How to prepare for performances

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Anna Karaulova, Development Director of the Internet Advertising Agency, reveals the secrets of preparing for performances in front of the public. This is a detailed instruction on how to create a successful presentation for those who have been deprived of the talent of the speaker by nature.

Sometimes it seems that there are people who have the talent of a good speaker. Talent is difficult to learn, but technology is quite possible. Preparing a successful speech is a technological process that takes time and effort. I want to tell you how I prepare for my performances.

Preparation for a performance consists of several parts:

1. Working out the idea.
2. Presentation creation.
3. Run through the presentation.
4. Performance.
5. Content promotion.

Let's talk about what each includes.

Working out the idea

The method of developing the concept of performance is described in books, and numerous trainers conduct classes on it. Personally, I use the materials, but he is not the only one from whom you can learn this.

I use Mind Map to create the concept. This allows you to capture the entire presentation at a glance. Mind maps are easy and fun to work with.

While developing a mind map was something new for me, I spent one to one and a half working days on creating a document. Now I am able to make a content outline in 4-6 hours.

Presentation creation

The visual presentation of the presentation is part of the presentation. It is important that it supports the story, helps it, and does not contradict or distract.

A good presentation, in my opinion, has several parameters:

1. Uniform style of illustrations (illustrations that are similar either in meaning, or in design, or better - in both parameters).
2. Uniform fonts (one font for headings, subheadings, body text, captions, and notes).
3. Identical visual elements: arrows, graphs, diagrams, frames, tables, and so on.
4. Same animation effects.
5. The included agency logo, as well as the logo or name of the event on which the report is being read.

The choice of visual content and the selection of illustrations is what is spent most of the time on the layout of presentations.

This is a truly creative process, and it brings tremendous pleasure.

A few words about. I knew about this format for a long time and dreamed of learning how to use it. It turned out that it is not the gods who burn the pots: there is on YouTube, which tells in detail about all the intricacies of working with the editor. The rules for assembling a document in Prezi are the same as in PowerPoint. Having done all the exercises sequentially, you can learn how to use the program.

Prezi is suitable for layout of complex presentations: vivid visuals help listeners to better perceive and memorize the content of the speech.

Seeding content after the event is an important part of marketing. It is necessary to immediately prepare a presentation for correct display in Slideshare. It is enough to follow a few simple rules:

1. Write the title and texts in special modules of the slide template (can be checked in the "Structure" display mode).
2. Include charts and tables in the presentation in the form of pictures (Slideshare turns PowerPoint charts and tables into long sequences of numbers).
3. Use pre-installed fonts. If you are using non-standard fonts, you should only upload your presentation to PDF. In this case, you may lose animation.

The timing of the layout of a presentation is about twice as long as the timing of coming up with a mental map: one to one and a half days, if I am not distracted (8-12 hours). The presentation must be ready at least a week before the event, otherwise there will be no time left for other stages. Therefore, I discard appearances that are confirmed at the last minute.

Run

A run-through of a presentation is a dress rehearsal for a presentation. The purpose of the run is to find as many errors as possible in the presentation, speech and answers of the speaker. In addition to me, the head of the marketing department, one of the agency's managing partners and one of the specialists participate in the run. My task is to read the report. The task of the listeners is to criticize him, as well as ask as many tricky questions as possible.

A 15–20 minute run of a standard report takes exactly one hour. As a result of the run, I get a list of shortcomings. The team agrees on the need for a second run based on the results of the first assessment: if there are many comments, a second meeting is scheduled. And so on until the team is satisfied with the quality of the material. After making adjustments, I save the finished presentation in an unmodifiable format (for PowerPoint it is PPSX) and send the file to the organizers.

It takes me two to four hours to fix a presentation.

Performance

The art of public speaking can and should be learned. Acting and public speaking courses, books … If you do not have the time or money for full-time education, you can use free and semi-free content (YouTube has excellent videos of the Voice school, Netology and other online education centers - about training and conducting speeches).

I prefer an informal style of communication with the audience. I know it sometimes fails me.

A performance takes from three to eight hours. I try to arrive at the site at least half an hour before the "broadcast". I definitely bring a USB flash drive with two presentation formats: editable and non-editable. Editable can be useful if you need to urgently tweak something in your presentation.

Before performing, you must:

1. Get used to the audience: understand where I will stand on the stage, how much space I have for movement, if there are any foreign objects on the stage floor, such as wires that I might trip over.
2. Check how the presentation opened.
3. Check the brightness of the projector (sometimes you need to change the color of some visual elements so that everything is displayed correctly).

This concludes the performance itself. The next stages are related to content promotion.

Content promotion

i-Media supports its speakers. The agency has a proven scheme for publishing content after events:

• We post presentations on corporate Slideshare.
• Posts are published on the agency's Facebook page (1,700 subscribers) and in the site's press center.
• We buy traffic from Facebook. All posts with presentations are promoted.

I recently transformed my personal Facebook profile into a business page. This gave access to professional publishing, promotion and analytics tools. Now my page has 2,700 subscribers. The layout of content in it is similar to that of the agency: Slideshare - Facebook - promo posts. Since the presentations contain the logo or the name of the event, all readers know for whom the material was created.

Writing articles, proofreading texts, coordinating videos, posting and responding to comments take time. All marketing support is usually another half of my working day (four hours).

And that is not all…

Based on the reports, articles are often written and published. But that's a completely different story.

The above scheme of preparation for performances requires certain resources:

• Idea development: 4-6 hours.
• Layout of the presentation: 8-12 hours.
• Run: 1 hour.
• Correction of the presentation: 2–4 hours.
• Speech: 3-8 hours.
• Marketing: 4 hours.

Preparation of one presentation usually takes me from 22 to 36 hours, 4-5 working days. I read such reports no more than once or twice a quarter, otherwise there is no time left for work. However, the result is worth it.