Own Your Content

As a presenter or speaker, you need to own your content

Sir Winston Churchill used to practise for 1 hour for every minute that he spoke, to ensure he knew his subject well, he knew all the facts and that he owned his content.

Preparation is a key ingredient in effective and confident public speaking and it allows you to present with ease and certainty and readiness for anything that goes wrong. There is the 6 P’s of public speaking which simply states that “Prior Preparation Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance”.

When agreeing to do a talk or presentation, you need to ensure that you know you topic inside out and that you are confident of both your content and what the audience will expect from you. This is also known as “owning your content” and it means that you can respond to questions and change tack as required to meet the audiences’ needs. Owning your content means that you can give real examples, tell personal stories about the subject and know where to get more information if the audience wants a greater depth of information.

So as part of your preparation, always know your subject well, have a list of references, have a bank of stories that illustrate your points and most of all “own your content”.

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