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Content or delivery?

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What is the most important part of a presentation? 

What it contains, such as the words, the message and the ideas or the way those ideas are delivered and presented to the audience?

When you present should you work more on delivery or content and message?

I have been giving his dilemma a lot of thought for some time, and an episode last week gave me a lot more to chew on.

There was a last-minute drop out at our speakers club so I took the slot even though I did not have a speech prepared.  I am normally a big believer in stage time, practice and experience being the way to improve as a speaker, but due to the short notice I only spent an hour preparing the speech on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and practiced it in the car on the way over. 

I felt a little uncomfortable giving the presentation, it was in my mind far from my best performance, and I was not as well prepared as I could have been.

I don’t believe the message was unique or different but the message was clear, have a go at using social media tools.

So what am I trying to say?

Well, I believe I was light on content, my message was not markedly different from what is already out there and I had not prepared as much as I would have liked, so instead I relied heavily on my delivery skills that had been building up over a long time to help me make my message stand out.

The presentation won best speaker and the general consensus from the 30+ people in the room was that they really enjoyed it.

So it seems that delivery was far more important than content.

Do you agree? Watch the speech and let me know what you think…………………

Alan Donegan – Guildford Speakers’ Club, 31.05.2011

What do you think is the most important, delivery or content?