive videos mostly rely on quizzes, polls, forms, input fields, hotspots, and interactive timelines. 

To create an interactive video, you need one or more of the following elements:

• Decision-making options: These branching scenarios or multiple content pathways allow viewers to influence the storyline with their choices.
• Quizzes: Interactive questions and tests provide immediate feedback on the viewer's understanding or information retention.
• Polls: As an engagement instrument, polls collect viewers' opinions or preferences during the video and gather data on views.
• Clickable hotspots: When clicked, the interactive areas within a video can reveal additional information, play a video, or redirect to a website. 
• Drag-to-look-around environments: 360-degree videos are ideal for creating a video tour or various experiences on a team's training grounds. This type of interactive video lets viewers click or drag the environment to explore it in all directions.
• Links to external pages: A lower form of interaction, embedding hyperlinks within a video is a simple way for viewers to access additional information or resources. These links are called on YouTube annotations and on Google display ads.
• Forms or data inputs fields: These are useful for surveys, feedback, or registration purposes. They collect information from viewers directly through the video.
• Interactive timelines: Present a chronological sequence of events or steps, like in a traditional linear video, but let viewers navigate by clicking or hovering to access various information formats. This walkthrough of a custom interactive timeline for litigation lawyers is an example.

Are interactive videos effective?

Interactive videos produce some excellent results. Digital marketers who include interactive videos improve conversion rates by 25% and lead generation by 18%. 

Interactive videos are highly effective in education, marketing, and training. In the learning and development industry, adopting game-based learning scenarios has been shown to increase engagement by 50%.

Interactivity feels, to some extent, like playing a game. As viewers make choices or discover hidden elements in the video, they get more curious and involved. This approach works very well even when teaching at scale.

By observing how viewers interact with the video, you can better understand viewer behavior and preferences. These details will help you further refine and tailor your interactive content strategy.

Marketers often use these videos as a marketing tool to showcase products. Then, they extract user data to guide their future video creation and marketing strategy. The same applies to L&D practitioners who rely on interactivity to make their learning programs more effective.

Zoom needed to train over 1,000 salespeople and used the AI video maker Synthesia to create 200+ micro videos 90% faster. Then, they produced highly interactive and engaging training modules at scale by customizing the AI footage in interactive video tools like Rise 360 and Storyline. Now, instead of relying on lengthy PDF files, their sales teams participate in realistic simulations with interactive sales courses like "Deal Detective," illustrated below:

10 examples of interactive videos

After all this information, it's time to watch some of the best interactive video examples for inspiration. That way, you'll know what to aim for once you create your own interactive videos. 

For many of these examples, the interactive element can only be accessed by taking the course or going to the website directly. You can find the website link between these 👉 two emojis.👈

Interactive video example 1: Video quiz

This interactive video quiz focuses on real-life scenarios instead of theoretical grade concepts. It even includes a friendly AI avatar to guide learners, making you feel more engaged.

The goal is to walk participants through a series of questions with multiple choices. You must select the most fitting answer, and if you're right, you unlock the next question. 

This type of interactive video makes learning simple, practical, and stress-free. It encourages you to apply knowledge to real situations and learn from mistakes. And the best part? There are no grades! It's straightforward, and it works.

👉 Watch the full interactive video quiz here .👈 

Interactive video example 2: A dating experience

"A Date with Markiplier" is a unique but great interactive video. It simulates a date from a first-person point of view, with viewers joining Mark at a restaurant. But as soon as the bill comes, things complicate.

The interactive nature of the series is given by YouTube's "next action prompts." At specific points, you get options to choose what happens next. These choices lead to different scenarios, ranging from comedic to thrilling. 

Want to discover all the possible outcomes? Watch the video multiple times and select a different branching storyline every time. This strategy creates a branching path narrative. But more importantly, it shows the creative options within interactive video content.

Interactive video example 3: Culture fit evaluation

This interactive video by Deloitte takes you through realistic job scenarios. It challenges you to make decisions, and every choice suggests the answer to the big question, " Will you fit into Deloitte? " By the way, that's the actual name of the video. 

After a short intro, the script moves on to an elevator incident. Coffee gets spilled on a manager's coat, and you must say how you'll react. Other choices arise, evaluating your fit with the company culture and role expectations. 

The video content differs from traditional productions in that it involves decision-making tasks. It offers a dynamic workplace experience and insights into the company's values.

👉 Watch the full interactive video here .👈 

Interactive video example 4: Customer service training

Think of this example as a tool to teach your people how to communicate. It's critical to developing great customer relationships.

The script involves engaging scenarios with a customer called Joseph. He's facing a difficult situation. Participants must select from various response strategies that lead to different results. 

Notice how concise, interactive, and focused the video is on personalized learning. It makes the experience direct and relatable. And it shows how we're supposed to train staff to handle real-life interactions with empathy.

👉 Watch the full interactive video quiz here. 👈 

Interactive video example 5: Product demonstration

LaCantina shows us how interactivity can be used to demo even a product like doors. But what's so special about this video that shows you how folding door systems work?

First of all, it's like a choose-your-own-adventure for doors. You have different exploration segments: Operation, Configuration, and Materials. Based on your choice, you get a real sense of how luxurious and versatile these products can be for your home. 

Then, there's also the special "switch view" feature. This one adds a ton of dynamic visual engagement. And the entire interactive video doesn't just educate on the product's complexity but tailors the demo to the varied users' interests.

This example video provides an immersive experience. It's an excellent way to highlight design and features, especially for luxury products.

👉 Watch the full interactive video demo here. 👈 

Interactive video example 6: Diversity training

Creating diversity training can be challenging, especially if you seek a unique approach. But this interactive video transforms it into an engaging detective game. Employees tackle a problem as if solving a mystery, which makes it so much fun.

The task involves examining various perspectives and researching laws. By judging the facts, learners have to reach a verdict. This is "learning through play" in action. It brings an entertaining approach to understanding diversity.

Besides the entertaining delivery, the video shows robust learning tools and covers many topics. Use it as inspiration to discuss sensitive topics in a way viewers resonate with.

Interactive video example 7: A zombie romance

Aardman Studios created a unique production with this interactive zombie romance video. "Dead Lonely" introduces the story of Fred, a lonely zombie searching for his lost love.

The narrative explores love, loss, and survival in a post-apocalyptic world. It combines choice-driven storytelling with immersive animations in a choose-your-own-adventure romance. The branching technique lets you change the plot and enjoy a personalized experience.

Fans of Aardman Studios can recognize their signature animation style. This video uses high-quality visuals and an engaging storyline. It explores human emotions in unexpected circumstances, keeping the viewer on their toes.

Interactive video example 8: Customer testimonials

Who said exploring customer desires and feedback is hard? This engaging, interactive video centered on testimonials certainly seems doable. In this example, users can choose from different customer testimonials. It's a brief experience that keeps you paying attention.

The format is perfect for helping employees grasp customer service nuances. All it takes is a few clicks. It leverages relatable content and introduces a friendly interface. And its success lies in the quick, natural way of exploring the testimonials. The warm atmosphere and appealing visual design also help but are complementary.

Interactive video example 9: Cars collection ad

Ready to dive into the wild with "Built Wild"? This interactive video features the Ford Bronco Family. The presenter and main character is renowned adventurer and filmmaker Jimmy Chin. And the experience takes you on an adventure to see the car's capabilities.

Demonstrations are made on various terrains. You can explore Bronco's features through active engagement with the video or learn more about Chin. All while his expert insights and thrilling narratives weigh in. 

This isn't your typical interactive video production. It's a unique presentation that connects viewers with the essence of exploration and helps increase brand awareness. Subtly, it also highlights the vehicle's rugged appeal.

👉 Watch the full interactive video ad here .👈 

Interactive video example 10: Conflict of interest course

In this video example, you'll discover a different way to teach conflict of interest. The cool part is that you can use it with any other similar theoretical topic. 

As a course, it balances informative content and engaging interactivity. The narrative makes the concept of conflict of interest more accessible and memorable. And the interactive experience caters to diverse learning styles.

The visuals include a mix of video, graphics, and text. And together with the script and interactive elements, they create a fresh approach. Few courses can make learning so intuitive, educational, and entertaining!

How do I make my video interactive?

To make a video interactive, you have to use interactive video elements that allow viewer participation and influence the content or outcome. Below is a four-step overview of how to do this.

Step 1: Choose an interactive video platform

To start, experiment with AI video makers like Synthesia . With text-to-video tools, a user-friendly interface, and lots of templates, you can create videos in minutes rather than hours. Integration with authoring tools like Easygenerator or Articulate 360 means you can add interactions without the hassle of exporting and importing video files. 

Step 2: Conceptualize your video's interactive elements

Decide which interactive elements best serve your goals. Here are some common interaction points to help you get started: 

• Offer viewers choices that lead to different paths/endings with branching storylines.
• Create clickable elements and areas that perform a specific action.
• Embed questions or polls to test knowledge or collect feedback.
• Allow viewers to control the viewpoint and explore the video from every angle.
• Add a timeline for users to navigate and jump to different paths and video sections.
• Enable content changes based on user input.
• Add interactive AI avatars to keep your storyline more engaging.

Step 3: Integrate and synchronize the interactive elements

Upload your video into the chosen interactive video platform and use the interactive elements available on that platform.

As you add interactions to your video, make sure each element is well-timed and programmed to show up at the right moment.

Here's a short video that shows how to add interactive elements to your video with Easygenerator:

Step 4: Test and publish your interactive video

Test the interactive video to ensure it performs as intended and provides an error-free experience. Check that it adapts to different screen sizes and that all interactive controls work correctly.

When done, simply export and publish your video on multiple channels, as established in your marketing strategy.

Leverage AI videos to create interactive learning experiences 

Are you ready to create a video and add interactivity elements to it?

The AI video maker Synthesia will turn your text into videos in minutes, using AI avatars and readymade video templates. It can even write the whole script from some inputs and integrates with various platforms that allow you to make your videos interactive.

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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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Interactive presentation: What it is & how to use it

An interactive presentation includes components that the spectators can examine and entitles them to feel belonging through participation. Prevent your dialogues from being predictable; with an interactive presentation, there is always something overlooked waiting to be noticed.

Workplaces, schools, and organizations have turned to remote working and learning models in response to the ongoing global crisis. We’ve been challenged to communicate through screens without proper preparation, leaving plenty of room for miscommunication. 

Clear and effective communication strategies are vital for the proper development of society from learning centers to the workplace, and presentations are often the perfect tool to acquire the wanted effect on our audience.

The success of a presentation depends on the ability to organize and present it well; having a clear idea of your presentation options and how to get the most out of each of them will be the decisive factor.

What is an interactive presentation?

An interactive presentation is a more dynamic way of presenting than the traditional way, by connecting with an audience through sounds and visual tools that amplify the chances for the topic to impact the participants and gain audience engagement significantly.

These presentations allow communication between an audience and their expositor in a dynamic way, enabling interaction through real-time mutual communication. Dynamics of this type are helpful to connect with clients, students, co-workers, or even remote family members.

The importance of audience engagement

The obvious goal whenever preparing a presentation is to successfully engage our audience by delivering the topic in a clear and significant way, as it’s known that the attention span of a standard audience lasts approximately 7 minutes. If the subject is particularly intriguing, it might take up to 10 minutes.

The lack of interaction with the public is the main reason why audience engagement is not acquired in a traditional presentation setting. If the participants don’t identify themselves as relevant to the topic or the experience, the chances are they won’t pay enough attention.

Interactive presentation Tips for audience engagement

We witness an interactive presentation when the presenter can interact with the audience in a back and forth conversation. Whenever you’re the one in front of a stated audience, you can for sure use some of these ideas and tips we’ve gathered for you.

• Create interactive custom content. Build a trivia game with topics of interest to your audience and start with a competitive game to activate the mind.
• Use visuals in your favor. Audiovisual resources aim to facilitate the communication of the message and the retention of the information presented. We must select them appropriately depending on the audience and the theme.
• Ask direct questions to the audience. When the audience members feel they’re part of the presentation and know there is an opportunity to participate directly, they tend to pay more attention and retain data.
• Set moments for discussion sessions. Moderate the conversation in crucial moments of the presentation to avoid blank spaces between bullet points.
• Use interactive games wisely. There are several ways to implement interactive games within a presentation to keep the audience engaged, such as trivia games and fun quizzes.
• Share study cases. A personal story that exemplifies the topic can be engaging when used correctly.

In addition to keeping your audience engaged during a presentation by following these tips, it’s crucial to have the right tools.

Let audience distraction become a thing of the past with QuestionPro LivePolls! Create presentations that look and feel like the best experience for your audience to stay engaged. Stop them from getting glassy-eyed by breaking the monotony.

LivePolls 2.0 is entirely FREE, and we have tons of new features coming your way. Claim your Free account now!

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Interactive Presentation 101: Tips, Templates & Tools

Learn how to create an interactive presentation online. See examples of ready-to-use interactive presentation slides that are optimized for engagement.

Dominika Krukowska

7 minute read

Short answer

How can I make a presentation interactive?

• Add a video on the cover slide
• Use narrated scrollytelling design
• Add multimedia (videos, animations, and text-to-speech readers)
• Visualize your data using live graphs and charts
• Group your content in tabs
• Add input options such as embedded apps, surveys, or calculators
• Hide additional data under “read more”
• Incorporate a chatbot
• End with an interactive next step

Interactivity is a core experience, not just cosmetics

These days, everyone's trying to add a touch of flair to their decks. A fancy transition here, a clickable element there. But let's be honest: it won’t transform the core experience.

It's like putting racing stripes on a family car; sure, it looks faster, but under the hood, it's the same old engine.

If you're settling for these surface-level enhancements, you're missing out on the chance to truly engage your audience.

Instead of leaving them with a memorable experience, you're giving them just another presentation they'll forget by the next coffee break.

By using tools that provide interactivity as the core experience rather than cosmetics, you can transform your presentations from passive viewings into immersive experiences.

It's about creating a two-way conversation, where your audience doesn't just watch but participates.

If you want to elevate your content from being just another slide deck to something that resonates and inspires action you’ll wanna stick around.

This post will give you world-leading interactive presentation examples to learn from and templates you can use immediately.

Let’s go!

Why static presentations are bad for business

Let's face it: static presentations are like that dreaded homework from school. Remember the feeling of slogging through pages of text, eyes glazing over, wishing to be done with it and go do something actually interesting?

That's what your audience feels when they read your static slide deck.

Static presentations just dump information. They're a one-way street, and they expect the audience to passively absorb everything. It's a pain, and honestly, no one's a fan.

Now, imagine a presentation that's interactive. It's like stepping into a playground of information.

Your audience isn't just sitting there; they're involved. They can choose their path, delve deeper into what intrigues them, and skip what doesn't. It's a two-way journey, tailored to each viewer's pace and interest.

Here’s what the difference between static and interactive looks like:

Why more interactivity will NOT get you more engagement

When it comes to presentations, there's a clear divide: they're either interactive or they're not. It's like coffee; it's either decaf or it's not. There's no semi-caffeinated middle ground.

As long as you remain within the bounds of the legacy PowerPoint slide format, no amount of interactivity you add to it will make your presentation worth engaging with.

Now, you might be thinking, "But what about those Canva-like solutions? They add some flair, right?" Yes, they can jazz up your slides with a bit of motion and some shiny effects.

But let's be real: a sprinkle of glitter doesn't turn a rock into a diamond. Beneath the surface bling, the core experience remains static, limited, and boring. A bit of animation doesn’t change that.

