Once content is divided into separate ideas, spread across individual slides and made as visual as possible, you are ready to add navigation strategies. Jumping around within slide shows, and between slide shows, in PowerPoint is very similar to moving within, and between, Web sites. It’s easy. Of course, with PowerPoint, you always have the option of scrolling forward through slides in a traditional linear way, if desired, but adding navigation greatly increases flexibility.

Building navigation components in PowerPoint involves different ways of combining shapes and picture thumbnails with hyperlinks and that’s it! In this video clip, you’ll get a taste for the basics, but you may also want to pick up a copy of a Relational Presentation textbook, or attend the video workshop sessions, to learn all aspects of building and using dynamic presentations.

Navigation strategies take on numerous forms. The four most common are:

• Showcase, a back and forth movement between content and a special slide full of links called a switchboard.
• In-line, where the navigation bar remains always visible as content changes above.
• Zone, where a slide doesn’t contain any obvious navigation elements, yet its visual design helps the presenter find appropriate hyperlinks—such as clicking one of the products on display here to reveal more information about that product.
• And Topical, where sets of related content are organized into distinct categories. Clicking each category link reveals a different set of available content links.

Building a basic navigation element is very easy. Insert a shape onto a slide, right click that shape and choose hyperlink, and then click the tab labeled “Place in this document” if linking to another slide in this same show, or click the tab labeled “Existing file or web page” if linking to a different slide show or Web page. Once the link is in place, you can start the slide show and click the shape. Doing so opens the destination seamlessly.

Building the navigation strategies you saw a moment ago is a little more involved, but still easy. Try it. Learn how to make Showcase and In-line styles for free by visiting the free video workshops link in the Getting Started section of this Website. Additional tutorials are available for exploring other navigation styles as well.

Some people at first are reluctant to add navigation, thinking “What if I get distracted by all the questions and the different navigation options and eventually lose track of what I wanted to say during my talk in the first place?” That is possible, but here’s a strategy we recommend to keep you on track and oriented at all times.

Let’s say your presentation slot is an hour long. While mapping out the talk’s agenda, use the 75% rule. Plan ONLY 45 minutes of critical core content and leave the remaining 15 minutes open for audience interactions, optional stories, helpful examples, and non-critical details. Your talk might progress something like this …

Perhaps the master of ceremonies drones on and on about your accomplishments and inadvertently cuts into your speaking slot by 5 minutes. That’s OK. You still have 10 minutes of flexibility left. Here someone asks a question. You briefly jump out to another short presentation, show its slides, and then return to the agenda … another two minutes. Here, you spontaneously remember a comment someone made just before the meeting started and take another 3 minutes to address her concerns, issues you hadn’t even thought of last week while planning the talk.

Now, someone asks a question that you DID anticipate, but it’s out of order. You say, “Good question, John. I was gonna address that topic a little later, but since you ask, let’s go there now.” John feels respected and the audience is impressed by your flexibility. Here, you notice looks of confusion on people’s faces and say, “Maybe that last statement was a little confusing? Let me show you a few examples of what I mean.” You quickly display pictures and charts from a past project that you didn’t think would be needed, but obviously they are. Finally, a couple minutes remain at the end for questions.

Notice that all critical topics in your talk were covered, even though the exact agenda changed repeatedly. Moving, adding, and deleting topics might occur frequently, without throwing you off track. In fact, contrary to common belief, interactive performances are always extremely well-planned and rehearsed this way. They are never random or disorganized. You literally plan organized ways of being spontaneous. Facing an audience with a highly flexible presentation platform, in that case, is not scary at all because you are in full control of the agenda at all times and can easily adjust to anything that happens.

In the last video clip, we’ll look at how this kind of presentation applies on a large scale at the corporate level, involving multiple presenters.