The question “What do I want my audience to know?” is part of the EMO process that can help you write your story when creating a presentation or speech.
When you talk to an audience or even a single person, you always have an objective. You want to transfer knowledge. You want to share something that you know so that others can benefit from it.
It’s all about sharing knowledge
For most of humanity’s history, we shared our knowledge orally. Our societies have been created by talking to each other, sharing stories and improving the overall level of wisdom within our communities.
In many cases, this process of sharing knowledge is not only for the common good. Think of a sales presentation, where you want your audience to know about your products or services. You want to share knowledge to benefit yourself from making sure others know what you know.
Find your key message
A good story can be summed up in a single sentence, a key message that is easy to understand and remember.
When you prepare your story, your presentation, your speech, you have a million things you want to communicate. Especially when you talk about complex topics, involving a lot of data or details.
Having a lot of information to share can lead to information overload on the recipient’s end. Your audience can process a lot of what you tell them, but the question you have to ask yourself is, what do you want them to remember? What is your key message? What is the one thing they should take away from your speech?
Define, emphasize and repeat
When you start writing your story, start with defining your key message first. You can do this by writing “I want my audience to know and that…” and filling in the blanks. Don’t overthink it; write down whatever comes to mind first. And allow yourself to revise or completely change that key message at any later stage.
In the process of writing your script, make sure you emphasize and repeat that key message in various ways. Give examples, use pictures or video, even music, use numbers, or any other means to clarify and repeat it. That way, your audience has a clear understanding of what you want to communicate, and you can be sure they will remember it.
Next, we will take a look at the third part of the EMO process, the OBJECTIVE and find out why it is essential that you ask yourself “What do I want my audience to do?”.
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