How To Create An Engaging Presentation Outline?

As a business owner or a public figure trying to communicate with an audience, you have to be able to present your ideas efficiently. This is certainly not an easy task; after all, you need to sift through millions of thoughts to extract something tangible or worth presenting.

What if you could jot down all of your ideas in a presentation outline and use it as a blueprint for identifying the most important details? Presentation outlines help to structure your ideas while ensuring you focus on the essential information.

This article explains what a presentation outline is, why you need one, and how to create an engaging presentation outline.

What Is A Presentation Outline?

A presentation outline is a summary or an index of all your uncommunicated ideas. It features a blueprint of the entire presentation, what you want people to know, and your intent behind the presentation.

It is a very useful tool for putting your thoughts together before breaking them down as a whole when composing your draft. Think of a presentation outline as a means to visualize those bulky opinions and intents in a concise but short manner.

In a sense, daily checklists are also a type of outline. As long as you intend to inform, educate, or provide a guide, then outlines have a reason to exist.

Benefits Of A Presentation Outline

Presentations can be used to inform, educate, convince, or create awareness. Most businesses use this method as a means of introducing an idea or concept to their employees and potential investors.

These are some of the reasons you should consider creating an outline for your presentation:

Helps To Organize Your Thoughts

There are probably tons of ideas on your mind when you are trying to startmake a presentation. To avoid having a disorganized presentation, you need to sort each of them.

Your entire presentation can only appeal to the audience when the ideas are well structured and ordered.

Sieving Out Unimportant Lines

Every idea of yours is worth millions. However, some take more priority than others. While an idea might be useful if fitted into another presentation, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will have the same relevance in the current draft you are making.

A presentation outline helps you to select the ideas you want and take down those you don’t. It can also help you avoid duplicate headlines.

Gaining New Inspirations

There is a popular saying, “Seeing something once is better than hearing about it a thousand times.” Penning down your ideas on a storyboard or a piece of paper can give you insights into other essential things you never thought about.

Remember the high school days when you had no idea what to write for an essay assignment? And then you became Shakespeare the next minute after jotting a few things down.

Pique The Interest Of Your Audience

For formal presentations, the use of a projector is usually employed to attract the attention of those participating. By displaying the outline of your presentation to the audience, you can build their expectations.

Setting up the right atmosphere is very important when making a presentation. Build the momentum right from the beginning and end it with a good call to action.

How To Outline A Presentation?

You can effortlessly create a presentation outline by following the steps below:

Figure Out The Goal Of Your Presentation

Before creating an outline for your presentation, figure out its purpose first. This is where research comes in to know who your audience is. If you are going to be addressing students or people who want to learn, then your goal is to educate.

For business presentations, the goal is usually to inform, convince investors to take action, or inspire employees. Other goals include entertaining your audience.

You also need to consider exactly what you want the audience to take home after your presentation and the desired result. Once you do this, creating a structure becomes easy.

Create A Framework

A presentation outline has three components, which are:

• Introduction

An introduction usually contains a few headlines on the subject matter or topic of discussion. You can include a brief overview or an interesting story, the importance of the subject matter, and a thesis.

• Body

Here goes your entire argument or justification for the presentation. If you are going to be persuading investors or convincing potential prospects, you need to include all the tangible reasons why they should take action.

• Conclusion

After using a beautiful storytelling method to capture the hearts of your audience, you need a call to action. Curate an ideal wrap that will compel your audience to take action.

Refine Your Outline

Now that you are done creating your outline, go through it a few times to make any necessary corrections. You can always go back to the outline section and make changes once you’ve started writing your draft.

An Example Of A Presentation Outline

The following is an example of a short but polished presentation outline on “Earth and Deforestation.”

• Introduction
• Talk about the Big Bang theory of evolution.
• Relate the story to the current Earth.
• Insert a simulated statistic showing the declining state of the planet in the next few decades.
• Body

Following the statistics above, talk about why deforestation will hasten the speed of earth’s destruction.

• Justify your claims with proven data.
• Add images where necessary
• Conclusion
• Summarize your points.
• Encourage the audience to promote forestation.

The sample above features an attention-grabbing story to ensure the audience is completely engaged and interested in the remaining sections of the presentation.

A justification was later provided for the possible declining state of the planet in a few decades to come. The presenter concluded with a call to promote reforestation.

Summary

Outlines can reduce the total amount of time spent on putting together the content of your presentation. Creating a presentation outline will help remove unnecessary ideas while prioritizing the important ones.

To create an outline, find out who your audience is and the topic of discussion, then design a framework and polish it until you are okay with the outcome.