You don’t want to present an adequate content audit. You don’t want a sorta decent audit presentation.
But a content audit is a funny beast. It’s an amazingly in-depth analysis of content – everything published on a particular website, usually. We’re talking hundreds or thousands of pages. Pages that have often been overlooked for quite awhile. And now it’s your time to present the results and insights from this detailed analysis.
You worked hard on this content audit and you obviously care a lot. But there are some critical, often-overlooked tips that can mean the difference between an engaged audience and one that needs woken up at the end of your audit presentation.
Here are 7 proven ways to ensure your content audit presentation kicks serious tuckus.
- “Perfect” means it’s all about THEM. Know thy audience. Ensure that every word, paragraph, and idea is framed in a way that particular audience understands. Make each slide highly relevant to your audit †and make certain that it supports the story you are weaving with this report. Every element of your perfect presentation should be unique to the audience in front of you.
- Never, ever, ever, ever present just a spreadsheet. Content strategists tend to live in spreadsheets; they allow us to analyze loads of complex data. But most people donít care about that – they are interested in the insights you found. If you called a travel agent to book your dream vacation, you do not need a schematic of the airplane. Get them to the beach already.
- Leave surprises to the creatives. Creatives tend to hide their work until the last minute in order to wring every ounce of “wow” out of each design or tagline. Content strategists should never pursue this tack. At the very least, our work doesn’t ooze “sexy.” At most, you’re risking months of work, hoping that suspense and your genius carry you through. This is time better spent making alliances and encouraging your audience to feel ownership in the project. Get them invested in your presentation’s success and everybody wins.
- Sizzle or steak? Thereís a big difference between a presentation and a document. If you need to put stars in their eyes one time, it’s a presentation; if they plan to pass it around or print it out, it’s a document. Why is this important? Have you ever seen Seth Godin’s presentations? There’s nothing in them. Some cool photos, a couple words…because he gets paid to present them. Are you Seth Godin? If not, you had better know which your audience expects.
- Graphs and charts are your friend; bullet points are not. Content strategists like words. We use words (a lot). But most people don’t want to be romanced with words (and you’re no Thomas Pynchon). They need to understand your mass of data in a glance. We recently presented a graph representing almost 500 articles on one slide – in moments anyone could understand the content hygiene of that entire section. Work with your designers to encapsulate data – don’t try to write it all out.
- If it isn’t actionable, you shouldn’t get paid. With apologies to David Oglivy, one purpose of content strategy is to create change. If people leave your presentation without knowing how your work effects their department, without thinking of opportunities to use these lessons, or without an idea of the next steps, you have failed. There are plenty of respectable ways to fail. Lack of actionability isn’t one of them.
- Romance the guy who likes you the least. You will initially present to those who deal with content the most. If successful, those initial viewers will share your work and you may be asked to present to a less receptive audience. Be prepared to seduce the guy who hates content. Have a 1-pager ready to grab his attention. Prepare the 3 take-aways you would gasp out in your last breath. Compress your work until the pressure forms the diamond that will persuade him to root around for more gems.
Content strategists have a difficult time presenting, especially content audits. And it makes sense: we deal in complexity and words – two enemies of the one-hour meeting.
But if you want your audience to derive value from your audit (and trust your future recommendations even more), you must be a rockstar at presenting your audit. You’ve gotta be the Mick Jagger of sweet, sweet content that day.
So put away the pocket protector and sell this stuff. You want to – otherwise why would you devote days, weeks, or months of your life to it? – and use these 7 tips to make it a presentation that’ll knock their socks off.
DJ Francis is a Sr. Content Analyst in the Chicago office.
[Thanks also to Linda Martens and Tiffany Mo for their assistance with this post.]
