Informational Presentations - What's Important

As the name indicates, the informational presentation focuses on information, understanding, and the content you need to share. It might be a presentation of financials to a board of directors, or a presentation outlining a new approach to something.

While informational presentations may also have a "selling" element, and even a "motivational element", they live and die on the back of the content or information. If you have little to say to the audience, no amount of speaker pizzaz can make up for that.

Some Characteristics of Effective Informational Presentations

Here are a few hints and tips about how to excel at informational presentations:

• Presentations should be reasonably short taking into account the possibility of information overload affecting the audience.
• The focus is on the content, and not your delivery of the content. In other words, audiences should leave thinking "I got a lot of information I really needed", rather than "Boy, was that presentation entertaining".
• Unlike a motivational speech, the pace should be slower. People need time to think about the content as you deliver it, so there should be more pauses, slower speaking pace, and use of rhetorical questions.
• Since the content is king, it must be organized, logical and clear to the audience.
• When there is more information that can reasonably included in the time available, handouts, and other documents are well used to provide all of the detail. Remember the audience will only easily recall a portion of what you communicate, and they need "takeaways" that have the details.
• Audiences need to know WHY the information is important to THEM, so you have to build in a component to tie what you have to say to what is relevant to them. Often, linking of your content with solving problems that audience members face works well.
• The most important points need to be highlighted by your words and tone, and even by having them displayed via your visuals. Remember that audiences will not always know what is most important to attend to, so you have to help them with the key points.