When it comes to free online tools, the Google suite – including Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Meet, and more – is pretty powerful. It’s great for small businesses who want to collaborate on documents, presentations, and the ilk without sinking their budget; as well as for larger enterprises who prefer a nimble solution for some of their teams.
But as with many tools, some of the best features go unnoticed by its users. Fortunately, we are here to show you four cool things you can do with Google Slides ahead of your next presentation. So, buckle up and get ready to learn about a few features you may have missed.
Interactive Table of Contents
Most people skim over the table of contents. They take it for granted. They think it’s boring. But when you need to find something quick, the table of contents is there to help.
But did you know that Google Slides offers an interactive table of contents? Instead of fumbling through your presentation slide by slide, you can hyperlink slides to your table of contents. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. Just create a ToC slide, outline your other slides, and hyperlink the slide.
Highlight the word you want to link; right click the selection; click “slides in this presentation”; scroll through your options; select the slide that you want; click apply. Repeat as necessary.
Cross-Linking to Other Slides
In the same vein as the tip above, you can also cross-link to other slides. Just follow the same italicized guidelines in the previous section.
Why is this helpful? Because it allows you to choose your own adventure, believe it or not. This allows presenters to navigate their slides based on what the audience wants to see. Newbie audience wants to hear about your background? Go ahead and view those slides. Veteran audience wants to skip to the good stuff? Click the hyperlinked text to move right along.
There are numerous ways this can be applied to presentations. Don’t be afraid to get creative.
Live Polling
Another little-known feature of Google Slides is the ability to use live audience polling during your presentation through the power of add-ons. One such add-on is the Poll Everywhere extension for Google polls. Start by signing up for Poll Everywhere and downloading the add-on via Chrome.
Then it’s as simple as deciding what kind of poll you want to use. Multiple choice questions are great for polling or testing an audience’s active listening capabilities. Q&As are ideal for more complex queries and real-time feedback from listeners, while a word cloud is more of an exciting visual for showcasing the types of answers you receive.
Embed a Video
Looking to break up the flow and monotony of your presentation with a little multimedia action? Luckily, Google Slides is very accepting of videos. You can embed a video from YouTube or Google Drive; as well as from other sources.
To include a YouTube video in your slide deck: Open the slide you want to use; click the Insert option in your menu bar and select Video; Search by URL; and Insert the video; drag and drop or resize the video to fit your needs.
To include a Google Drive video in your slide: Again, go to Insert, then Video; select the video stored to your Drive account; then select to add. Resize and move as you will.
To include videos from another source: Find the video you want to add; snap a screenshot for your slide; Insert the video from your hard drive to the image; scale and move as you would; copy the URL and link it to the image.
And there you have it: a few examples of cool things you can do with Google Slides. Nothing left to do now but experiment and see the results for yourself.
