5 Prep Steps for Any Presentation

So, you have an upcoming presentation and you’re not sure where to start?

Let’s go to the beginning. Firstly, if you are crystal clear on the objectives of your presentation, you will be able to understand what KPIs are needed and what would define your meeting or event as successful. Next, know your audience. Are they industry peers with an expert level of your topic, or will you need to educate them with the basics? Then you can decide on your format; that is, where, when, and how you will present. That brings us to content, and you will certainly want interactive content that encourages participation and has a few shiny features. Lastly, before you actually present, take the whole thing for a test drive.

Let’s run through that again, slightly more in depth… and just for fun, let’s use classic song titles as our headers. 

1 [Boston] More Than A Feeling (Objectives)

This is the first and most important step. Why are you presenting? What is the message you are trying to convey? Once you have determined your objectives, you will be able to build your key performance indicators (KPIs) and measure success post-event.

2 [The Who] Who Are You? (Audience)

You’ll want to know who you are speaking with in order to know how you should be speaking with them. Whether it’s an audience of 10 or 10,000, you should do your best to learn about them beforehand, or even during your presentation. We’ll get to engagement shortly, but during your presentation, you can live poll your audience and ask them to self-identify their level of expertise on your topic, which can inform the approach you take in your content delivery.

3 [REO Speedwagon] Roll With The Changes (Format)

Format is the physical element of your presentation, different from the content. Are you presenting solo, without any AV assistance? That’s pretty easy. What about a six person panel, live streamed as part of your hybrid event, to an audience of fifty thousand, and being translated to multiple languages in real time? This ties into more complex budget considerations. Especially in this current time of virtual and hybrid events, we recommend leaving production elements to professional AV teams, so you can focus on your message and not the technical headaches.

4 [Bachman Turner Overdrive] You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (Content)

Now you can focus on the heart of your presentation, the content. It’s worth building a loose sequence or storyboard of how you hope for your presentation to run, but the most memorable events will always make the audience feel like they are included, or better yet, driving the presentation. Enhance your content with audience participation like Q&A and quizzes, use storytelling principles to make it more enjoyable, and dazzle the crowd with data visualization. To make sure you’re reaching audiences in any language, use wordly.ai to translate your presentation to be read or heard in real time.

5 [Jimi Hendrix] Are You Experienced? (Rehearsal)

Now that you’ve done all your research, technology assessments, implementations, and content building, you’re ready to present, right? Wrong. Always do a dry run. Let me say that again, a bit louder. ALWAYS DO A DRY RUN. Even if it’s a small, internal presentation, doing a few rehearsals in front of the mirror can help you catch potential disasters beforehand and instead of potential embarrassment, you can deliver an engaging presentation worth remembering. 

There you have it, 5 straightforward steps to prepare your presentation. Rock on!