These tools might give the illusion of interactivity, but it's just that—an illusion. True interactivity means giving your audience the reins and letting them navigate, explore, and engage with your content on their terms.

Anything less is just a dressed-up version of the same old static PowerPoint.

9 tips for making a truly powerful interactive presentation

Creating a presentation that stands out in today's digital overload is no small feat. But with the right tools and approach, you can turn passive viewers into active participants.

Here's how to make a truly powerful interactive presentation:

1) Add a video on the cover slide

Think of a time-lapse of a bustling city or a heartwarming clip from a community event. Such visual hooks not only captivate but also set the context for your narrative.

Here's an example of a deck with a video on the cover slide:

2) Use narrated design

A narrated design means structuring your slides to unfold like a story, guiding the viewer from one point to the next seamlessly. Letting your audience explore at their own pace increases engagement.

Here's a great example of narrated design:

3) Add multimedia elements

Go beyond text. Integrate images, sound bites, and short clips to highlight points, break up the flow, and cater to different learning preferences.

Here's an example of a multimedia deck:

4) Visualize your data using live graphs and charts

Numbers tell a tale, but in chunks, they're snooze-worthy. Use live graphs and charts to represent data in a digestible, visually appealing manner.

Here ' s an example of a presentation with dataviz elements:

5) Group your content in tabs

Think of this as chapters in a book. Tabs help segment and organize your content, allowing viewers to jump to sections that interest them most.

Here's an example of a tabs slide:

6) Add input options such as embedded apps, surveys, or calculators

Embedded apps can provide tailored experiences, surveys gather immediate audience feedback, and calculators allow for real-time data manipulation.

By including them, you invite your audience to actively engage, making the content more memorable and the experience more dynamic.

7) Hide additional data under “read more”

Offer a teaser, then dive deep. This approach ensures you cater to both the skim-readers and the deep-divers in your audience.

8) Incorporate a chatbot

It's like having a 24/7 assistant. Chatbots can provide instant answers, clarify doubts and keep viewers on track.

Here's an example of a deck with a chatbot:

9) End with an interactive next step

Ditch the generic "Thank You" slide. Instead, wrap up with a call to action, a thought-provoking question, or a personalized video message. It's about leaving a lasting impression and sparking action.

Here's an example of a presentation with a smart CTA:

How to create an interactive presentation with AI

As screens around us buzz with endless streams of content, the main challenge is creating presentations that rise above the noise.

Thankfully, with the help of AI, you can create an impactful interactive presentation in 6 easy steps.

1) Define your presentation’s purpose with AI

Start by letting the AI know the goal of your presentation. Whether you're pitching a solution to prospects, explaining a concept during a workshop, or showcasing quarterly results to stakeholders, AI can generate content that's both relevant and engaging.

2) Introduce your context

Provide the AI with a brief overview of who you are, your company's mission, the product or service you're highlighting, and the industry landscape. This helps the AI tailor the presentation to your unique narrative.

3) Choose a design template

No need to build from the ground up. Platforms like Storydoc offer a variety of design templates optimized for real-world performance. Pick one that resonates with your brand's voice and aesthetic.

4) Customize and add interactivity

This is where the magic happens. Integrate your content, adjust the design, and watch as the template adapts to fit your narrative. Spice things up with clickable tabs, real-time data charts, or other interactive elements.

And if you're feeling a bit unsure about your multimedia choices, you can also let the AI suggest some for you.

5) Add dynamic personalization

Modern tools allow for dynamic content adjustments. You can connect to your CRM, fetch relevant data, and use it to create presentations that feel tailor-made for each viewer in a matter of seconds.

This trick will make your audience feel more connected to your content and boost overall engagement.

6) Review, refine, and stay in control

Before hitting send, give your presentation a once-over. Make sure it flows seamlessly and your message shines through.

And here's the best part: since platforms like Storydoc are online-based, you can make on-the-fly adjustments even after sharing your presentation. No more “Did I just share the old draft?” panic.

7) Advanced: Use analytics to make continuous improvements

Every presentation you create with Storydoc comes with access to a robust analytics suite. This gives you a bird's-eye view of how your content performs, from viewer engagement metrics to slide-by-slide analysis.

Use this data to refine, tweak, and perfect your presentations over time.

Here's a short video explaining how our AI presentation maker works:

Best interactive presentation examples to inspire your own

Dive into our gallery and let these interactive presentation examples spark your inspiration and guide your next presentation journey.

Remember those captivating story books from childhood? The ones where you could choose your own adventure, turning to different pages based on your choices, and every read felt fresh and new?

That's the magic interactive presentation templates bring to the table.

While traditional presentations often feel like a boring lecture, we flip the script. These templates don't just present; they engage. Every element, every interaction, is optimized to ensure your audience isn't just watching—they're participating.

And it's not just about aesthetics. These templates have been in the trenches, battle-tested in real-world scenarios, and have come out as champions, driving results and making lasting impressions.

Best tools for making interactive presentations

While tools like Canva might add a touch of sparkle, they often fall short of creating a truly interactive experience.

So, if you're looking to elevate your presentations from static to dynamic, here's a list of the best tools that genuinely make a difference:

Storydoc is leading the charge in creating AI-powered interactive business presentations for sales, marketing, and reporting. It transforms traditional business decks into dynamic, immersive stories. With AI-driven design, content suggestions, and built-in deck analytics, it brings a storytelling experience into business communications.

Genially offers educational presentations used to enrich learning materials inside and outside the classroom. From dynamic infographics to gamification and thousands of classroom-ready templates, it comes with a range of tools to make your content interactive and engaging.

Foleon is an intuitive all-in-one platform that focuses on creating mini-sites that provide immersive content experiences that work across devices, packed with rich media and interactive elements.

Hi, I'm Dominika, Content Specialist at Storydoc. As a creative professional with experience in fashion, I'm here to show you how to amplify your brand message through the power of storytelling and eye-catching visuals.

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How to make a presentation interactive and exciting

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What makes a presentation interactive?

Main benefits of interactive presentation, 9 ways to make your presentation interactive, types of interactive presentations, take your presentations to the next level.

An impactful speech or lecture requires more than being an articulate speaker . If you want the information to stick, your audience should engage with you and the material you’re presenting.

And that audience is changing. Among people with teleworkable jobs, 76% worked remotely some, most, or all of the time . Presentations are tricky when you’re catering to a virtual audience and don’t have the benefit of a physical space. And they’re even trickier when the people you’re speaking to are a mix of in-office and remote workers.

Creating a good presentation that incorporates the needs of both in-person and online audiences can feel like a tall order. But there’s a way to transform your spectators from passive listeners to active participants, giving them a memorable experience no matter the platform. And that solution is interaction.

Learning how to make a presentation interactive can grab and keep your audience's attention so they remember your session and its key takeaways. Here’s how to use interactive elements like Q&As, live demonstrations, and fun quizzes to make your presentations more exciting.

An interactive presentation has elements that involve the audience. The presenter engages with the group in real-time, asking and answering questions or encouraging participants to voice their opinions. Interactive presentations can also include online polls, quizzes, and face-to-face activities between audience members.

You’ve probably experienced a standard presentation where the speaker stands at the front of a projected PowerPoint slideshow, talking at you. Your only chance to engage comes when they open the floor to audience questions, and that’s only if there’s enough time. 

The presenter will still get the point across, but this approach can get boring, and it might be hard to pay attention if you’re not engaged. Around 90% of people admit to daydreaming during meetings and presentations , which can impact comprehension. An interactive presenter transforms the audience from viewers into active contributors and collaborators, making it easier to pay attention and gain from the meeting. 

A captivating presentation does more than just get the audience involved. It improves comprehension, helps you connect, and personalizes the experience. Here are more benefits to including interactive elements in presentations: 

• Connection: Human connection benefits everyone involved . An interactive presentation offers more back-and-forth between yourself and your audience, creating a sense of familiarity and an outlet for connection.
• Comprehension: Studies show that during conversations, the speaker’s brain activity and the listener’s brain activity mimic each other, which improves understanding . Interactivity helps the audience better absorb the information you’re presenting. 
• Engagement: Employee engagement leads to a happier workforce and improved company culture . Making the audience part of every meeting can contribute to their experience at work overall, and it’ll hold their interest in the moment. 
• Cooperation: Soliciting contributions or setting up participation activities means you won’t be talking for the whole presentation, which can help you feel less tired. You’re letting the audience do some of the work for you.
• Personalization: When you draw on your audience’s input, you’re creating a customized experience that is more meaningful and memorable. And interactivity means you’ll never give the same presentation twice, so your material will stay fresh.

Choose one (or a few) interactive elements to add interest to your presentation and improve comprehension. Experiment with different options and find the activities that stick. If you aren’t sure how it went, ask for presentation feedback to learn what the group enjoyed most and what you could improve. 

Here are a few interactive methods to try:

1. Icebreaker questions

Using a fun icebreaker to kick off your presentation creates a connection between yourself and members of the audience. You can keep it simple by asking a straightforward question or separating participants into small groups for an activity like charades. Whatever method you choose, you’ll help everyone relax, set the tone, and encourage participation for what’s to come. 

2. Storytelling

Listening to a good story makes your brain more engaged and helps you relate to the storyteller . Introduce your talk with a personal anecdote and use it to create a framework for your presentation. Try using music clips, video clips, or sound effects to add an extra level of interest.

As your speech progresses, you can refer back to your narrative and connect your ideas, creating a clearer line of thought. Telling a good story can also create a rapport with your audience, helping them relate to you through empathy or shared experience.  

Using interactive polls for presentations demonstrates that you care about your audience’s opinion. You can use a poll to gauge interest in a specific topic, learn how the group is feeling in the moment, or segue into a new section of the presentation. A live poll will also provide immediate feedback, helping you gauge whether your content has the effect you want it to.

Adding an interactive quiz for a presentation can help you read the room and assess your audience’s comprehension. Giving a quick quiz at the end of every section also lets you know if you need to follow up and explain your point further or open the floor to questions. Apps like Kahoot work well because everyone can pull out their smartphones and join in. The friendly competition of a quiz can also be a good motivator.

5. Question and answer

If you hold a Q&A session at the end of your presentation, the group might be too tired or rushed to find it meaningful. Instead, invite participants to ask their questions at key points throughout your talk. The information will be fresher in their minds, and a moment of conversation breaks up the lecture.

6. Demonstrations

If your presentation is about a product or concept, try showing it instead of telling it. Talking about the new app you’re launching isn’t as exciting as showing how it works. Demonstrating a concept, product, or service offers hands-on interaction and can make a more significant impact than words alone could.

7. Movement

Spending the whole presentation at the front of the room might bore both you and your audience. And it can be hard to create a personal connection when there’s a separation between you.

When you’re speaking, close the gap by moving through the venue space, pacing around, or speaking directly to different sections of the audience. Proximity and body language can help reinforce the connection you’ve built throughout your presentation.

Using props might sound gimmicky, but they can be powerful tools to help audiences engage with your material. Allowing your audience to interact with an item related to your speech can help break the third wall and add an element of fun.

Find an object that represents what you’re talking about, either literally or symbolically. For example, in Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED talk about her stroke, she shows the audience a real human brain to explain what happened .

You may have many methods for gauging your presentation’s success. Did the audience laugh at the jokes? Did you receive thank-you emails after ? This kind of indirect feedback can be telling, but it doesn’t provide you with actionable data.

Instead, incorporating a post-event survey gives your audience one last chance to share their thoughts and opinions with you. It gives the group a moment for self-reflection on what they’ve learned, and the feedback can help you improve your presentation skills before your next talk.

To apply interactive techniques that work the way you want them to, you need to be clear on the type of presentation you’re giving. Presenting the past quarter’s sales numbers has vastly different requirements than a lecture inspiring high school students to start volunteering. Understanding your audience and having clear goals will inform the format of your presentation and what kind of interaction suits it best. You have some freedom to mix and match elements of one format into another as long as they're complimentary, like adding persuasive characteristics to an inspirational speech. Here are five types of interactive presentations, with examples.

1. Informative

The goal of an informative presentation is to educate your audience. The structure shares factual information in a direct, unadorned fashion. For this kind of presentation, quizzes and polls work best because they test the audience’s knowledge. You can also use props to help them better understand complex information.

EXAMPLE: You present a workshop about your company’s style guide to new members of the marketing team and use a quiz to gauge their understanding.

2. Persuasive

You use a persuasive format when making a sales pitch or convincing an audience to take specific actions. Props, movement, and Q&As all work well for this format because they keep your audience engaged and give them the chance to learn more about the topic.

EXAMPLE: You’re leading a public meeting to encourage citizens to begin recycling and composting, and you bring a full garbage bag to represent the amount of waste each person produces in a day.

3. Inspirational

If you’re familiar with TED talks, you’ve likely experienced an inspirational presentation format. These speeches use storytelling to boost morale or inspire audience members to change their behavior or perspective. Try moving around the space or asking the group an icebreaker question to get them involved with the story.

EXAMPLE: You give a speech about how you moved up the ladder at your company, and you move around the room to better connect with the audience and tell them they could do the same.

4. Outcome-related

This collaborative presentation structure generates the most interaction between yourself and the participants because its goal is to work together. Use it to brainstorm solutions to a problem or determine the process you need to reach a desired outcome. Polls, quizzes, and surveys all work well for outcome-related presentations. EXAMPLE: You hold a meeting to develop a social media strategy for a new client and give an anonymous survey where team members can submit ideas.

5. Instructive 

An instructive presentation takes a deep dive into a topic. By the end, audiences expect to better understand an idea, concept, or possibly a product. Using storytelling and props can help demonstrate difficult concepts and give an audience more ways to connect with the topic.

EXAMPLE: You give a lecture on the benefits of solar panels on domestic buildings, and you bring in a solar panel with a lightbulb to show how it works.

Speaking in front of a group can be a little intimidating. But learning how to make a presentation interactive can elevate the event and relieve some of the nervousness associated with public speaking .

Whether you’re reviewing the results of a marketing campaign or speaking about an issue near and dear to your heart, interactivity helps transform a one-sided lecture into a participatory event. Meaningful audience interactions help your audience remember what you’re talking about and connect with the story you’re telling.

So next time you develop a virtual team-building exercise or present last month’s sales report, you’ll have the interactive presentation ideas you need to create an engaging experience, no matter your audience.

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Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

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How to create an interactive presentation and keep viewers engaged.

For most people, the word “presentation” is synonymous with boredom. Pair it with “business” or “educational” and you make it even worse. Before they even sit down to watch, your audience has flashbacks to that endless chemistry PowerPoint in the 10th grade. Yikes.

But here’s the thing: online presentations don’t have to be mind-numbing. Like most trends that started in 1990, they just need a makeover.

According to the experts , the best way to make your presentation more interesting, engaging, and effective is to make it interactive . It’s not even that hard to do. With the right tools, you can make your presentation interactive in just a few minutes.

What is an interactive presentation?

Unlike a static presentation, an interactive presentation includes opportunities for your audience to get involved in real-time. This can mean including video clips for discussion, live polls or quizzes, in-person activities, or incorporating stories to create a more engaging experience.

In a standard presentation, audience members watch something. In an interactive presentation, they do something. And when we learn by doing , we retain material significantly better .

There are tonnes of benefits to making your presentation interactive.

• Boost engagement: interactive elements make your presentation more engaging. When your audience knows they’re going to be a part of the experience, they’re more likely to stay present and focused throughout.
• Connect with your audience: the lecture format is one-sided. The presenter becomes the talking head, and everyone else is free to doze off. Making your presentation interactive transforms the lecture into a conversation, allowing you to connect with the other people in the room.
• Share the workload: interactive presentations make presenting easier. When you toss questions or activities to the crowd, you share the burden of transmitting the information. More work from the audience can mean less work for you.
• Personalised delivery: because they’re informed by participants, each interactive presentation is unique. That means you can tailor your presentation to the people you’re speaking to, personalising the experience to make it that much more meaningful.

