Editing Your Content: the NEED to know basis

Last week I sat through a number of presentations at a networking event. The event was designed to help women grow their business and one of the topics was marketing.

The presenter had great charisma and personal style - she was passionate and enthuiastic about her topic, which she obviously knew a great deal about. She spoke without notes, which meant she could engage with us directly. She even made her talk interactive by asking questions of the audience to demonstrate how some of us had approached marketing for our own businesses.

But she talked about nearly every aspect of marketing known to man: from blogs, to social networking, local and national media, radio interviews, direct marketing and so on and so on. I knew we were in trouble when I saw her handouts - copies of her bullet point ridden slides (never a good sign).

I left in feeling totally overwhelmed - and I was not alone. Various people made comments about how they needed a break now to take it all in.
I was left with that feeling "I am sure I have learnt something, I am just not sure what".

She was suffering from an inability to focus and edit her ideas down into manageable chunks.
As a result her NEED TO KNOW ideas got lost amongst the rest of what she said.

Whatever the presentation or workshop you are designing, before you start cramming in every thing you have learnt in the last ten, twenty or thirty years, think about this...

What does your audience really NEED TO KNOW?

You might brainstorm lots of ideas, but it is vital that you pick out just one thing that you really feel is the most important thing for your audience to learn. You can add in a few more (depending on the time available), but do make sure that you know what thing or few things you really want your audience to leave with.