Slido, one of the interactive add-ins for PowerPoint
Feedback: whether positive or negative, it’s important. It’s how we communicate with one another.
Presenting is all about communication. Most of the time, however, it’s one way – presenter to audience. If you’re lucky, there might be a brief question and answer session at the end. For the most part that works. But it could be more inclusive, right?
As a presenter, you can increase your audience’s engagement by giving them a chance to input and provide feedback.
And, there’s an app for that!
In fact, there is plenty of software on the market that offers interactive add-ins for PowerPoint, and many of them integrate nicely into your deck, such as Poll Everywhere, Kahoot and Slido.
Today, I’m going to take you through the one I’m most familiar with: Slido. So, what are the features of this add-in and how does it work?
Slido, one of the interactive add-ins for PowerPoint
With Slido, you can interact with your audience using polls, questions, quizzes and word clouds. It doesn’t matter where your audience are (in-person or online, or both). The process is super simple:
- Add questions to your slides using the Slido add-in
- Your audience picks up whatever device is closest (phone, tablet, laptop etc.)
- They go to Slido.com and enter your hashtag (no account needed)
- They answer your questions
- Your slides automatically update with their answers
N.B. Access to the internet is required for your slides to update!
If you go for one of their paid plans, you can adjust the look and feel to match your branding, so that your Slido polls blend in nicely with the rest of your presentation. You can even add images to some of your questions. Not sure how to do this? Talk to us!
Slido tools
1. Multiple choice poll: I would imagine that this is the most used option (probably, I don’t actually know). You can ask a question, giving several potential answers, and get the audience to vote in real time. Bish bash bosh.
Slido multiple choice poll
2. Word cloud: Ask a question and let the audience reply. The more regularly a word is used in the replies, the bigger that word appears on the slide. Beware if your audience tries to sneak naughty words onto your slides… there is an option to moderate incoming answers to filter these out!
3. Quiz: If they know there is a quiz coming at the end of the presentation, that’s bound to get your audience to sit up and listen to you!
4. Rating question: These are the “on a scale of 1-10” type questions; find out what your audience really think.
5. Open text / questions: You have complete freedom with these. Your audience can type in their answer, or ask questions. If you allow it, other members of the audience can upload their questions and comments too. Again, there is an option to moderate these if needed!
6. Ranking poll: This is different to the ranking question mentioned earlier. Rather than a scale, the ranking poll gives you a selection of answers which you then place in the order of preference. Slido then combines all of the answers to provide an overall audience ranking.
Slido ranking poll
7. Survey: Ask the audience their thoughts on your presentation before you even leave the room, using the quick survey.
So there you have it. There are lots of ways in which you can get input from your audience, and techie interventions like Slido (and other interactive add-ins for PowerPoint) can certainly help! Will you turn your next presentation into more of a conversation?