The main types of interactive presentation

Before we get into how to build the perfect interactive presentation, you've first got to decide what type of presentation you want to run.

Is it formal? Entertaining? A live webinar or a delayed video uploaded to YouTube?Are you speaking to investors for your non-profit , prospective clients, or just trying to convince your partner to let you splash out some cash on a new TV?

The type of presentation you're running influences everything from your tone to the kind of online tools you might use to build it.

Your interactive elements should be relevant to the type of presentation you’re giving. You might include a Kahoot poll if you teach third-grade history, but you’ll need something a little more professional for a sales pitch.

8 ways to make your presentation interactive with Paperform

Paperform is a form builder first and foremost, but you can also use our tools as an interactive presentation software. Just treat each page of your form as a slide to create a custom presentation your audience will love.

It’s not a replacement for Powerpoint or Prezi, but it’s a great way to bridge some gaps and add interactive elements to your presentation. One of our own, Josh, uses Paperform to help his son Jesse create presentations for school.

Most recently, Jesse and his dad made an incredible presentation on the Amazon, complete with wild jungle GIFs, interactive animal quiz questions, and plenty of surprising jungle facts. We made this quick replica to show you how to use Paperform as an interactive presentation software.

When you host your slides on Paperform, you get access to all the sweet features that make our digital suite of tools so unique, like conditional logic , advanced calculations , heaps of design options, and built-in robust data analytics.

Making an effective presentation shouldn’t be a chore. Let’s walk through eight interactive presentation ideas you can try out today, and how you can implement them with Paperform.

1. Make use of visual elements

There’s nothing worse for your presentation design than endless blocks of text. Nobody wants to be lulled to sleep with a bedtime story about this quarter's financial goals.

As a general rule of thumb, if you’re going to say it, you don’t need to write it. The text should be used to remind you of your key points and topics, not to explain them in detail. That’s what you’re there to do. Try to use graphs, charts, or visualisations of data whenever possible.

Paperform it: If you’ve collected your data via a Paperform poll or survey , we’ll make the visuals for you. Just head to our built-in analytics dashboard and download custom graphs created from your form results.

And if you create your interactive presentation slides with Paperform, you can also make use of our native integration with Unsplash and Giphy. Just think: all the royalty-free images and GIFs you might want, all without leaving the editor. You can even edit the images with our built-in editor.

Our integration with Adobe creative cloud allows you to import your branding and colour palette automatically, so creating personalised presentations is easy. And once you make one you like, you can share it as a template with the rest of your team so everyone can start from the same square one.

If you’re not using Paperform to host your presentation, you can always find your visuals separately and incorporate them into your slides on Prezi or Powerpoint. Wherever you host your slideshow, aim to have at least one visual for every two slides.

2. Start with icebreakers to set the tone

Icebreakers aren’t just for summer camp and blind dates. You can use them to build rapport, set the tone for what's to follow, and show that you have created a safe space that encourages audience participation. They can even be—dare we say?—fun.

When picking your icebreakers, try to be creative and topical. It’s a great opportunity to introduce audience interaction and gain some information that might be relevant to your presentation.

Let’s say you’re giving a presentation to your colleagues about the success of a recent advertising campaign. You could ask everyone what their favourite commercial is and why. Down the line, you can return to these answers for a brainstorming session about your next ad campaign.

If you're working with a small group (say 5-10 people) you can chat with your audience directly. If you’re working with a larger audience, you can ask folks to chat in pairs or send small groups off in virtual breakout rooms.

Paperform it: With Paperform, you can send out your icebreaker as a quick, interactive poll. Include it within the presentation itself, or make a separate one and add the link to your slideshow software of choice.

However you choose to share it, your respondents can answer your Paperform in a few clicks, and you can view the results in real-time. It’s a constructive way to connect efficiently with your audience when presenting remotely.

3. Find your narrative

A story can be a great hook. Draw people in with an engaging personal anecdote, and return to it throughout the presentation. It’ll keep them engaged from the beginning, and recenter them along the way if they drift off.

Take our ad campaign presentation. You might start off with a short story about how much you loved Frosted Flakes commercials as a kid, and how you went as Tony the Tiger for Halloween one year. You can return to elements of this story throughout (maybe even a photo of the infamous costume).

Why use stories in a business presentation? For the same reason we tell fables to children. Stories to help us learn. When there’s a narrative behind your presentation, your audience will be inherently more connected to it, and more likely to remember what you say.

Paperform it: Incorporating a story can be done in just about any presentation software. But if you want to get really creative with it, you could use Paperform to build your narrative into an escape room .

Just pick your story, create a few puzzles that relate to it, and use our advanced conditional logic to create a lock and key or branching-style escape room. You can present the escape room alongside your presentation, or hide the clues within the presentation itself to keep your participants hanging on every slide.

4. Let your audience decide the presentation order

Most presenters use a slide deck to support their presentations. Whether you use Powerpoint, Prezi, Google Slides, or heaps of cardstock like Andrew Lincoln in Love Actually , slide decks are a great way to keep yourself on track.

There are three main ways to progress through a slide deck.

• Standard navigation: this is the presentation you’re probably familiar with. A presenter clicks through their slides in real time, but the order is predetermined.
• A video presentation: a linear presentation where slides automatically play one after the other. This is great for presentations that will be inserted into a website or landing page , and not necessarily accompanied by a live person.
• Flexible navigation: this kind of presentation is influenced by the audience and the presenter. The presenter clicks through slides but can skip around freely and use interactive elements like buttons, clickable images, and direct download links .

Paperform it: Paperform can help with all three. For standard navigation, simply add each “slide” as a new page in your Paperform, and progress through the pages as needed. Your respondents can do this, too.

Just send the link and allow latecomers or no-shows to progress through the presentation on their own time.

You can do the same thing with video presentations. Just add your recordings on individual pages, and include a short quiz after each video. With a little conditional logic, you can block viewers from progressing until they answer the comprehension questions correctly.

And then there’s the funky one: flexible navigation. It’s a great way to keep viewers engaged and on their toes. By using conditional logic, you can allow your audience members to alter the course of the presentation in real-time based on their feedback.

Take the ad campaign presentation, for example. You could ask folks what they would rather go over first: Instagram or YouTube stats. If they go with Instagram, you would click that option and your presentation would navigate you to the appropriate page.

Your audience doesn't need to (and probably shouldn't) decide the order of your entire presentation. But adding just one or two opportunities for viewer choice can make a huge difference in engagement levels.

5. Add polls and quizzes for gathering feedback

Polling audience members shows them that their opinion matters. It's also a fantastic way to get a sense of how the presentation is going, and whether attendees are understanding the topic.

Consider adding a true or false question with a surprising answer, or a quick pop quiz at the end of each section. If you’re presenting in person, you can answer the questions yourself based on feedback from the audience, like voting by applause or raised hands.

If your presentation is virtual, you can have respondents answer the poll on their own devices, either in the presentation itself or via a separate link.

Paperform it: Paperform makes creating polls and quizzes easy. We have over 25 field types to choose from, so you can gather the right type of data every time. You can send out a lightning-fast yes or no poll, or ask your officemates to rank all the Harry Potter movies. We’ve got ranking and rating fields for that express purpose.

All Paperforms are mobile-optimised, so you can be sure your presentation polls and quizzes will look great on any device. And if you’re making a longer quiz but don’t want to overwhelm respondents , you can toggle on guided mode to display one question at a time.

Form a better life now.

6. share a hashtag to promote social interaction.

We live in the era of the second-screen experience. The chances are that while you're speaking, folks are simultaneously tweeting, emailing, or operating their entire small business on their phones.

Sure, that means your audience might be distracted. But fighting the current by asking them to turn their phones off is a losing battle. If you can’t beat them, join them.

Try making a branded hashtag to encourage participants to engage with your presentation on social media. It's a combination of word-of-mouth marketing, event promotion and social interaction all rolled into one.

When done well, social hashtags can:

• Encourage people to promote your event on social media
• Give attendees a way to share further discussions online
• Allow you to look at tagged responses to analyse customer opinions
• Draw attention to your presentation
• Keep attendees engaged with the material

Paperform it: Paperform integrates with all your favourite social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. With this connection in place, you can automatically post a tweet when someone submits your form.

You could use this integration to give folks a shout-out when they complete your digital presentation at home. Just include a short Paperform at the end of your presentation, ask for their handle and permission to shout them out online, and have a congratulatory post shared on your platform automatically.

It’s a great way to celebrate your audience members and boost awareness about your online presentation or webinar at the same time.

7. Include multiple Q&A opportunities

Sometimes, the best ideas are the simplest ones. If you want to know how your audience is going, just ask them. Q&A sessions give you the chance to do just that.

The trouble with traditional Q&A sessions is that they come too late into the presentation, and are too short to be meaningful. How often have you sat through an hour-long presentation, only to be asked if you have any questions at the very end?

One-time, end-of-presentation Q&As are not ideal. It’s easy for participants to forget their questions, and it puts pressure on them to make their time count.

There’s a better way: incorporate several, shorter Q&A sessions throughout your presentation. At the end of each section, take some time to answer audience questions and listen to audience input.

When your participants know they’ll be able to ask questions regularly, they’re more likely to stay present with each section. It also takes some of the pressure off and gives more shy participants several chances to consider raising a hand.

Paperform it: If you host your presentation on Paperform, you can create a customised Q&A slide that you can use at the end of each section of your presentation.

Worried about time? Embed the video of a favourite song, and allow participants to ask questions while it plays. You get yourself a built-in timer, and you break up your presentation with some music clips. Win-win.

8. Improve based on participant feedback

You might have your own markers of a successful presentation—whether people laughed, followed you on Twitter, or sent you an email saying how much they loved it. That's all well and good, but it doesn’t give you a lot of tangible data . The best way to measure the success of your presentation is with a post-event survey .

Leave your audience with one final moment of interaction by sending out a feedback form after your presentation. They get to share their thoughts, and you gain actionable insights on how you can improve for your next presentation.

Paperform it: Paperform has over 45 feedback form templates for you to choose from, each made by one of our in-house experts. Of course, you can make your own from scratch, or pick one of our other 650+ ready-made templates just because you like the style.

Whether you’re looking for a quick CSAT rating or lengthy open-text responses, Paperform can help you do it. Our no-code platform is designed to be easy to use, without skimping on all the advanced features you want.

Level up your presentation today

With the help of a PowerPoint maker , you can connect with your audience through interactive experiences, original content, and thoughtful slide design, you can put an end to boring presentations. Whether you’re working on your next pitch for the sales team or creating an interactive webinar for your website, Paperform can help you do it.

Our software is designed to be versatile, intuitive, and genuinely helpful. It’s a powerful tool that allows you to automate more of the mundane through our 3,000 direct and Zapier integrations, as well as our built-in shortcuts like automatic emails.

Want to give it a go for yourself? Try Paperform today with our 14-day free trial , and discover what you can create.

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Present how you think.

Concepts and ideas don’t always follow a straight line. Prioritize understanding and attention over step-by-step slides with linear and nonlinear formats.

1. Feel free to improvise

Miro never locks you in. Run an impromptu show-and-tell in full-screen mode where your audience follows your view on the board.

2. Speak to your story

Walk through your content in a seamless slideshow of frames and pan away to share more content on other parts of the board.

3. Elevate your collab sessions

Present content and pre-planned activities to facilitate powerful meetings and workshops.

Presentations are boring. On Miro, they’re not.

How to Make an Interactive PowerPoint Presentation: An Expert Guide (Free Downloadable Playbook)

Zhun Yee Chew

Are your PowerPoint presentations lacking impact and failing to engage your audience? You’re not alone. I experienced that before. I used to spend hours carefully crafting the perfect PowerPoint presentations only to be met with disinterested faces.

In a world where attention spans are getting shorter, traditional PowerPoint presentations often struggle to hold the interest of the audience. So here’s the hard truth: unless you adapt and embrace interactivity in your PowerPoint presentations, your valuable hard work and content run the risk of getting lost in presentations.

Fret not, as in this comprehensive guide, we will share with you expert tips on how to make an interactive PowerPoint presentation through interactive animations, transitions, hyperlinks, quizzes, games, and many more.

And perhaps the sweetest part of the deal is that you will also have access to a downloadable playbook of 60+ pages with a wealth of tutorials, templates, cheat sheets, resources and tools to elevate your PowerPoint skills from average to extraordinary through interactive PowerPoint presentations.

Are you prepared to impress those who once found your presentation dull? If your answer is a resounding ‘yes,’ then let’s begin.

What is an Interactive Presentation?

What is an interactive powerpoint presentation.

Interactive PowerPoint presentations are simply PowerPoint presentations that are made interactive to convey information in a more dynamic and engaging manner.

Creating an interactive PowerPoint presentation involves deciding if you want to make your slide content interactive or if you want your audience to interact with your slides. 

Interactive PowerPoint presentations can generally be divided into two main dimensions: interaction with slide content through interactive elements and fostering interaction with the audience.

Interaction with Slide Content:

In the first dimension, PowerPoint presentations are made interactive through enhancing the slides content with interactive elements, usually native to PowerPoint. 

We will cover interactive elements including:

• Transitions
• Interactive data visualization
• Annotations. 

They function to enhance slide interactivity through adding movement to static objects, enabling non-linear slides navigation, as well as adding a dynamic touch to data and information presentation. 

Audience Interaction:

In the second dimension, PowerPoint presentations are made interactive through interaction between the presenter and the audience, usually with the help of PowerPoint add-in tools. We will cover: 

• Assessments
• Brainstorming
• Collaborative multimedia uploading

Once you have decided which strategy you would like to use, you can then follow  these step-by-step guide  and the following expert tips to turn your PowerPoint slides into an interactive experience!

Benefits of an Interactive Presentation

The fact that you are still reading this suggests that you don’t need further convincing on the benefits of interactive PowerPoint presentations. 

However, if you do, here are some quick statistics:

68% of individuals hold the belief that interactive presentations have a greater potential for being remembered. Webinar Care

This means that a simple action of making your PowerPoint slides interactive has a profound impact on how your presentation is received by the audience. From our years of experience creating interactive PowerPoint presentations, they generally: 

• Increases  engagement , motivation and knowledge  retention . 
• Result in better  impression  and more impactful messaging being conveyed.
• Allow presenters to better tailor their content or offerings to the audience or clients because they can gather  real-time feedback .
• Open up room for  creative   storytelling  and showcases.

Interactive Puzzle PowerPoint Templates

Master the tricks to turn your PowerPoint into an interactive experience today!

Expert Tips on How to Make an Interactive PowerPoint Presentation – Before Presenting

1. add animations, but use them judiciously.

The first and most straightforward way of making your PowerPoint presentations interactive is through adding animations to your slides. However, so many people use PowerPoint animations the wrong way. PowerPoint animations are more than just making bullet points or images appear or fly in during your presentation.

Remember, using animations excessively in your PowerPoint presentation will only reduce the appeal and professionalism of your slides. The key is to use them judiciously and purposefully. Before you hit the “Animations” tab, ask yourself, “Does this animation enhance the message I want to convey to my audience?”  

2. Add 3D PowerPoint Animations Using PowerPoint Native 3D Stock Elements

Did you know that PowerPoint has free animated 3D elements you can use? We recommend you to try them up to instantly upgrade your presentation from ordinary to extraordinary. 

