How Many Slides for a 30 Minute Presentation
30 minute presentations are very common in different situations and scenarios. Some business meetings are arranged for 30 minutes only, and then the PowerPoint presenter can eventually be available for questions or to exchange ideas with the audience. Also, during a presentation in the classroom, a 30 minute presentation is good to leave more space for other student presentations during the same day. This way, many groups can perform the presentation in a single day.
But the question here is, how many slides for a 30-minute presentation? And of course, it is not an accurate answer since every slide and presenter is different and it could take less or more time. But as a rule of thumb, we can get some estimates about how many slides to include in 30 minutes PowerPoint presentation.
Let’s start thinking on this idea. If we have to perform a presentation in 30 minutes and we want to make it on time, let’s imagine every slide should take 2 minutes as most. Then, using 15 slides we’ll be able to present it in a timeframe of 30 minutes.
As a rule of thumb, consider:
- Estimate how much time do you require to present your slides in average and add 30 more seconds to the result.
- Then divide 30 minutes by the time spent on a single slide.
- The result will give you an idea about how many slides for 30 minutes.
Why are we adding 30 more seconds to every new slide? It is very common that we as presenters underestimate the length in minutes for a slide, so by adding a few more seconds for every slide, we’ll be safe in the total presentation time.
Why 30 minute if you can present it in 20 minutes and using less slides?
Alternatively, suppose you need to wrap a presentation in 5-minute presentation, 10-minutes or 20 minutes. In that case, you should be aware that are some well-known methodologies, rules and frameworks that are interesting to know in advance. For example, 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint is a rule that Guy Kawasaki is evangelizing and that is a very simple concept.
10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.
by using 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint for example, you can make less boring presentations, with only 10 slides and no font smaller than thirty point.
How many words to include in a 10 minute presentation speech?
There are many different classifications and estimates, but as a general rule, presenters can consider a speech takes 100 to 200 words per minute. Having this in mind, how many slides should we use in a 10-minute presentation? The answer is simple, a 10-minute presentation would require between 1000 to 2000 words.
Similarly, if you have a 30 minutes presentation, it would take between 3000 and 6000 words.
The 5 by 5 rule in PowerPoint
There are many other rules that can help to estimate the time taken by presenters to deliver a speech. For example, the 5 by 5 rule in PowerPoint is a rule that will keep your audience from feeling bored and overwhelmed. In this rule, you should keep the text on each slide reduced at the minimum. Keep it short and straight to the point. For example, in the 5 by 5 rule, you can spend up to 5 words per line of text, 5 text lines per slide.
To keep your audience from feeling overwhelmed, you should keep the text on each slide short and to the point. Some experts suggest using the 5/5/5 rule for presentations: no more than five words per line of text, five lines of text per slide, or five text-heavy slides in a row.
If you need to prepare a presentation of a different length, then our other guides can help you. For example, in How Many Slides for a 45 Minute presentation can help to decipher how many slides to include in a longer presentation, which is sometimes useful for trainings and courses.