You've likely sat through dozens of terrible presentations and resented every minute.

You know what I'm talking about: the identically themed slides, the walls of text, the monotone of the presenter's voice, the utterly useless handouts, and the awkward silence whenever the presenter stands up and goes, "Um, thank you for your time. Are there any questions?"

You're right to feel robbed of your time. Those boring, ineffective presentations didn't apply the most basic principles of content marketing.

It's time to avoid the same fate. And there's no better way to do that than to apply the solid principles of content marketing to your presentations.

Back to Basics

Content marketing comes down to the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant, and consistent content to a clearly defined audience.

The key to understanding this definition is to... well... read the definition again.

Seriously. Content must be relevant, consistent, and valuable so that it can attract and retain a clearly defined audience.

And it's no different in the presentation space. For a presentation to be effective, it must be relevant, consistent, valuable to a clearly defined audience.

Without those principles applied—yes, all of them, not just one or two—your audience is going to scroll through cat memes while you're on stage rather than listen to what you have to say.

A Clearly Defined Audience

You can't create relevance, consistency, and value if you don't know whom you're creating these things for.

Defining your audience is a relatively simple process; it's all about finding the link between your main idea and the personas that make up the members of your audience.

There are several factors to consider when determining audience profiles, but here are some questions to get you started:

• What are the ages of the members of your audience?
• Where are they from?
• Where do members of your audience work?
• What are their professional roles?
• What are their goals, dreams, and ambitions?
• What are their pain points and weaknesses?

Relevance

It was Dale Carnegie who once said, "Talk to someone about themselves, and they'll listen for hours."

The statement holds strong merit, especially in relation to presentations. As a presenter, you have to nurture meaningful connections between your audience and your content.

Everything (and I mean everything) that you do starts with your audience.

Take the time to craft a narrative that's relevant to your audience's desires. And don't stay true to your cause—stay true to your audience's.

Consistency

Consistency is what drives content home and keeps it there.

The main thing to point out here is that you should omit everything and anything that has nothing to do with your core message. Inconsistent messages hurt your outcomes—they cause confusion, waste time, and throw your audience off.