❓ How?  Simply go to Insert > 3D models > stock 3D models > animated models. And you will find a wide range of free 3D models ranging from food and animals to plants and characters, and many more. You can also select different animation scenes by heading to the Animations tab.

3. Add Animations With Triggers for Visual Excitement

You can take your PowerPoint animations up a notch by incorporating combining animations with triggers to create interactive pop-ups with extra information . These on-click pop-ups are valuable when presenting a map or when you want to explore specific aspects of an object or topic in more detail. You can also use these pop-ups as markers to alert the audience to exciting elements within different parts of the slide, as such: 

❓How? To create on-click pop-ups in your PowerPoint slides, first add shapes that will become clickable buttons, one to “open” the pop-up and the other to “close” the pop-up. Then, add text boxes with extra information you want to show, as well as entrance and exit animations. Combine the animations with “triggers” to activate the animations when the open or close buttons are clicked on. 

For a more detailed tutorial on this pop-up animation, download our Interactive PowerPoint Playbook  below. 👇

4. add non-linear slide transition.

A quick way to add interactivity to your PowerPoint slides is by using PowerPoint transitions. The first we want to discuss is PowerPoint Zoom. PowerPoint Zoom enables you to zoom in and out of and navigate to specific sections or slides on click, anytime during your presentation.

To  access the PowerPoint Zoom feature : click on Insert in the  PowerPoint ribbon  >  Zoom  > then choose  Slide ,  Section , or  Summary   Zoom . Each of these PowerPoint Zoom option serves slightly different functions:

• Slide Zoom: zooms into specific slides
• Section zoom: zooms into specific sections
• Summary Zoom: creates a summary slide for the different slides or sections in your PowerPoint presentation for easy navigation.

❓ How? To  set up PowerPoint slide zoom , select the starting slide where you wish to implement the Zoom effect. Next, click  Insert  >  Zoom  >  Slide Zoom . Here, you can pick the specific slide or slides you want to zoom in on. Click the Insert button, and thumbnails of the chosen slides will be added to your current slide.

Alternatively, for a more manual setup process, you can also set up a navigation menu at the beginning of your presentation that allows the audience to jump to different sections or slides using hyperlinks.  Read more in the Hyperlinks section below. 

5. Add PowerPoint Morph

Like PowerPoint Zoom, PowerPoint Morph empowers presenters to create dynamic transitions that elevate the visual storytelling in their presentations. But PowerPoint Morph brings storytelling to a whole new level and adds a layer of intrigue to your slides by simulating object transitions or evolution across slides. It functions similarly to animations but offers a smoother and more organic visual experience, without the need for complex setup steps. 

Personally, we think the outcomes generated by PowerPoint Morph are more professional and polished-looking as compared to traditional animations. And if you are looking for a more advanced-looking presentation, try this 3D morph animation In PowerPoint .

We’d also like to share with you the numerous applications of PowerPoint Morph contributed by our colleagues and PowerPoint professionals at ClassPoint:

• Moving background
• Rotating wheel
• Rotating cogs
• Photo gallery
• Slide Zoom with Morph
• Creative reveal
• Parallax effect
• Continuous slide transition
• Phone frame
• Movie frame

Gain access to free templates for all these PowerPoint Morph applications and effects by downloading our Interactive PowerPoint Playbook. 👇

6. add hyperlinks – they can link to so many more places than just websites.

Much like PowerPoint Zoom, hyperlinks enable presenters to create interactive menus and navigation structures, allowing audiences to jump to specific slides or sections effortlessly. However, while PowerPoint Zoom primarily focuses on creating a visual and interactive overview of content within a single presentation, hyperlinks extend this capability to connect with external resources, web content, or even additional PowerPoint files. 

There are a few ways you could add hyperlinks to your PowerPoint presentation to transform  it into an interactive experience effortlessly: 

4 Ways You Can Add Hyperlinks to PowerPoint: 

• Slide Transition : You can navigate to specific slides in a non-linear manner by simply inserting a hyperlink into your current slide. Head over to Insert > Link > This Document and select the slide you want to link to. You can apply hyperlinks to text, shapes, or pictures. 

• Interactive Navigation Menu : Adding an interactive navigation menu at the beginning of your presentation allows clear navigation between different slides and sections in your presentation. Head over to Insert > Link > This Document and select the slides you want to link to.

• Action Buttons : With hyperlinks, you can also create Action Buttons in your PowerPoint presentations to make your PowerPoint slides behave like interactive web pages, allowing users to navigate, explore, and engage with the content in a dynamic and user-friendly manner. Head over to Insert > Action Buttons and choose from the selection.

• Embedded Content : You can also hyperlink your PowerPoint slides to embedded content like PDFs, spreadsheets, and even web pages. Simply click Insert > Object and select the file you would like to embed in your PowerPoint slides. This way, you can remove the hassle of toggling between various files or windows during your presentation.

Expert Tips on How to Make an Interactive PowerPoint Presentation – When Presenting

1. turn your powerpoint slides into interactive quizzes.

The traditional way to add interactive quizzes to PowerPoint is through an unfavorable process of combining complex animations with triggers and hyperlinks. Let’s be honest, it takes an eternity! Even though PowerPoint offers an extensive range of presentation tools, it does not have audience interactivity built at its core. 

The good news is, audience interactivity can actually be effortlessly achieved with the various PowerPoint add-ins as listed below: 

We will get to polls and games in a bit. For now, let’s show you how you can turn your PowerPoint slides into an interactive quiz in a just a few clicks with PowerPoint add-ins like  ClassPoint , which offers a wide range of interactive quizzes from  Short Answer  and  Word Cloud , to Multiple Choice questions.

How to Create An Interactive Quiz in PowerPoint In A Few Clicks

Once you have downloaded ClassPoint, you will have a suite of additional interactive quiz features added to your PowerPoint ribbon. 

To turn  your PowerPoint slide  content into interactive  quizzes, simply  click on any of the interactive quiz features and add them to your slide. Enter PowerPoint Slideshow mode and you can start the quiz immediately. 

2. Run Gradable Assessments inside PowerPoint

With the versatile PowerPoint add-in,  ClassPoint , you can also create assessments and collect real-time responses right inside PowerPoint. This is wonderful news for teachers! All you have to do is set up  interactive Multiple Choice questions  and enable  Quiz Mode . 

ClassPoint’s Quiz Mode introduces an  automatic grading  feature to your Multiple Choice questions within PowerPoint presentations created with ClassPoint. This feature not only automates the grading process but also includes automatic star ratings, the option to select difficulty levels, and provides a quiz summary along with an exportable quiz report, making it the perfect tool for classroom formative assessments in PowerPoint!

3. Incorporate Annotations During Slideshow

Another unique way to interact with your PowerPoint slides is through the use of annotations. With annotations, you as the presenter can interact with your slides to draw your audience’s attention to specific details, highlight key points, and tell a more coherent story. 

There are 3 ways you could use annotations in PowerPoint: 

• PowerPoint Draw Tab:  To utilize the PowerPoint Draw Tab, click on the “Draw” tab in your PowerPoint ribbon and begin annotating anywhere on your slides using built-in features like the pen, highlighter, and Ink to Shape. However, please note that PowerPoint Draw only allows annotation in Edit mode.

• PowerPoint Pen Tools:  Another option for native PowerPoint annotation tools that permit annotation during slideshow mode can be found by clicking the pencil icon located in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen during a presentation. You can use the pen, highlighter, or laser tools to annotate any part of your slides during the presentation.

• ClassPoint  Toolbar:  The ClassPoint toolbar serves as an enhanced, free alternative to PowerPoint’s existing pen tools. It offers a broader range of additional annotation features, including text boxes, shapes, spotlight effects, fully customizable pens and highlighters, and more. This enables you to transform your PowerPoint slides into a creative canvas that will captivate your audience throughout your presentation.

4. Run Ice Breakers and Brainstorming Sessions in PowerPoint

The uses of interactive PowerPoint add-ins like  ClassPoint  are not only limited to teaching and learning. Give your PowerPoint meetings and presentations a strong start with a collaborative and dynamic brainstorming experience.

You can enhance your PowerPoint presentations and turn them into an interactive brainstorming experience by incorporating  Word Cloud  in PowerPoint, inviting participants to instantly contribute ideas, keywords, or concepts. This allows everyone to dynamically visualize emerging trends and interesting ideas.

❓ How? To start a brainstorming session in PowerPoint, click on the “Word Cloud”  button in your PowerPoint ribbon once you have downloaded ClassPoint to add the “Word Cloud” feature in your PowerPoint slides. Then enter PowerPoint slideshow mode to start brainstorming! 

5. Add Draggable Slide Objects (And Why It’s Better than Animations!)

Similar to animations, draggable objects allow you to interact with your slide objects freely during slideshow mode, except than you can do so with full control of where you want the slide elements to go!

This dynamic presentation feature adds an element of visual interest that captures your audience’s attention and can be a valuable tool for explaining complex ideas. Moreover, it has the potential to serve various purposes, such as revealing hidden information or acting as a movable marker to indicate your position on the slide content. You can also use it for group drag-and-drop activities, such as matching, categorizing, sorting, and more. You can either perform these actions yourself to provide a visual explanation or engage your audience by letting them instruct the movement of images and text on the slide.

❓ How? Draggable objects is a unique tool that is possible inside PowerPoint with the use of the add-in ClassPoint. Download ClassPoint, free PowerPoint add-in, the select any shape, image, illustration, or text on your slide to become draggable by clicking on “Draggable Objects” in your PowerPoint ribbon, and toggling “Drag enabled” on the side panel.

In slideshow mode, click on the draggable objects hand from the ClassPoint toolbar at the bottom of your screen to start dragging your slide objects around!

6. Create Playable Games In PowerPoint (Without Animations or Hyperlinks)

Much like interactive quizzes, PowerPoint games add a layer of interactivity and fun to PowerPoint presentations. However, what sets PowerPoint games apart is their ability to introduce competition through gamification. 

Here are  3 ways  you can instantly gamify your PowerPoint slides with  gamification elements :

• Set Up a Point and Reward System : Define how your participants can earn stars and points, and  award stars  to them when they have accomplished a goal during your presentation. 
• Add  Levels and Badges  to PowerPoint : Every game benefits from having levels and badges, and your PowerPoint game is no exception. You can create a simple game within PowerPoint by incorporating  questions  into your slides and defining the points and scores needed to progress to higher levels. When it comes to badges, you have the creative freedom to tailor them to your audience. For example, in an educational setting, badges can be skill-focused, while in a social gathering, they can take the form of fantasy characters that participants aspire to collect
• Add a  Leaderboard  to PowerPoint : Leaderboards are essential to keep track of scores or points during a PowerPoint game. You can of course create a manual leaderboard using PowerPoint’s tables and hyperlinks, but an easier and more straightforward way of implementing a leaderboard in your PowerPoint is using add-ins like  ClassPoint  and  Vevox .

With these fundamentals of gamification in place, you are now ready to create fun and exhilarating games in PowerPoint. 

Here is a full walk-through on  how you can create a PowerPoint game  in a few simple steps. 

If you are an educator, this  free trivia PowerPoint template and these 5 interactive PowerPoint game templates tailored for the classroom will be useful for you.

Expert Tips on How to Make an Interactive PowerPoint Presentation – After Presenting

1. run real-time polls in powerpoint.

Think of a memorable presentation you have attended? Did it use live polls? We bet it did! Live polling are especially helpful after a PowerPoint presentation to gather feedback for future improvement.

Traditional poll tools require presenters to switch between tabs during presentation. Thanks to PowerPoint add-ins such as  ClassPoint ,  Mentimeter  and  Poll Everywhere , this is no longer the case. And by eliminating the need to switch between different applications or tabs, the presentation experience becomes more fluid and engaging.

2. From Static to Interactive Data Visualisation

Incorporating interactivity through data visualization after a presentation concludes is a potent strategy for enhancing audience engagement and comprehension. Once the primary content delivery is complete, you can transition into a dynamic display of data or feedback you have gathered from your audience using interactive charts, graphs, or infographics.

This approach empowers your audience to explore the information at their own pace, dig deeper into specific data points, and ensure a two-way communication between the presenter and the audience. Whether it’s zooming in on specific trends, toggling between different data sets, or going through feedback, interactive data visualization encourages active participation and a deeper connection with the presented information. 

We recommend the following 2 ways to display data into your presentation:

• Insert tables, charts and graphs, and add a touch of interactivity through animations.

Below is a list of 10 PowerPoint animations most suitable for different kinds of graphs and charts: 

• Embed a website with data you want to go over. I’m not talking about a link that leaves PowerPoint for your default browser, but an actual embedded browser that loads your websites without leaving PowerPoint! Plus you can insert the page as a picture into your slide and start annotating on it!

Now that you have a collection of strategies and tips at your disposal, you are better prepared to leave your old and dusty PowerPoint toolkit behind and embrace these refreshing ideas. Whether your ultimate aim is to create a captivating classroom experience, deliver a memorable business pitch, or simply wow your friends and peers during  PowerPoint nights , don’t forget to: 

• Add animations, but use them sparingly.
• Make use of non-linear transitions and storytelling. 
• Turn simple transitions into stunning visual experience with PowerPoint Morph.
• Make creative use of polls, quizzes and games. 
• Make your presentation human with Bitmoji.
• Build anticipation with interactive presentation tools like annotations and drag and drop.
• Try out these 160 fun PowerPoint ideas for your next presentation!

To read more about Interactive PowerPoint Presentations, you can download our Interactive PowerPoint Playbook, which includes comprehensive guides, tutorials on various interactive PowerPoint presentation methods, cheat sheets, and a wide range of resources for mastering the art of creating interactive PowerPoint presentations.

About Zhun Yee Chew

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How To Make Presentations Interactive: Top 10 tips

Transform your presentations into dynamic experiences with these interactive strategies which give them an elevate engagement

What Is An Interactive Presentation?

• An interactive presentation is a dynamic communication format that transcends the conventional one-way flow of information. Unlike traditional presentations where the audience plays a passive role, interactive presentations actively engage attendees through various means, fostering a two-way exchange.
• These presentations leverage a spectrum of interactions, encouraging audience participation, feedback, and collaboration. The essence lies in transforming the audience from mere observers into active contributors, creating a more immersive and memorable experience.

• The heart of an interactive presentation lies in the deliberate incorporation of interactions throughout the session. This extends beyond the verbal or visual aspects and includes hands-on activities, live polls, Q&A sessions, and other participatory elements.
• These interactions not only capture the audience's attention but also create a sense of involvement, turning the presentation into a shared experience. By recognizing and responding to the diverse ways people absorb information, interactive presentations aim to cater to varied learning styles, making the content more accessible and impactful.

• In the realm of interactive presentations, the term "interactions" takes on a broader significance. It encompasses not only the explicit engagement tools employed but also the subtle cues and responsiveness woven into the presentation's fabric.
• From gauging audience reactions to adapting the content based on real-time feedback, the continuous thread of interactions weaves a narrative that goes beyond a monologue, transforming presentations into collaborative dialogues that leave a lasting impression on the audience.

Here are few Ways To Make Your Presentation Interactive

Embed video elements:.

• Educational Clips: Integrate short educational videos that succinctly explain complex concepts or provide additional context to your presentation.
• Testimonials and Case Studies: Feature video testimonials or case studies to add a human touch. Real-life success stories create a compelling narrative that resonates with your audience.
• Product Demonstrations: For sales presentations, showcase your product or service in action. A demonstration video can vividly illustrate its features and benefits.
• Expert Interviews: Include interviews with industry experts or thought leaders. Their insights can reinforce your points and provide additional credibility to your presentation.

