Public Speaking Skills Training | How to Prepare Your Content For Presentation

Once you know what your presentation is to cover, why you’re doing the presentation, and who will be attending, it’s time to do some research. Research comes in many forms and goes to various levels, depending on what you know about the topic and what your participants need to know. You may have to present on a topic that you know nothing about, or it may be something that’s second nature to you. You may be providing a brief overview or focusing on one aspect and going into detail.

Whatever your situation, unless this is a presentation that you give with the same information to similar audiences, you must do at least some research. You show your audience a different level of respect by researching and understanding your topic. “An ill-prepared presenter sends a dramatic message to his or her audience: ‘I don’t think you’re very important. If you were, I’d be better prepared.’”

Before You Start Your Research

Before you can start your research, there are three questions you should ask yourself:

1. What do I want my audience to gain?

2. What might they already know about my topic?

3. What is the objective of the presentation?

You should already have the answers to these questions, but now you start taking what you know about the people and the point and translating it into specifics.

For example, the purpose of your presentation may be to enable your participants to train their subordinates on a new procedure. They should already know how to train their people and they may know something about the new procedure or about the old procedure that this new procedure is replacing. The objective is to make sure that you have provided the knowledge that they need to be able to go into the field and train their people.

Asking these three questions will help you get your thoughts together about the information you’ll need in this presentation. This is the “brain dump” time before you start your research. Write down whatever thoughts come to you. Don’t worry about the form or the format: the thoughts that you dump don’t need to be complete. They can come in the form of comments and/or questions. Write down only main points or thoughts that need more research. If in doubt, put it down. Don’t worry about organizing your thoughts at this point—just dump them!