How to Structure your Presentation

For many people the thought of delivering a presentation is a daunting task and brings about
a great deal of nerves. However, if you take some time to understand how effective
presentations are structured and then apply this structure to your own presentation, you’ll
appear much more confident and relaxed.

Why is structuring a presentation so important?

If you’ve ever sat through a great presentation, you'll have left feeling either inspired or
informed on a given topic. This isn’t because the speaker was the most knowledgeable or
motivating person in the world. Instead, it’s because they know how to structure
presentations - they have crafted their message in a logical and simple way that has allowed
the audience can keep up with them and take away key messages.

Research has supported this, with studies showing that audiences retain structured
information 40% more accurately than unstructured information.

In fact, not only is structuring a presentation important for the benefit of the audience’s
understanding, it’s also important for you as the speaker. A good structure helps you remain
calm, stay on topic, and avoid any awkward silences.

What will affect your presentation structure?

Generally speaking, there is a natural flow that any decent presentation will follow which we
will go into shortly. However, you should be aware that all presentation structures will be
different in their own unique way and this will be due to a number of factors, including:

 Whether you need to deliver any demonstrations

 How knowledgeable the audience already is on the given subject
 How much interaction you want from the audience
 Any time constraints there are for your talk
 What setting you are in
 Your ability to use any kinds of visual assistance

Before choosing the presentation's structure answer these questions first:

1. What is your presentation's aim?

2. Who are the audience?
3. What are the main points your audience should remember afterwards?
Typical Presentation Structure
This is the usual flow of a presentation, which covers all the vital sections and is a good
starting point for yours. It allows your audience to easily follow along and sets out a solid
structure you can add your content to.

1. Greet the audience and introduce yourself

Before you start delivering your talk, introduce yourself to the audience and clarify who you
are and your relevant expertise. This does not need to be long or incredibly detailed, but will
help build an immediate relationship between you and the audience. It gives you the chance
to briefly clarify your expertise and why you are worth listening to. This will help establish
your ethos so the audience will trust you more and think you're credible.

2. Introduction
In the introduction you need to explain the subject and purpose of your presentation whilst
gaining the audience's interest and confidence. It's sometimes helpful to think of your
introduction as funnel-shaped to help filter down your topic:

1. Introduce your general topic

2. Explain your topic area
3. State the issues/challenges in this area you will be exploring
4. State your presentation's purpose - this is the basis of your presentation so ensure
that you provide a statement explaining how the topic will be treated, for example, "I
will argue that…" or maybe you will "compare", "analyse", "evaluate", "describe" etc.
5. Provide a statement of what you're hoping the outcome of the presentation will be,
for example, "I'm hoping this will be provide you with..."
6. Show a preview of the organisation of your presentation

Keep in mind that the main aim of the introduction is to grab the audience's attention and
connect with them.

3. The main body of your talk

The main body of your talk needs to meet the promises you made in the introduction.
Depending on the nature of your presentation, clearly segment the different topics you will
be discussing, and then work your way through them one at a time - it's important for
everything to be organised logically for the audience to fully understand. There are many
different ways to organise your main points, such as, by priority, theme, chronologically etc.

 Main points should be addressed one by one with supporting evidence and examples.
 Before moving on to the next point you should provide a mini-summary.
 Links should be clearly stated between ideas and you must make it clear when you're
moving onto the next point.
  Allow time for people to take relevant notes and stick to the topics you have prepared
beforehand rather than straying too far off topic.

When planning your presentation write a list of main points you want to make and ask yourself
"What I am telling the audience? What should they understand from this?" refining your
answers this way will help you produce clear messages.

4. Conclusion
In presentations the conclusion is frequently underdeveloped and lacks purpose which is a
shame as it's the best place to reinforce your messages. Typically, your presentation has a
specific goal - that could be to convert a number of the audience members into customers,
lead to a certain number of enquiries to make people knowledgeable on specific key points,
or to motivate them towards a shared goal.

Regardless of what that goal is, be sure to summarise your main points and their implications.
This clarifies the overall purpose of your talk and reinforces your reason for being there.

5. Thank the audience and invite questions

Conclude your talk by thanking the audience for their time and invite them to ask any
questions they may have. As mentioned earlier, personal circumstances will affect the
structure of your presentation.