• Animation and Infographics: Use animated videos or infographics to visually convey data or statistics. This dynamic approach enhances understanding and retention.
• Customer Reviews or User-Generated Content: Share videos of satisfied customers expressing their experiences. Authenticity in the form of user-generated content builds trust.
• Motivational Clips: Inject inspiration into your presentation with motivational videos. These can set the tone, energize the audience, and create a positive atmosphere.
• Interactive Elements: If feasible, incorporate interactive videos that allow the audience to make choices or participate in decision-making within the presentation.

Integrate Quizzes:

• Knowledge Checkpoints: Assess your audience's understanding by asking questions related to the material covered. These can be straightforward to ensure comprehension of essential concepts.
• Scenario-Based Questions: Present real-life scenarios and ask the audience how they would approach or solve them based on the information provided. This encourages critical thinking and application.
• Opinion Polls: Gauge the audience's opinions on relevant topics. This not only adds an interactive element but also allows you to understand the diversity of perspectives in the room.
• Interactive Case Studies: Pose questions that delve into a case study or scenario, prompting the audience to analyze the situation and share their insights. This encourages active participation and group discussion.
• Recall and Recap: Test the audience's memory by incorporating questions that require recalling information shared earlier in the presentation. This reinforces key messages and aids in retention.
• Multiple-Choice Questions: Provide multiple-choice options for quick and interactive responses. This format is effective for swift assessments and ensures a higher rate of participation.
• Trivia or Fun Facts: Infuse a lighthearted element by including trivia questions or fun facts related to the presentation topic. This adds an enjoyable aspect to the quiz and keeps the audience entertained.
• Future Predictions: Encourage forward-thinking by asking the audience to predict future trends or outcomes based on the information presented. This not only engages them but also stimulates discussion.

Leverage Entire Venue Space:

• Enhanced Connection with the Audience: Steve Jobs was known for his ability to connect with the audience on a personal level. By dynamically moving around the stage, he ensured that he engaged with people from different parts of the venue. This created a sense of intimacy, making each audience member feel directly addressed and fostering a stronger connection.
• Dynamic Energy and Engagement: Jobs' presentations were anything but static. His energetic movements conveyed enthusiasm and passion for the products he was unveiling. This dynamic energy captivated the audience, keeping them engaged and eager to witness each revelation. The strategic use of movement contributed to the overall excitement of the presentation.
• Breaking Down Physical Barriers: Unlike presenters who remain confined to a podium, Jobs had a penchant for stepping onto the stage and even into the audience. This deliberate act broke down the physical barriers between him and the audience, symbolizing a shared experience. It conveyed a message of openness and accessibility, inviting the audience to be part of the presentation.
• Targeting Different Sections of the Audience: In Apple product launches, Jobs strategically moved around to address various sections of the audience. Whether showcasing a new feature on a large screen or engaging with the crowd on either side of the stage, he ensured that every audience member had a moment of direct interaction. This approach made the presentation inclusive and relevant to everyone present.
• Varied Perspectives and Visual Interest: Jobs understood the importance of visual impact. By leveraging the entire venue space, he provided varied perspectives for the audience. Whether revealing a groundbreaking product or sharing anecdotes, his movements ensured that every corner of the venue felt involved. This not only added visual interest but also contributed to the immersive experience of the presentation.

Demonstrate Real-World Applications:

What can we learn from raju srivastav’s case.

• Contextualized Simulations: Raju Srivastav uses tailored simulations to make cybersecurity concepts tangible, emphasizing real-world vulnerabilities and practical security solutions for non-tech individuals at the bank.
• Humanizing Data: By incorporating live customer interactions, Raju humanizes data analysis, making the impact of data-driven insights relatable and compelling, bridging the gap between technical concepts and real-life experiences.
• Immersive Learning: Raju advocates for immersive learning through hands-on training sessions, ensuring that non-tech individuals gain practical experience with new processes, facilitating a smoother adoption of technological changes.
• Clear Communication via Case Studies: Raju employs concise case studies to communicate the advantages of data-driven decision-making, demystifying complex tech concepts and enabling non-tech individuals to understand practical benefits aligned with the bank's goals.

Add Effects Like Music and Transitions:

• YouTube Audio Library:
• YouTube Audio Library offers a wide selection of music tracks and sound effects that you can use for free in your presentations. The library provides options to filter music by genre, mood, instrument, and duration.
• Free Music Archive:
• Free Music Archive (FMA) offers a vast collection of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The music on FMA is generally available under various open licenses, making it suitable for use in presentations.
• Jamendo is a platform that provides free music for personal and commercial use. While some tracks may have different licensing options, there's a substantial collection of tracks available for free use.
• Incompetech:
• Incompetech by Kevin MacLeod offers a variety of royalty-free music. The music is available under a Creative Commons license, allowing for use in presentations with proper attribution.
• Bensound is a website that provides royalty-free music for personal or commercial use. The site offers a range of genres, and the music is free to use with attribution.

Conclusion:

Frequently asked questions:, check out other blogs:.

• Mastering PowerPoint Transitions And Animations: A Complete Tutorial: https://www.magicslides.app/blog/Mastering-PowerPoint-Transitions-and-Animations-A-Complete-Tutorial
• Animating Your Google Slides: A Step-by-Step Guide: https://www.magicslides.app/blog/Animating-Your-Google-Slides-A Step-by-Step-Guide
• How To Use Google Slides Offline: https://www.magicslides.app/blog/How-to-Use-Google-Slides-Offline

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18 Ways to Make Your Presentation More Interactive

November 10, 2017 - Dom Barnard

It can be difficult to hold your audience’s attention for the entire presentation. According to a  Prezi study , half of the respondents said they did something other than listen during a co-worker’s presentation, including:

• Sending a text message (28%)
• Checking emails (27%)
• Falling asleep (17%)

An interactive presentation is much more likely to keep your audience’s attention and build rapport with them, and there are a few simple ways to achieve this, from live polling to asking questions throughout.

This article explores several different effective strategies for making the audience feel fully involved in your presentation and keeping your audience’s eyes away from their smartphones.

Why involve your audience?

Listening to a presentation for any length of time can be a difficult process. If you don’t involve the audience, they’ll start to play with their phones, talk to colleagues and generally lose track of what you are saying. Once this happens and you start seeing that the audience would rather be somewhere else, you’ll start feeling anxious and might try to speed up the presentation.

To engage a  large audience  fully, the presentation needs to be energetic, purposeful and staged, as if it is a direct conversation between both you and your audience. That way, they’ll absorb your ideas and insights and they’ll have learnt something in an enjoyable way.

1. Plan from the audience’s perspective

Before you start  writing your presentation , think about these points:

• What are the most interesting parts in my topic?
• How much will the audience know about my topic? What level do I target it at?
• Which members of the audience will most likely be disinterested?
• How can I help them learn and understand my topic?
• What is the size of the audience?

You can do this by researching the event or conference, investigating other speakers at the event and even contacting the organisers to find out more about the demographic.

By asking these questions about your audience and identifying answers, you are starting to think about your audience’s interests and needs. Remember, the aim is to give the impression that your presentation has been planned according to your audience’s specific interests.

2. Use an easy-to-follow structure

When building your presentation, focus on giving it a structure which people can easily follow. Start by introducing the core concepts and goals, then elaborate on the various points in a bit more detail, draw logical conclusions and leave your audience with a clear takeaway message. You want to flow naturally from one part to the next like you are telling a big story chapter by chapter.

3. Get the audience immediately involved

You audience will come to your presentation in a range of different moods. Try using a simple ice-breaker to re-energise them and get them focussed on your presentation.

For example, ask people to stand up and introduce themselves to their neighbours, or have them identify two or three questions they would like to hear addressed during your presentation. By starting with an ice-breaker, you show your audience that your talk will be interactive and require their participation.

4. Ask the audience questions during your presentation

The audience’s attention drops to zero after just 10-15 minutes of your presentation. To get their attention back, take a break from your presentation from time to time and interact with your audience. Ask for their questions and answer them during your presentation. This will help clear up any confusion the audience might have.

When planning your presentation, identify opportunities in your material for your audience to ask questions. If you’re not comfortable breaking the flow of your presentation, mention that you’ll be taking  questions at the end  so the audience can prepare some questions.

Asking rhetorical questions as you move through your presentation involves your audience by stimulating their own thought processes. This technique also helps move between sections of your presentation as it establishes a clear transition from one point to another.

If you’re comfortable with taking questions throughout your presentation, use a tools such as  Slido , which allows your audience to ask questions anonymously at any time, so even shy people can participate in the discussion.

Example of what can go wrong with audience interaction

Audience interaction:

Watch how the presenter tries but initially fails to get the audience to interact with the presentation. Notice how he encourages them to get involved and eventually they do join in.

5. Use storytelling to make it more memorable

Since our early ancestors, stories have always been a huge part of human culture and civilisation. Storytelling is the most universal way to captivate your audience’s attention, no matter where they are from or what they do for a living.

Stories are much more engaging and memorable than lists of facts and figures, but you wouldn’t think so looking at the majority of presentations (particularly academic ones).

People automatically tune in when you  start telling your story  because they want to know what happens next. A popular storytelling technique is when you present the status quo and then reveal an improved path to that end goal.

Think of your presentation as one arching narrative. As we mentioned earlier, give it the proper structure with a clear beginning, middle and end. Introduce conflict and provide a powerful resolution that reinforces your key messages.

6. Use non-linear presentation software

Instead of flipping through slide after slide, you can show the relationships between your ideas and give your audience the “big picture” view of your topic. Try letting your audience drive the presentation by laying out all of your main points, and then let them choose which topics they want to go to. Your audience will get a truly custom presentation based on their interests, which they will appreciate and more easily remember.

Prezi, shown above, is a popular non-linear presentation tool.

7. Add in a short video

Billions of hours of YouTube are consumed each month and advertisers have identified videos as having a high  retention rate  for users. However very few presentations ever use videos to engage with their audience.

Find a short video clip that reinforces your story or explains a concept better than words can. You can either embed the video directly into your presentation software or include a link to an external website. Just make sure you test your method on the day of the presentation and have a backup on a USB just in case you need it.

8. Invite people onto the stage

If you’re preparing a particularly long presentation, consider having other people to come on stage and talk for a bit. This will help you narrate the story and make the whole presentation more interactive.

Steve Jobs never pulled off the entire presentation by himself; he always invited several speakers, including designers, partners, and other executives, to help him introduce their latest product. Of course, this technique should always be arranged with your colleagues in advance.

9. Poll the audience

Polls are similar to quizzes in that they engage the audience during the presentation. Polls encourage participants to think not only about your questions but also about their answers. Moreover, live polls help create mental breaks, so your audience can regain attention and stay focused throughout your presentation.

By including everyone in answering the question, you also create a group experience that leaves the audience feeling like they all have been part your presentation.

10. Use (appropriate) humour

Some of the best speeches and presentations in the world feature plenty of humour. No matter the subject, a great speaker will use natural charisma, humour and language to convey their points and get the crowd excited about what they are saying.

A great example of building rapport with the audience through the use of humour is Barrack Obama talking about the government building Iron Man.

Another example is when  Morgan Spurlock  offers individuals the opportunity to buy the rights to name his TED talk—which he refers to again at the end, where he reveals the title. He peppers the entire presentation with humorous commentary that nonetheless supports his point.

Create relevant jokes or find a way to bring out the humour in your subject, and your audience will be much more engaged and more likely to remember your words.

11. Practice your delivery, again and again

Practicing is the most important part of delivering an interactive presentation. You’ll need to practice where to use live quizzes, when to accept questions, which points to emphasise with body language and many more. There are several options for practicing:

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• In front of a mirror  – great for seeing and improving your body language, however it can be distracting to what you are saying.
• To friends or colleagues  – a useful way to get feedback on your presentation, try and action the feedback straight away to improve on it. You can also give the person some key areas to focus their feedback on if you believe you are weaker in those areas.
• Virtual reality  – practice in realistic  public speaking environments , whether it be in a virtual conference room or boardroom. Receive feedback on your speech with voice analysis technology.

With all three of these, you’ll want to work on your tone of voice, accent, pauses between sentences and facial expressions. The most important thing is to talk slowly and loudly enough to be heard and understood clearly.

A list of the best presentation skills courses you can practice with:

• Presentation Skills Training Courses

12. Try and relate to the audience

Make comparisons to events from everyday life that most people are more than familiar with. By making things look simple, not only will you help your audience get a better understanding of the subject by enabling them to visualize the information more clearly, you will also draw a connection between you.

After all, you are all just regular people with similar experience, you just happen to be performing different roles at the moment.

13. Strong body language (position, posture and gesture)

Non-verbal communication plays a large part in how we construct meaning, so it makes sense to consider how to use it in your presentation. You can make things more interesting for your audience by using  your body language  to enhance what you’re saying.

Body language goes beyond reinforcing your messaging – it’s useful from a biological standpoint. As discussed in her  body language TED talk , Amy Cuddy’s research found that using ‘assertive’ body language released testosterone and reduced cortisol in both men and women, thereby increasing confidence and decreasing stress.

An effective presenter pays close attention to the physical relationship with her/his audience. If you stand hidden behind an overhead projector or stand too far away from your audience, they will not develop a bond with you and this will limit the effectiveness of your presentation.

Your posture will also dictate levels of audience involvement. If you’re too relaxed and sit slumped in a chair to deliver your talk, the audience might drift away. Find a comfortable but purposeful position in relation to your audience and adopt an upright sitting or standing posture that allows for movement and gesture.

Audiences respond well to the physical energy and enthusiasm being conveyed by a presenter, and thus the use of clear and controlled gestures will greatly enhance your presentation. Gestures that are open and reach out to your audience serve to extend your presentation to them and thus help them feel more involved.

Examples of good body language:

• Use hand gestures when delivering key points
• Use calm, deliberate movements when highlighting certain information
• Keep arms and legs uncrossed

14. Maintain eye contact with all sections of the audience

Making eye contact is one of the most  powerful techniques  for involving your audience. If used well, eye contact can serve to make your address much more personal and thus more effective. If eye contact is avoided, the presenter can appear to be nervous and unconvincing.

It is important to share eye contact with all members of a small audience or all sections of a large audience. Avoid making eye contact with just the people you know, taking particular care not to deliver your entire presentation to the person who’s assessing your work. Remember that you will need to involve the whole audience if you are to make an effective presentation.

If you are nervous, eye contact can be very difficult to establish and maintain. Remember that some eye contact is better than none and that you should try to build your confidence over time.

15. Use live quizzes to better understand your audience

Live quizzes are a great way to understanding your audience better get them engaging with the material.

For example, if you’re giving a presentation on autonomous vehicles, you could ask questions such as:

• When do you think autonomous vehicles will become mainstream?
• Are you concerned by safety issues?
• If someone is injured or killed by the car, who is to blame?

These will surely create some interesting results which you, as the presenter, can talk about and discuss.

16. Use physical props if possible

You don’t need to be giving a product demo to use props during your presentation. Props are a great way to help the audience visually picture what you are talking about. While talking through your presentation, you can refer to the prop at certain points to highlight your point or make it clear to the audience.

Kenny Nguyen  does this will in his TEDx talk on ‘The Art of Saying No’. He refers to the “sword of yes” and “shield of no.” Naturally he picks up a sword and shield from the table to help demonstrate his points.

Another great example is when  Jill Bolte Taylor  brings a real human brain on stage during her TED talk to explain to what happened to her when she had a stroke. She touched the audience with this demonstration and left the audience in complete awe.

