Make a presentation in 5 steps (2): Know your audience

To make a good presentation, you need to define the audience well. This post outlines what you need to know about the audience and offers some questions to ask to analyse them well.

(If you haven’t aleady seen the overview blog-spot for making effective presentations, read this first)


Define the audience: Who am I talking to and why do they care?

The audience is the key to how you will define your message, choose structure and content and get in style. Before you move to structure and content, think about who you are talking to. Again, answer these 5 questions (write it down!):

1.       What is the audience’s situation, what do they value and what do they need (from me)?

2.       How do I define the audience in terms of hierarchy, influence and group dynamic?

3.       What is the audience’s relationship to me and what is the impact of this?

4.       Why is the audience coming to my presentation? What is their objective? What do they expect from me? (this is key to defining the “WIIFM”)

5.       What can I do to motivate them to come, stay and listen?

Follow this link to see how I answered these questions for myself when creating a presentation on “Building proactiveness” for the Kluwer Meet+Greet in Gembloux in 2010


If you are ready, move on to defining your message…

If you have questions, contact me:

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About Dan Steer


Posted on March 9, 2011, in Communication, Presentation Skills, Resources and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.

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