Design Your Own Theme

• Instead of using a preset PowerPoint theme, create your own. This allows you to tailor your theme to the content of the speech, though it can take a while to design. Make sure the design is clean: Do not mix and match more than two fonts and ensure colors are not overly bright or clashing with each other.
  
  

Images

• PowerPoint is not just for continuous slides of text. Use images to highlight and illustrate key points. The presentation will be more attractive, keep your audience members' attention longer and help them remember important points.
  
  

Video and Audio

• PowerPoint can support a number of video files, such as WMV, MPEG and AVI. This gives you scope for including a video or audio clip in your presentation. Make sure the clip is no more than one minute in length and you do not have too many in your presentation, as this can cause your slide show to run slowly.
  
  

Animation

• Animation can add an interesting and entertaining element to your PowerPoint presentation when used carefully and sparingly. Animate text or images or choose a transition between slides. Make sure you do not choose an animation that develops slowly, such as a "crawl" of text, as you may find you are still waiting for the animation to finish even though you've said all you need to say on that point.