17. Extend your usual vocal range

Your tone of voice, your volume, and other vocal aspects affect how people listen and hear your message.

Julian Treasure’s  TED talk on ‘How to speak so that people want to listen’ is all about this, and at the end offers several tips ‘in our toolbox’ for how to master the use of voice, from changing your speaking pace to speaking in a different pitch.

Get feedback from a friend or colleague to see what works best for you.

18. Use language and literary techniques

Your use of language has a huge influence on the way you engage your audience. It’s important to use language your audience understands and is familiar with.

Avoid using language that is too formal or informal, too technical or too simplistic depending upon the nature of your talk and the knowledge base of your audience. Pitching your presentation at the right level can be a challenge but it is very effective for making the audience feel involved.

There are various  literary techniques  you can use, such as the Power or Three, to give greater impact to your message.

Involving your audience is essential to making an impact. Your presentation should pull them in, get their attention and stimulate their thoughts and understanding. This can be done in a number of ways.

The way that you plan your presentation will be critical in terms of using language and ideas that your audience will understand. You must also ensure that there is sufficient time for questions and discussion. The way that you deliver your presentation should create a bond with your audience.

Your use of eye contact, body language, spoken words and energy should  communicate effectively  and enthusiastically with all areas of the room, thus ensuring that the audience receives positive messages about you and your material.

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10 Interactive Presentation Video Ideas for your Next Meeting

Mar 21, 2023

It doesn’t matter what your topic is. If your presentation isn’t engaging, it won’t hit home for your audience.

Now that so many businesses have gone fully or partially remote, it can seem harder to connect and interact with your audience. Lucily, video is a great solution for informing any online audience. But making your presentation engaging and memorable is another skill altogether.

In this blog, we’ll share some interactive presentation video ideas and tips to help bring your presentations to life. Let’s dive in!

What is an interactive presentation video?

Presentation videos are integral to the “new normal” for remote and hybrid organizations. Just last year, presentation videos were among the most commonly made videos by businesses.

Interactive video presentations take it just one step further by incorporating opportunities for engagement. These presentation videos encourage your audience to follow along and complete certain tasks as they watch. We’ll dig into the ways to make your presentation more interactive plus examples of engaging and interactive videos below.

The benefits of an interactive presentation

If you have important information to share, you don’t want it to fall on deaf ears. But unfortunately, as the number of online meetings and live business presentations are increasing, viewership is shrinking.

Studies like the one conducted by Forbes have shown that our attention spans are shortening. Today, you have about 8 seconds to capture attention and hook viewers in. Once you have them, keeping their attention is a new challenge. That’s where interaction comes in to save the day.

There are two aspects of engagement: attraction and retention. Successful presentations have both. Here’s how it’s done.

Interactive presentations offer a “reset” to restimulate and engage your audience. Depending on your content, your presentation video may take anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. If you’re not engaging with your audience every 7-10 minutes, you could lose them. Alternatively, if you create interactive presentation videos, you can expect the following benefits:

• It makes learning easier: Applying lessons to real-life situations makes your presentation easier to understand. This ultimately boosts information retention, recall, and successful application.
• It increases engagement: Engagement is a key component of successful presentations. By encouraging your audience to interact with you and your content, they will become more engaged, attentive, and ready to learn more.
• It encourages team building: Last but not least, interaction with your audience boosts team building. It provides an opportunity to engage with fellow coworkers, get to know one another, and subtly encourage others to start interacting too.

8 ways to make your presentations more interactive

Interacting with your audience can often get overlooked when preparing for a presentation, but it goes a long way. By simply asking a few questions, giving moments to pause and reflect, and using compelling media, you can engage with your audience and keep them tuned in.

Here are some ways to interact with your audience to keep them engaged.

1. Start with an icebreaker

Kick things off with an icebreaker that relates to your topic. This could include asking a question, voting on a poll, or playing an icebreaker game .

2. Follow up with a Q&A session

Leave room for your audience to ask questions at the end of your presentation. We recommend holding a Q&A session immediately after your presentation video ends.

3. Create a quiz

Test your audience’s knowledge and get them engaging with your content through a quiz! If you’re showing your presentation video live via Zoom or hangouts, you can create a poll right in the comments. Or, pause midway through and send a link to an online quiz .

4. Add a webcam recording or voice-over

Make a personal connection with your audience even if you’re not presenting live! With webcam recordings and voice-overs , you can add a unique and personalized touch to your video that draws viewers in.

5. End with discussion questions

At the end of your presentation, add thought-provoking questions that you can ask your audience. Whether you want to discuss there and then or leave room to marinate on the topics, questions help drive your story home and encourage further learning.

6. Include music

Music is an easy and surefire way to make your videos more exciting! Choose an upbeat and catchy music track and add it to the background to instantly energize your audience.

7. Add animations and video clips

Don’t just rely on text to share information in your presentation video. Include video clips, photos, and animations to make your video more eye-catching and engaging.

8. Use data visualization

Lastly, put important stats in figures into perspective with data visualization! You can use graphs, charts, and illustrations to emphasize key figures and make them understandable.

10 Interactive presentation video ideas for your next meeting

With these tips in mind, you’re ready to get started on your next interactive presentation video! Here are 10 presentation video ideas you can easily create for your business. Look out for the buttons below each video to create your own video using an expert-made template.

1. Presentation

This template has everything you need to connect with your audience and present just like you would in person. Share your slide deck and add webcam recordings to talk through complicated processes. This is a great starting point for presentations to your colleagues and clients alike.

2. Welcome to the company

Give new hires a warm welcome to the team with a video! You can share the video in your first all-hands meeting for a stress-free introduction. Then, open it up to conversation with the team, ice breakers, and more to get to know each other better.

3. Workplace explainer

Have a new policy or process you need to introduce? Use an explainer video to make sure your colleagues are in the loop. You can add your own voice-over, screen and webcam recordings, and charts to explain your topic as clearly as possible.

4. New hire welcome

A new employee’s first few days are usually filled with a lot of presentations. Instead of the same old standard content, start things off on the right foot with a video! Use this template to welcome them to the company and introduce them to other members of the team.

5. Customer onboarding

Successful relationships with your customers start with onboarding. Help your new customers get acquainted with your product, service, or team with a branded video that they can watch on their own time.

6. Meeting recap

Recap the highlights of your latest meeting with a video! These shareable videos can empower and inform individuals from your organization and clients alike.

7. Employee onboarding

Make sure new members of your team know how to get themselves set up for success. Create an onboarding video that explains what they should accomplish in their first days and who to reach out to for help.

8. Event summary

Keep the momentum of your latest event going by sharing a summary video. By sharing the highlights of your meeting, you can educate those who couldn’t attend while building excitement for your next event too.

9. Technical tutorial

Troubleshooting and teaching your audience to complete technical tasks can be difficult when you’re not in person. Luckily, with a technical tutorial video, you can show exactly what’s on your screen, step by step.

10. Q&A presentation video

Ask your audience for any questions they may have to make sure there are no questions left unanswered. Then, answer them via video that’s shared with your team so everyone is in the loop.

How to make an interactive presentation video with Animoto

Animoto makes it easy for anyone to create videos! Just follow these simple steps to drag and drop your way to a professional and engaging presentation video.

• 1. Choose a video template or start from scratch: Hit the ground running with one of the video templates we linked above! Or, start with a clean slate to make a one-of-a-kind video.
• 2. Upload your video clips, images, logos, and more: Upload the media you need to tell your story. Just drag and drop your photos, charts, video clips, and more throughout your video. Or create screen and webcam recordings right in Animoto. Finally, use animated text to explain for further explanation and callouts as usual.
• 3. Edit your video with Animoto's built-in tools: Next, edit your video to your liking! You can trim and crop your media, change the colors, add music, record voice-overs, and more.
• 4. Collect video feedback: Send a link of your video to your colleagues for feedback before the big presentation. They can leave time-stamped comments so you know which elements of your video work well and which ones need improvement.
• 5. Download and share your video with your team: Finally, you’re ready to start presenting! Download your video in 1080p and share it via email or during a Zoom meeting, or upload it to the cloud for on-demand access.

Interactive elements not only help to attract and retain the attention of your audience but also promote better understanding and information retention. By simply engaging with your audience during the presentation, you can help them feel more invested in the topic. This direct feedback can also help you feel more confident and capable while presenting! And who doesn’t need that?

Interactive presentation video FAQ

How do i record a presentation with audio.

You can create a voice-over or camera recording to add audio to your presentation video. Voice-over allows you to narrate your presentation from “behind the scenes” whereas with webcam recordings, you are the star of the show. The latter will help you connect and engage with your audience during the presentation. To do this, just use a video maker with a built-in camera recorder or voice-over tool , or record them separately and upload them to your video.

Where can I share interactive presentation videos?

Interactive presentation videos can be shared during live video meetings, via email, or in shared drives for on-demand viewing. You can also present your video in-person as part of your complete presentation.

• Marketing video
• How-to video
• Slideshow video
• Social media
• Promo video
• Birthday video
• Intro / Outro videos
• Explainer video
• Email marketing
• Training video
• Internal communications video
• Presentation video
• Photography
• Real Estate
• Marketing Agency
• HR / People Ops
• Video commenting tool
• Screen recorder
• Photo video maker
• Music library
• Online video editor
• Video trimming
• Stock library
• Privacy policy
• Terms of use
• Animoto Tutorials

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Use Prezi’s interactive presentation software to engage, involve, and wow your audience. Stand out whether you’re presenting online or in person. Get started with hundreds of professionally-designed templates and make the presentation your own with easy-to-use features that add movement and help you connect with your audience. It’s never been easier to make an interactive presentation.

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Turn your presentation into a conversation and involve your audience. Prezi Present’s one-of-a-kind open canvas lets you navigate freely between topics and dive into details on anything your audience wants. Reveal key data and findings by hovering your mouse over interactive graphs, tables, and infographics, all of which can be made with Prezi Design and easily incorporated into any presentation.

Make any video meeting immersive and interactive with Prezi Video and Prezi Present. Create your presentation with Prezi Present, then take it to your virtual meeting and bring it with you on screen. Features like name tags and virtual backgrounds enhance your video feed for more professional and interactive presentations, anywhere.

Interactive presentation templates

There’s no need to start from scratch. Prezi provides hundreds of templates to help you create interactive presentations. Get started with one of our professionally designed presentation templates, then customize it with your own content, plus your branding if you’re a Teams customer.

Check out more interactive presentation templates

• Sign up for Prezi by exploring our plans and pricing options. Contact us for more to learn about our plans for businesses and teams.
• Open Prezi Present in your dashboard.
• To create an interactive presentation, create from a template, start from scratch, or convert an existing PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation to Prezi.
• Upload your own images, GIFs, and videos, or select visuals from Unsplash and Giphy directly within Prezi.
• Add custom elements, such as tables, graphs, and maps with subtle effects that add an extra layer of interactivity to your presentation with Prezi Design .
• Add your presenter notes to keep track of main ideas and speaking points.
• Share your presentation by presenting live and in person, through a shareable link, or by using Prezi Video to present on a video call.

Make an interactive presentation

Get inspired by the top presenters in the biz

Some of the most interactive presentations out there are available on Prezi. Look through our gallery of presentation examples, curated by Prezi’s editors, for some of our favorites. You can take notes, get inspired, and you can even re-use an existing presentation for your own purposes. Just look for the green symbol, then customize the presentation with your own content.

Explore interactive presentation examples

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More resources to help you make interactive presentations

Frequently asked questions

What is an interactive presentation.

An interactive presentation is precisely what you might guess – a presentation you can interact with. They often use features like clicks and movement, and weave in activities like questions, polls, and games throughout the presentation to get the audience involved. An interactive presentation is fundamentally different than a traditional presentation in that the audience is an essential part of the content. Their involvement creates more conversational, authentic experiences that benefit everyone involved.

Can I create an interactive presentation on Prezi for free?

Yes. You can sign up for Prezi for free and start creating an interactive presentation immediately, and explore even more features and team options when you try one of our premium plans with a free trial.

How can I make a virtual presentation interactive?

With cameras off and microphones muted, it can be difficult to make an interactive presentation online, but not impossible. The trap that many virtual presenters fall into is sharing their screen and delivering their presentation more like a lecture. The audience recognizes the one-way nature of it and goes into passive mode. Use Prezi Present to create a presentation that feels more like conversation rather than a rehearsed deck of slides, and take it on screen with you with Prezi Video . This allows more face-to-face interaction with your audience and makes your presentation much more engaging.

Can I use an existing Powerpoint or Google Slides deck to make an interactive presentation on Prezi?

Yes, you can convert Powerpoint and Google Slides decks by importing them into Prezi. You can also take these presentations with you on screen to any virtual meeting, making for more immersive and interactive presentations than before.

Does Prezi’s interactive presentation software work with tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams?

It sure does. Connect an interactive presentation to any video meeting with Prezi Video. Just make sure to select “Prezi Camera” from the camera list to see your content.

Get interactive presentation tools and more for your team

Use Prezi’s interactive presentation software to create engaging presentations that stand out online, plus so much more when you get Prezi for your team. Get access to additional interactive presentation tools, branding solutions, and more with Prezi’s business solutions.

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Make interactive presentations

Create show-stopping presentations and clickable slide decks with Genially’s free online presentation builder. Leave boring behind and tell a story that’s interactive, animated, and beautifully engaging.

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Post online

Embed the slides on your website or post them on social media. Upload to Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, Moodle or any other platform.

The benefits of interactive slides

🗣️ Active participation An interactive slide deck gives your audience cool things to click on and discover, boosting learning and engagement.

👂 Multi-sensory experience Audio, video, animations, and mouse interactions make your content immersive, entertaining and accessible.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 People-friendly format Pop-ups and embeds condense more material into fewer slides so you can break information down into digestible chunks.


🎮 Gamification Games, quizzes and puzzles make information more memorable and enable you to gather feedback and check understanding.

How to make an interactive presentation

With Genially’s easy-to-use presentation platform, anyone can make incredible visual content in moments.

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Resources to become a pro presentation creator

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How to present data without sending your audience to sleep.

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The art of digital storytelling: Engage and thrill on screen.

Genially in a nutshell

How do I make a presentation interactive and how does Genially work? Find the answers to all of your slide-related questions here!

What’s an interactive presentation?

Interactive slides contain clickable hotspots, links, buttons, and animations that are activated at the touch of a button. Instead of reading or watching passively, your audience can actively interact with the content.  

Genially’s interaction presentation software allows you to combine text, photos, video clips, audio and other content in one deck. It’s a great way to condense more information into fewer slides. 

If you’re a teacher, you can share multiple materials in one single learning resource. Students can create their own projects using digital media and online maps. For business or training, try embedding spreadsheet data, PDFs, and online content directly in your slides. 

An interactive slide deck is more user-friendly than a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation or Google Slides document. That’s because you can break information down into chunks with pop-ups, labels, voiceovers and annotated infographics.  

The other benefit of interactive content is increased engagement. It’s easier to keep your audience’s attention when they’re actively participating. Try Genially’s presentation software and free slideshow maker to see how it’s better than other presentation websites. You won’t go back to standard presentation apps!

How do you make a clickable slide?

The best way to make slides clickable is to use Genially’s free interactive presentation program. Design your slide then apply an interaction. In a couple of clicks, you can add popup windows, hyperlinks, close-up images, games, animations, multimedia and other content. 

Choose from the library of hotspot buttons and icons to show people what to click on. Go to Presenter View to get a preview and see how your content will appear to your audience.