Other common presentation structures

Demonstration
Use the demonstration structure when you have something useful to show. This is usually
used when you want to show how a product works. Steve Jobs frequently used this technique
in his presentations.

 Explain why the product is valuable.

 Describe why the product is necessary.
 Explain what problems it can solve for the audience.
 Demonstrate the product to support what you've been saying.
 Make suggestions of other things it can do to make the audience curious.

Problem-solution
This structure is particularly useful in persuading the audience.

 Briefly frame the issue.

  Go into the issue in detail showing why it 's such a problem. Use logos and pathos for
this - the logical and emotional appeals.
 Provide the solution and explain why this would also help the audience.
 Call to action - something you want the audience to do which is straightforward and
pertinent to the solution.

Storytelling
As well as incorporating stories in your presentation, you can organise your whole
presentation as a story. There are lots of different type of story structures you can use - a
popular choice is the monomyth - the hero's journey. In a monomyth, a hero goes on a
difficult journey or takes on a challenge - they move from the familiar into the unknown. After
facing obstacles and ultimately succeeding the hero returns home, transformed and with
newfound wisdom.

Another popular choice for using a story to structure your presentation is in media ras (in the
middle of thing). In this type of story you launch right into the action by providing a
snippet/teaser of what's happening and then you start explaining the events that led to that
event. This is engaging because you're starting your story at the most exciting part which will
make the audience curious - they'll want to know how you got there.

Remaining method
The remaining method structure is good for situations where you're presenting your
perspective on a controversial topic which has split people's opinions.

 Briefly frame the issue.

 Go into the issue in detail showing why it's such a problem - use logos and pathos.
 Rebut your opponents' solutions - explain why their solutions could be useful because
the audience will see this as fair and will therefore think you're trustworthy, and then
explain why you think these solutions are not valid.
 After you've presented all the alternatives provide your solution, the remaining
solution. This is very persuasive because it looks like the winning idea, especially with
the audience believing that you're fair and trustworthy.

Transitions

When delivering presentations it's important for your words and ideas to flow so your audience
can understand how everything links together and why it's all relevant. This can be done using
speech transitions which are words and phrases that allow you to smoothly move from one
point to another so that your speech flows and your presentation is unified.
Transitions can be one word, a phrase or a full sentence - there are many different forms,
here are some examples:

Moving from the introduction to the first point

Signify to the audience that you will now begin discussing the first main point:

 Now that you're aware of the overview, let's begin with...

 First, let's begin with...
 I will first cover...
 My first point covers...
 To get started, let's look at...

Shifting between similar points

Move from one point to a similar one:

 In the same way...

 Likewise...
 Equally...
 This is similar to...
 Similarly...

Internal summaries
Internal summarising consists of summarising before moving on to the next point. You must
inform the audience:

 What part of the presentation you covered - "In the first part of this speech we've
covered..."
 What the key points were - "Precisely how..."
 How this links in with the overall presentation - "So that's the context..."
 What you're moving on to - "Now I'd like to move on to the second part of presentation
which looks at..."

Physical movement
You can move your body and your standing location when you transition to another point.
The audience find it easier to follow your presentation and movement will increase their
interest.

A common technique for incorporating movement into your presentation is to:

 Start your introduction by standing in the centre of the stage.

 For your first point you stand on the left side of the stage.
  You discuss your second point from the centre again.
 You stand on the right side of the stage for your third point.
 The conclusion occurs in the centre

Group Presentations

Group presentations are structured in the same way as presentations with one speaker but
usually require more rehearsal and practices. Clean transitioning between speakers is very
important in producing a presentation that flows well. One way of doing this consists of:

 Briefly recap on what you covered in your section: "So that was a brief introduction on
what health anxiety is and how it can affect somebody"
 Introduce the next speaker in the team and explain what they will discuss:
 Then end by looking at the next speaker, gesturing towards them and saying their
name
 The next speaker should acknowledge this with a quick: "Thank you
It's important for a presentation to be well-structured so it can have the most impact on your
audience. An unstructured presentation can be difficult to follow and even frustrating to listen
to. The heart of your speech are your main points supported by evidence and your transitions
should assist the movement between points and clarify how everything is linked.