Imagine you are preparing for something. You prepare your suitcase, fold and pack your clothes into your suitcase. Most of the clothes you prepare are shirts. After you finish packing, you are ready to go ahead. Unfortunately you are going to the beach for vacation. And finally you cannot wear your clothes in that beach.
That is what you will feel if you prepare a presentation, while you are not knowing the purpose of the presentation. Without knowing the purpose of the presentation you are going to perform, you won’t do the presentation well and properly. Your presentation will be a waste of time for both of you and the audience eventually. You cannot give the proper information and the audience cannot get all the points.
The main purpose of a presentation is to inform. Your presentation must be well prepared in order to be able to give information to the audience properly. There are two kinds of giving information.
1. Giving information to those who don’t know about the topic yet (to inform)
2. Persuade people to use something they already know (to persuade)
Each Type has its own Trick!
The purpose to inform is different to persuade in a presentation.
Informative presentation is usually done in front of the audiences who don’t know yet about the topic or are not familiar with the topic. Here you must give facts and data so that in the end of your presentation the audiences got new information. For this type of presentation, the preparation you have to do is make an understandable material.
However, the persuasive presentation is a little bit more complicated. Here you will face the audiences who already know and are familiar to the topic you are going to present but they are not interested to it yet. This type of presentation requires your best communication skill. In the end of your presentation, the audiences are expected to change their minds. Those who are not interested to the topic are now interested in that, or at least they are willing to try to use that.
Everything Begin with the Material
The success of your presentation depends on your ability as a presenter. You are may be not a star, but if you have a good communication skill, you will be a star after you deliver your presentation. The audiences will thank you for they have got useful information to bring home.
In fact, a presentation is a communication. A success communication is when the communicator could deliver the message properly to the communicant. At the end, the communicator and the communicant have the same understanding and knowledge about something.
So, communication in delivering presentation will need 3 things:
1. Message bearer (communicator)
2. Media
3. Message receiver (communicant)
Those three things is interrelated to each other. If the communicator could give the message through the right media, the message will be accepted and understood by the communicant.
The material for your presentation must be strong and understandable. By understanding easily to the presentation you deliver, the audiences will be interested to your presentation.
Prepare Your Material at Your Best
Before you arrange the materials, collect all the things you will deliver in your presentation first. You must deliver things that are relevant to the purpose of the presentation of course. If its purpose is to inform, you must give new information and things that are not familiar to the audiences. If its purpose is to persuade, you must deliver the benefits and advantages of the thing you deliver.
Write down all things you will deliver. Write down all things that come up to your consciousness, that relevant to your presentation. After that, evaluate them. Re-read your writings, and if you find things less important, remove them.
If you have the fixed material for your presentation, classify each idea. Classification will help you to deliver the material easily to the audiences. After that, make the media for your presentation. The very common media used for presentation is slide show.
Make a simple but attractive slide show for your presentation. A slide full with writings and pictures will bore the audiences. In opposite, a simple slide will grow curiosity so that the audiences will pay attention to your presentation.
After presentation media is made, you also must prepare yourself. You must deliver the presentation properly. Public communication skill is highly required to be a good presenter. Not all people are gifted to do the public speaking, but everyone can deliver a good presentation, with one condition: practice, practice and practice.