How do I create presentations that look professional?

You’ve got a deadline looming and you’re staring at the screen with a blank presentation. We’ve all been there! Starting a presentation design from scratch is tricky, especially if you’re short on time. 

Genially’s free online presentation maker has over 2000 ready-to-use templates for professional slide presentations, photos slideshows, and more. Each slide design has been created by our team of top graphic designers. No need to worry about fonts, centering images, or designing a matching color scheme. It’s all done for you. 

Start by browsing our layouts and themes for education, business and then customize with your own text and images.

How do I share or download my slides?

Because Genially is a cloud based presentation software, you can simply share the link to your slides. Like other online presentation tools, there are no files to download or store on your computer. Everything is saved online.  

When you publish your slide deck, it gets its own unique url, just like a website. Share the link with others to let them explore the content in their own time. If you’re presenting live, just click the Present button. 

You can also embed your presentation on your website, company wiki, or social media. Genially is compatible with WordPress, Moodle, Google Classroom, and other platforms. If you use an LMS, you can also download your interactive design slides in SCORM format.

For slideshow videos and slideshows with music, share online or download as an MP4 video. Check out our free slideshow templates for ideas.

Can I make a free presentation in Genially?

You bet! Genially is an easy-to-use slide maker, with a free version and paid plans. The free plan allows you to create unlimited slides with interactions and animations. Subscribe to one of our paid plans for more advanced features.

Discover a world of interactive content

Join the 25 million people designing incredible interactive experiences with Genially.

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“It’s easy to create something in Visme quickly that looks like we sent it out to an advertising firm to design. We’re creating a lot of infographics, we create banners for announcements on social media, we’ve been tapping into the new version to create animated ebooks. Visme has really become a vital part of what we do.”

“I absolutely recommend Visme due to its dynamic functionality and ability to integrate everchanging media and digital technologies. That combined with a collaborative environment which empowers our team to be more efficient with time has been a huge plus.”

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• Inspiration

17 fun presentation ideas (with video!) to wow your audience

• 30 Mar 2023

So you want to be the next Steve Jobs. Or Martin Luther King. Or any other dazzling orator you look up to. But you need a little something to add to your presentation ideas – you don’t want to bore people to death with Powerpoint.

Whether you’re creating a sales presentation, an event presentation, or just showing your travel video to Uncle Ron, we’ve compiled some of the best ways to get your audience seriously hyped up about your message.

Biteable offers online video presentation software, so we know a thing or two about making engaging presentation videos. In this guide, we share some of our favorite video presentation inspiration and show you some of the different types of presentations you might consider.

When you’re ready to make your own video presentation, head over to  Biteable  for hundreds of brandable templates, video scenes, and workplace-ready animations. With Biteable, making a video presentation is as easy as making a PowerPoint – only a whole lot more fun.

Create videos that drive action

Activate your audience with impactful, on-brand videos. Create them simply and collaboratively with Biteable.

Types of video presentations

If you’re looking to win over your audience with a presentation, videos are the best way to do it. According to Insivia, viewers retain  95% of a message  when they see it in a video, but only 10% if they have to read on-screen text.

When you’re making your presentation, you could either make your video the whole presentation, or just a part of the whole. Did you know, for example, that you can  embed a video in a Powerpoint document?  Either is possible with our video templates and it can be interesting to mix things up once in a while.

There are four main types of presentations:

• Informative
• Demonstrative
• Inspirational

Picking the right one will ensure you’re onto a winner with your video presentation. For example, if you’re onboarding some new employees, you might choose a video template that’s an informative presentation like this one:

Or, if you want to show off how something works, a demonstration presentation might be what you want to create:

A persuasive presentation would involve creating a video more like this charity infographic example:

And if you want something a little more inspirational, try something like this positive quote video template.

But that’s not all, folks! If you’d like to check out more awesome Biteable video templates, visit our  templates page here .

Creative (and fun!) video presentation ideas

You’ve now picked the type of presentation you need. But how do you get creative with your video?

First of all, it’s important your video is top-notch. Without high-quality graphics and production value, your message may fall by the wayside. Choose online  video presentation software  that’s easy to use and makes great-looking videos. That’s where Biteable comes in.

Whatever the topic of your presentation, your video format and design need to match the overall tone and message.

Delivering a corporate presentation on climate change? A fast-paced, wildly colorful template with upbeat music is going to feel a little off-message.

To identify how to design your presentation, think about the feelings you want to evoke in your audience. Want them to be crying with laughter? Moved to tears? Motivated into taking action? Pinpointing the emotions behind your presentation will help you choose the right template and make the best video possible.

17 great video presentation ideas

Now you’ve nailed down the type of video presentation you want to make, it’s time to master the finer details. Here’s just some of the ways you can make your message sing.

1. Start with a bold statement

A bold statement can capture your audience’s attention right from the get-go. Your statement should offer something slightly unusual and maybe even a little controversial. Something to make people sit up and take notice.

2. Tell a story

One of the best ways to get your audience’s attention is to tell a story – it’ll hit them right in the feels.

A personal, human story works because it the audience can relate to it on a personal level. Think about some stand-out examples of human stories that relate to your business or idea, and tell that story so people will connect with the central character. The bigger the emotion the better: love, longing, overcoming obstacles, things we’ve all had to deal with at some point in our lives.

Think about the  ‘story arc’  – how will you frame your message so the audience immediately empathizes?

If you’re selling trainers, perhaps you’ll talk about someone who’s training for a marathon. If you’re lobbying for women’s rights, perhaps you’ll tell a story of when a passing comment affected you deeply. Maybe you should think back to the decision that started your business, and start your presentation with that.

Here’s a great example of storytelling from one of the world’s top brands:

3. Use music

Music has great power to support and enhance the emotion in a video presentation, and has been proven to sustain an audience’s attention and aid in information retention. Music is used in movies to suggest an emotional state to the viewer, so why not in a video presentation?

Modern, up-tempo music will snap people to attention at the right moment, while slow, minor-key sounds relax the brain, which is useful for reviewing content so it can slip more easily into long-term memory.

It can be a struggle to find good quality  royalty free music , but here at Biteable we have a selection of great royalty free tracks (or you can upload your own if you’re that way inclined).

Music is one of the most critical (and often overlooked) aspects of any presentation. Here’s a good example of a Biteable template where the music does a great job of supporting the message.

4. Visual metaphor

Research has shown that combining pictures and text is one of the best ways to help people engage with and retain information. There’s something about how our brain works that makes text by itself far less memorable, so if you can combine something visual with your message, you’ll keep people’s attention longer and they’ll remember more of your presentation.

Talking to a group of people about taking action on something that scares them? A picture of someone diving or bungee jumping could work. Telling your boss how important that company retreat is next year? Show them an image of happy, relaxed people with their toes in the sand.

It doesn’t have to be obvious and clichéd, either. Closed doors, wide open roads, and lighting a candle all have subconscious messages that you don’t really need to explain. (Whatever you do, just don’t use the ultimate cliche: the overused  ‘water ripple’ .)

5. Use questions

Questions can be a great way to open a presentation, because they encourage the audience to think for themselves. It opens them up to a realm of critical thinking, which is perfect when you’re gonna sock it to them with your impactful message.

‘Did you know 15 billion trees are cut down each year?’

‘Have you ever considered what life would be like if you didn’t have to save money?’

The art of asking questions in a presentation means you can incorporate them into your video as a great lead-in. Combined with some appropriate music, it can really get your audience thinking about the issue, and then you’ll go on to explain exactly what your solution is.

Having a laugh can really do a lot to win over an audience. There’s no need to be too serious, and even if you’re dealing with a heavy topic, lightening the mood can work wonders.

Whether you’re looking to create a funny sales video, an event presentation, or a presentation for an interview — one thing’s for sure, you can’t go wrong by including humor.

7. Repetition

Simple. Effective. Powerful.

Repetition can be used in several ways: by offering several one-word sentences in a row (the repetition is in the rhythm), or by repeating a word or a key phrase several time throughout your presentation.

In his famous Stanford speech in 2005, for example, Steve Jobs concluded by saying  “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

Repetition is powerful. It drives home your key message and strengthens your position.

8. Motion Graphics

Motion graphics  are basically animation with text as a major component, and is a staple of what we do at Biteable.

When you use moving graphics in a presentation, it instantly captures attention. If your audience is just taking their seats, or are halfway through hearing your story, there’s no doubt they’ll sit up and take notice if you introduce some cool motion graphics, like this Meeting Tips example.

Although they can sometimes feel clichéd, quotes are a great way to impart a message in a presentation. Want your audience to understand something complex? A quote from Einstein should do it. Or would you like to say something meaningful and poetic? A couple of lines of Shakespeare should convey some wisdom.

10. Audio narration

Narration can give a different mood to your presentation, especially if the voice is powerful and the words are heartfelt. Use it to change the tone or pace of your presentation and it will certainly keep your audience hooked if there’s a danger of them losing interest.

11. Go bright with color

Color can have a huge effect on how your video comes across. Don’t be afraid to experiment. The contrasts of black and white can be extremely effective, but you can also grab people’s attention with some carefully-chosen primary and secondary colors, like in our Motion Graphics template.

12. Use illustrations

Illustrations are a great way to communicate information, especially if you’ve got lots to say. Whether you want to create a crowd of people or a cool depiction of some new fancy gadget, illustrations can draw the eye and make your presentation more interesting.

13. Infographics

When you utilize infographics, you can pack in a huge amount of data and information without confusing your audience. Think pie charts, digital numbers, and ascending animated graphs. These can show your audience boring data in an exciting way.

14. Create interesting transitions

The one advantage of video over a standard presentation is that you can do all types of funky things with transitions, like a whip pan transition, when the camera quickly pans between scenes. It’s a bit like a wipe, but much faster. Check out our full article on transitions  here .

15. Make it look cinematic

Adding a cinematic touch can help your audience feel receptive to your message because subconsciously, they will associate these elements with being at the cinema, eating popcorn, and generally having a good time.

16. Go retro

A cool, retro look for your presentation will make it hard to ignore. By going retro, you add a little bit of cheeky style to your message. You don’t need to go  quite as retro as the template below, but taking a step back in time is a sure way to add a little bit of zing to things.

17. End on a meaningful note

Your presentation will only give your audience a lasting impression if you end it right.

It’s important to let the audience know what you want them to do next: to visit a website for more information, to ponder an idea or new direction, or to take action toward a particular goal.

An attention-grabbing visual will work really well here, along with a meaningful end to the music – a change of pace, volume, or pitch.

What’s the takeaway message? A strong CTA (call to action) will ensure your presentation is memorable and much more likely to be talked about.

Video brings your presentation alive

Of course, we’re a little biased here at Biteable, but we’ve also sat through enough mind-numbingly dull presentations to know that video offers a delightful treat for your audience. It brings your message to life in a way no other medium can.

Ready to start crafting your presentation? Check out our range of templates  here .

Make stunning videos with ease.

Take the struggle out of team communication.

Try Biteable now.

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5 Interactive Presentation Ideas to Make Your Message Memorable

One of the greatest challenges presenters face is making their content memorable. Not only do they want to hold the attention of the audience, but they also want people to reflect on the presentation after it ends. There are plenty of ways to engage people, from opening jokes to icebreaker games , but they don’t necessarily guarantee that your audience will remember and actively apply your message. 

There is a science to connecting and engaging with audiences so that they better retain the information you present. The key is to make your presentations more interactive so people better engage with and retain your ideas. Discover why interaction is so valuable and test these interactive presentation ideas with your next audience. 

Why interactive presentations are so effective

To better understand why interactive presentations work, it helps to briefly step into the world of pedagogical theory. American educator Edgar Dale is credited with inventing the Cone of Experience , which highlights how we only remember 20% of what we hear, but 70% of what we say and 90% of what we do. Listening to a presentation and scanning slides on a deck is a form of passive learning, where audiences are more likely to forget the material. Conversely, discussing the content with someone else or simulating an experience is a form of active learning where audiences remember and apply what they know. 

Interactive presentations move audiences deeper into the Cone of Experience where they better engage with your message. People are more likely to remember what you are trying to convey and can tie your message to the activities you developed to reinforce your ideas. That doubles the opportunity for them to remember something compared to simply hearing a message during a static presentation. 

5 interactive presentation ideas for active learning

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to interactive learning. Depending on your audience and topic, you can incorporate multiple activities and engaging elements into your talk. Here are a few ideas to get started if you are ready to elevate your presentations.

1. Lead with real-time trivia questions

The first way to engage your audience is to collect feedback from your audience. Start your presentation with real-time trivia that tests what they know. You can incorporate a Poll Everywhere Multiple Choice Activity or a short Competition to quiz your audience. This immediately engages your listeners and challenges them to think about the content. 

There is also a pedagogical reason for leading with trivia: you are tapping into prior knowledge . Your audience members don’t have to be experts on the topic at hand, but they can reflect on what they are already familiar with and reinforce their knowledge with your messaging. This makes the content stickier, meaning your audience is more likely to remember it. 

After you ask the first questions, incorporate trivia throughout your presentation to reinforce concepts. A great example of this would be starting your presentation with a well-known misconception related to your topic. Ask your audience to answer based on what they know, and then after disproving this concept, ask them the same question again. Your audience will be surprised by the difference in their answers. This will also give your audience a dopamine hit (the feel-good hormone that comes with “aha!” moments) when they realize how much they are learning. 

2. Let audience members express themselves through polls 

Polling is a form of trivia that lets people express their opinions or ideas about a topic. For example, if you are leading a group of entrepreneurs through an accounting seminar, you might take a poll to identify what percentage of the audience “thinks bookkeeping is tedious,” or “gets overwhelmed easily by financial spreadsheets.” 

Take advantage of real-time polling software like Poll Everywhere to see how your audience feels about the topic at hand or the information they are learning.  

There is also a psychological reason to take these polls: they enable you to tap into group emotions where people form connections because they experience the same feelings. This creates a sense of community and ties your messaging to emotional responses, making the content more memorable. 

3. Create a collaborative whiteboard

A collaborative whiteboard (or giant Post-it note) allows people to share their thoughts and ideas on the material as you introduce new concepts. It is a form of scaffolding where you start with a foundational idea and expand on it with more advanced information. You can create a single whiteboard with your audience or break them into groups so they create their giant Post-its together. 

Whenever there is a new idea, you or your audience writes it down on the whiteboard – ideally with a keyword or definition that explains what it means. New information is added throughout the presentation, highlighting how various concepts tie together. 

This is a form of active note-taking and collaborative learning where everyone works together to create a finished product. 

4. Create roleplay opportunities

Another way to utilize active learning is to let audience members work through situations where the material is applied. You can either break your audience into small groups to work through these activities or ask for a few brave volunteers to interact with you in front of everyone else. 

The small group method allows everyone to participate, maximizing the amount of active learning in the room. However, for the sake of time and to keep the audience’s attention, you might prefer to run through this roleplay with just one or two people. 

If you choose the latter option, challenge the rest of your audience to think of their answers while listening to the main volunteer. You can also ask the group to answer questions in real time with a Poll Everywhere Q&A Activity before the roleplay begins so you can see how the group’s answers compare to the volunteer’s responses.  

5. Ask your audience members to teach the material to each other

One of the best ways to prove that you understand a concept is to teach it to others. This is another opportunity for your audience to break into groups while you walk around the room helping each pod of learners.

Consider developing worksheets where the groups have to work through problems by applying what they learned. They can then explain to each other why they came up with those answers. These discussions can give audience members space to think about what they learned and how they can apply it. Try to incorporate open-ended questions into this group work that fosters healthy discussions.    

