Confidently Plan, Write, and Present Your Message Now!

The first of the three things you should know before beginning the outline of your speech is your objective.

This initial lesson explains the importance of knowing what you want from your audience in order to communicate your message effectively.

This lesson will also cover best practices for keeping your objective manageable as well as focusing on how you want your audience to feel after you have finished with your speech.

One of the most important questions to ask yourself before beginning your speech is to ask yourself “What can I (the presenter) do for my audience?”

This section will explain the importance of keeping your audience always in mind and how to locate what your audience expects from you.

You will learn how to place your audience into three categories according to their exposure to your topic as well as why developing an audience persona can prove very helpful.

This lesson will bring home the importance of the last variable you should know before beginning to plan for your speech, which is knowing where and when you will be presenting.

Understanding the setting of your presentation can help you deliver your speech more effectively, remove surprises, and provide a smoother flow between your presentation and another to keep your audience and fellow presenters happy :)

Great presentations are memorable because they are well thought out, organized, and told. These steps will help you develop your thoughts, arrange them in a coherent fashion, and dress them in ways that appeal to your audience.

This lesson will illustrate how to visualize your key points so that you can really see the Big Picture. Creating for yourself a Big Picture of your topic and its main points will help you better understand the shape and potential direction of your argument or better clarify the points that should be made in sequential order.

Storyboarding your outline will help you simplify your structure and make the road towards actually writing your speech easier.

You will learn how to use a storyboard to help further order and visualize your presentation by first segmenting your key points into a beginning, middle, and end sequence.

Storyboarding also helps order and visualize your message in a way that can easily be transferred into your favorite slide sharing program.

This lesson will help bring everything together and help you leverage the power of stories to add real emotion to your speech.

Storytelling has the power to transform your fragments of data and key points into something memorable and most importantly can illustrate a world in which your audience can take an active part.

This lesson will help you drive home the point of your presentation by finding the right story to tell that can put a face and a feeling behind your data.

Great presentations require a script, visuals, and rehearsal. These steps will complete the process of scripting, visualizing, and memorizing your presentation.

This lesson will quickly explain how to support your presentation with slides using Powerpoints Presentation View.

This lesson also will explain a few key shortcuts for creating, ordering, and populating your slides.

Because giving a presentation is only half verbal, this lesson focuses on the visual elements that should help support your key points without becoming a distraction.

This lesson will explain the design techniques of balance, color, and position within your layout and go over other best practices found in most successful presentations where slides are required.

This lesson will also help you avoid the dreaded 'death by PowerPoint' by providing tips that will help you keep your audience feeling engaged instead of abandoned.

This lesson to wrap up the module in composing your presentation will explain how I use a storyboard as a memory tool to help recall key points quickly and effectively.

By working on memorization through this method and others you will become more confident in your speech and find yourself freed up to spend more time looking at and engaging with your audience.

Great presentations illustrate effective openings, vocal variety, and non-verbal forms of communication. This last step will prepare you for facing your audience and affecting your reception.

This lesson will provide a few ideas on how to start and conclude your speech.

Because first impressions are so important, it makes sense to spend a little time preparing for an opening that will grab attention right from the beginning and keep your audience listening.

This lesson will also provide a few examples of how to bring your presentation to a close along with an opportunity to wrap up your message with something memorable that your audience can take home with them.

This lesson builds upon all that has come before by moving from knowing what you say to how you say it.

This lecture on using variety explains how subtle uses of one's tone, pace, and volume can help break up monotony and increase audience attention.

This penultimate lesson continues from the last lesson by focusing on how you can control your non-verbal messages when presenting in front of an audience.

Keeping ourselves aware of how our body speaks and what it is saying is a constant effort and this lesson focuses on three major actions - through hand gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions - that you can stay aware of in order to improve your own interaction and reception by your audience.

This last lesson will wrap up the course with a quick tip on how to take control of your interaction with your audience by starting before your presentation begins.

I also explain my plans for future courses and express my gratitude for your participation and feedback.

Happy Presenting!