After the group work is complete, bring everyone together to discuss what they learned. People can highlight the challenges they faced, which alerts you to material you might want to review before the session is over. This is also a great way to collect feedback on which parts of your presentation are confusing to audiences. 

Test interactive presentation ideas with Poll Everywhere

Interactive elements can make any presentation more memorable, whether you are speaking to a group of employees or giving a keynote speech at an industry-leading conference. Wherever you talk, bring Poll Everywhere with you. Poll Everywhere is a great resource to engage audiences with trivia, poll questions, and word clouds. You can make your presentations better and form strong connections with your audiences. 

Create memorable and engaging presentations with Poll Everywhere. Create an account and incorporate one of our 8 core Activities types in your next presentation. 

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How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

• Guy Kawasaki

Remember: Less is more.

A strong presentation is so much more than information pasted onto a series of slides with fancy backgrounds. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others. Here are some unique elements that make a presentation stand out.

• Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
• Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
• Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
• Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

• Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist at Canva and was the former chief evangelist at Apple. Guy is the author of 16 books including Think Remarkable : 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.

Partner Center

Watch CBS News

CDK cyberattack shuts down auto dealerships across the U.S. Here's what to know.

By Megan Cerullo

Edited By Aimee Picchi

Updated on: June 21, 2024 / 5:15 PM EDT / CBS News

CDK Global, a company that provides auto dealerships across the U.S. with software for managing sales and other services, was shut down for a third straight day Friday after cyberattacks crippled the platform. 

The outage is disrupting roughly 15,000 car sellers that depend on CDK's dealer management software to run their businesses, including vehicle sales. Some dealership employees have resorted to pen and paper to handle transactions, but said most deals had ground to a halt. CDK has not indicated when its systems will be back up and running, but suggested the outage could last several days. 

"We are actively investigating a cyber incident," a CDK spokesperson told CBS News. "Out of an abundance of caution and concern for our customers, we have shut down most of our systems and are working diligently to get everything up and running as quickly as possible." 

CDK, which said it had restored some services on Wednesday, told CBS MoneyWatch on Thursday afternoon that its systems were again offline after it suffered another cyberattack. 

"Late in the evening of June 19, we experienced an additional cyber incident and proactively shut down most of our systems," a CDK spokesperson said. "In partnership with third-party experts, we are assessing the impact and providing regular updates to our customers. We remain vigilant in our efforts to reinstate our services and get our dealers back to business as usual as quickly as possible."

Calls to a CDK customer support hotline produced a continuous busy signal. But the company's automated recording said the outage could affect dealerships for days, according to  PC Mag . The message told callers, "At this time, we do not have an estimated time frame for resolution and therefore our dealers' systems will not be available likely for several days," the publication reported.

The message also warned callers that "bad actors" posing as CDK support staff were trying to obtain customers' credentials in what are known as phishing attacks, according to the Associated Press . 

The number of cyberattacks has been on the rise in the last year, with more than 3,200 data breaches in 2023, a 78% jump from the prior year, according to a new study from data firm  SOAX . Those breaches impacted more than 65 million victims last year, it added.

What is CDK? 

CDK's dealer management system, or DMS, lets car vendors operate their business, including handling payroll, inventory, customer relations and office operations. The technology also enables dealers to line car buyers line up with financing and insurance.

On its website, it also touts its cybersecurity capabilities. "CDK Cybersecurity Solutions provide a three-tiered cybersecurity strategy to prevent, protect and respond to cyberattacks so you can defend your dealership," it says. 

Brookfield Business Partners, a Toronto-based private equity firm, acquired the company in 2022 in a  deal  valued at more than $8 billion.

When did the cyberattack begin?

The cyberattack on CDK Global began Tuesday evening, Bleeping Computer , a cybersecurity news site, reported Wednesday, taking the 15,000 car dealerships it serves offline.  

As mentioned above, CDK said it suffered another cyberattack on Wednesday evening. It is not currently known who, or what group, is behind the cyberattacks. 

Mike Stanton, CEO of the National Automobile Dealers Association, said in a statement on Friday that "dealers are very committed to protecting their customer information and are actively seeking information from CDK to determine the nature and scope of the cyber incident so they can respond appropriately."

How are dealerships responding?

Some dealerships appeared to get creative to continue doing business during the outage. Dealership employees posted about the outage on  Reddit  Wednesday, sharing that they were relying on spreadsheets and sticky notes to sell customers small parts and make repairs, but that they weren't making any large transactions. 

One employee asked other dealership employees, "How many of you are standing around because your whole shop runs on CDK?" under the heading "CDK down," with users in Wisconsin and Colorado confirming their dealership transaction systems were offline. 

—The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Megan Cerullo is a New York-based reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering small business, workplace, health care, consumer spending and personal finance topics. She regularly appears on CBS News 24/7 to discuss her reporting.

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Lesson Plan

June 17, 2024, 6:05 a.m.

Lesson plan: History of Juneteenth and why it became a national holiday

A Juneteenth celebration in Richmond, Virginia, 1905. Library of Congress

This lesson was originally published on June 16, 2021, and was updated on June 16, 2024.

For a Google version of this lesson plan, click here . (Note: you will need to make a copy of the document to edit it).

In this lesson, students will explore and discuss the history and context around the Juneteenth holiday in the United States. Topics explored will include the history of racial injustice in the U.S., the Civil War and the limitations of the Emancipation Proclamation. Additionally, students will be encouraged to explore the modern significance of Juneteenth and its long-term impact.

Estimated time

One 50-60 minute class period

Grade Level

Grades 6-12

On June 15, 2021, the Senate unanimously approved a bill approving June 19 as a federal holiday for “Juneteenth National Independence Day.” The House passed the bill one day later. Still, many Americans are still unaware of the history and significance of June 19.

On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring “that all persons held as slaves” in the Confederacy “shall be free.” While this may have freed some enslaved people on paper, the reality was much more complicated.

Source: PBS NewsHour via Associated Press

For instance, the Emancipation Proclamation only freed those slaves held under the Confederacy, not in border states loyal to the Union, including Kentucky, West Virginia and Delaware, where slavery was still legal after the Emancipation Proclamation. In fact, slavery was still legal in Kentucky until Dec. 1865, when the 13th Amendment was passed, though Kentucky voted against ratifying the amendment.

Confederate states and slaveholders also resisted emancipation, and many people remained enslaved in Confederate states after the proclamation, even as many enslaved people fought for their freedom or escaped behind Union lines. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger of the Union issued an order in Galveston, Texas, alerting all enslaved persons that they were legally free.

At this point in 1865, Texas was the westernmost state in America and one of the last Confederate states to be occupied by the Union. Many slaveholders had fled Union advances in other parts of the South to Texas, along with the people they had enslaved.

While it took time for the logistics of “freeing” enslaved people to come into effect, the importance of June 19, or “Juneteenth” lived on. Considering how complicated emancipation was, many dates were considered for holding celebrations of emancipation, but over 150 years later, June 19 remains.

What originally was a holiday mainly observed by Texans has grown to be recognized all over the country. Each year on “Juneteenth,” (or more formally Juneteenth National Freedom Day), communities all around the United States gather and celebrate and reflect on the history of slavery and struggle for civil rights and equality, including the work that still remains after conditional advances such as the Emancipation Proclamation.

Warm up activity

As a class, watch the BrainPop video (8 minutes) below found here introducing Juneteenth. While watching the video, answer the following discussion questions.

Source: BrainPop

Discussion questions:

• What is “Juneteenth”? What does it celebrate?
• Why did it take so long for enslaved peoples in Texas to finally be free? What obstacles existed?
• What were some of the forms of discrimination against newly freed people mentioned in the video?
• What is the Great Migration?
• How did Juneteenth become a national, not just regional, celebration?

After watching the video, separate into groups of 3-4 to discuss the focus questions (5 minutes).

Main activities:

• Why was June 19th chosen as the date to celebrate the freedom of all Americans? What were some of the drawbacks to other dates? Can you make an argument for why you think a different date might have been better and/or worse?
• Gates describes several reasons why Juneteenth struggled to be remembered at times, and why it was able to endure. Compare and contrast what the BrainPop video included as reasons why Juneteenth struggled and endured with what Gate’s emphasizes. What do you think were the most important factors in Juneteenth’s momentum and remembrance continuing?
• “When did they start recognizing Juneteenth, if at all?”
• “What was the process of Juneteenth becoming a holiday in my state?”
• If Juneteenth isn’t recognized in your state, see if you can answer, “Why is Juneteenth not recognized?”
• This search engine for state and local government websites
• The Library of Congress

Additional activities

• Brainstorm or plan a Juneteenth celebration activity. This can be decorating a common area, bringing in a relevant local speaker or planning a refreshment break for your school. Juneteenth celebrations can be in the home, at school or in community locations. For more inspiration see these resources:
• “ How to Celebrate ” from Juneteenth.com
• See how others are celebrating Juneteenth on Twitter .
• Some activists feel ambivalent about Juneteenth becoming a national holiday, or reject the idea. To learn more about the nuances surrounding making Juneteenth a federal holiday, watch this NewsHour interview with Dr. Mark Anthony Neal recorded in 2020 amid the George Floyd protests.

• The day now known as Juneteenth was formally recognized as a national holiday in 2021, due in large part to the activism of retired teacher Opal Lee. Learn more about Lee's activism and the message of Juneteenth in this NewsHour interview with Opal Lee.

If classrooms finish and plan a celebratory activity, please share your ideas with us on social media @NewsHourEXTRA on Twitter.

This lesson was written by Cecilia Curran, NewsHour Classroom intern, while she was a rising sophomore at Amherst College. This lesson was edited by NewsHour Classroom's education producer and former history teacher Vic Pasquantonio.

Fill out this form to share your thoughts on Classroom’s resources. Sign up for NewsHour Classroom’s ready-to-go Daily News Lessons delivered to your inbox each morning.

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Identity Theft and Online Security

How to protect your personal information and privacy, stay safe online, and help your kids do the same.

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What To Know About Identity Theft

Learn what identity theft is, how to protect yourself against it, and how to know if someone stole your identity.

What Is Identity Theft?

How to protect yourself against identity theft, how to know if someone stole your identity, monitoring services, recovery services, and identity theft insurance.

Identity theft is when someone uses your personal or financial information without your permission.

They might steal your name and address, credit card, or bank account numbers, Social Security number, or medical insurance account numbers. And they could use them to

• buy things with your credit cards
• get new credit cards in your name
• open a phone, electricity, or gas account in your name
• steal your tax refund
• use your health insurance to get medical care
• pretend to be you if they are arrested

Taking steps to protect your personal information can help you avoid identity theft. Here’s what you can do to stay ahead of identity thieves.

Protect documents that have personal information

If you get statements with personal information in the mail, take your mail out of the mailbox as soon as you can.

Ask questions before giving out your Social Security number

Some organizations need your Social Security number to identify you. Those organizations include the IRS, your bank, and your employer. Organizations like these that do need your Social Security number won’t call, email, or text you to ask for it.

Other organizations that might ask you for your Social Security number might not really need it. Those organizations include a medical provider, a company, or your child’s school. Ask these questions before you give them your Social Security number:

• Why do you need it?
• How will you protect it?
• Can you use a different identifier?
• Can you use just the last four digits of my Social Security number?

Protect your information from scammers online and on your phone

If you’re logging in to an online account, use a strong password .

Add multi-factor authentication for accounts that offer it. Multi-factor authentication offers extra security by requiring two or more credentials to log in to your account. The additional credentials you need to log in to your account fall into two categories: something you have — like a passcode you get via text message or an authentication app, or something you are — like a scan of your fingerprint, your retina, or your face. Multi-factor authentication makes it harder for scammers to log in to your accounts if they do get your username and password.

Do not give your personal information to someone who calls, emails, or texts you. It could be a scammer trying to steal your information .

Watch  5 Ways To Help Protect Your Identity .

In addition to taking steps to protect your information, it pays to know how to tell if someone stole your identity . There are things you can do yourself to detect identity theft. There also are companies that sell credit and identity monitoring services.

What you can do to detect identity theft

Here’s what you can do to spot identity theft:

• Track what bills you owe and when they’re due. If you stop getting a bill, that could be a sign that someone changed your billing address.
• Review your bills.  Charges for things you didn’t buy could be a sign of identity theft. So could a new bill you didn’t expect.
• Check your bank account statement.  Withdrawals you didn’t make could be a sign of identity theft.
• Get and review your credit reports.  Accounts in your name that you don’t recognize could be a sign of identity theft. Here’s how you can get your free credit reports .

(View or share the  YouTube version of the video. )

If you discover that someone is misusing your personal information, visit IdentityTheft.gov to report and recover from identity theft.

Many companies sell identity theft protection services that may include credit monitoring, identity monitoring, identity recovery services, and identity theft insurance. These services also might be offered by your

• bank or credit union
• credit card provider
• employer’s benefits program
• insurance company

Credit monitoring services

Credit monitoring services scan activity that shows up on your credit reports. They might monitor activity at one, two, or all three of the major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

Credit monitoring services will usually alert you when

• a company checks your credit history
• a new loan or credit card account appears on your credit reports
• a creditor or debt collector says your payment is late
• public records show that you filed for bankruptcy
• someone files a lawsuit against you
• your credit limit changes
• your personal information, like your name, address, or phone number, changes

Credit monitoring services will not alert you when

• someone withdraws money from your bank account
• someone uses your Social Security number to file a tax return and collect your refund

If you’re considering using a credit monitoring service, here are some questions you can ask them:

• How often do you check credit reports for changes?
• Which of the three credit bureaus do you monitor?
• Is there a limit to how often I can review my credit reports?
• Will I be charged each time I review my credit reports?
• Are other services included, like access to my credit score?

Identity monitoring services

Companies that offer identity monitoring services check databases that collect different types of information to see if they contain new or inaccurate information about you. Those could be a sign that someone is using your personal information. These services can detect uses of your personal information that won’t show up on your credit report.

Identity monitoring services may tell you when your information shows up in

• a change of address request
• court or arrest records
• orders for new utility, cable, or wireless services
• an application for a payday loan
• a request to cash a check
• on social media
• on websites that identity thieves use to trade stolen information

Most identity monitoring services will not alert you if someone uses your information to

• file a tax return and collect your refund
• get Medicare benefits
• get Medicaid benefits
• get welfare benefits
• claim Social Security benefits
• claim unemployment benefits

Identity recovery services

Companies that sell credit and identity monitoring services also may offer identity recovery services to help you fix any damage caused by identity theft. These services may be included or cost extra. Some of the services they offer may be things you can do on your own for little or no cost.

Identity recovery services typically give you access to counselors or case managers who will help you recover your identity. They may

• help you write letters to creditors and debt collectors
• place a freeze on your credit report to prevent an identity thief from opening new accounts in your name
• guide you through documents you have to review

Some services will represent you in dealing with creditors or other institutions if you formally grant them authority to act on your behalf.

Identity theft insurance

Companies that sell monitoring services also may offer identity theft insurance. These services may be included or cost extra.

Identity theft insurance may cover

• the cost of copying documents
• postage costs for sending documents
• costs for getting documents notarized
• wages you lost
• legal fees you paid

Identity theft insurance generally won’t reimburse you for money stolen or financial loss resulting from the theft. Most policies won’t pay if your loss is covered by your homeowner’s or renter’s insurance. If you’re considering getting identity theft insurance, ask about the deductible and find out what’s covered and what isn’t.

Find out how to recognize the signs of medical identity theft , tax identity theft , and child identity theft .

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