80:20 Pareto Principle for Effective Content Creation

In 1896, Vilfredo Pareto, an economist from Italy found a unique fact that 80% of land in Italy is owned by 20% of the population (as quoted from Wikipedia). This fact become a foundation to various things, such as 80% of our goals will be achieved if we can focus on 20% priority activities. Nevertheless, its correlation to presentation content. We can grab at least 80% of the attention of the audience by focusing 20% (or 1/5 part) on our presentation slides. For example, if we have about 20 slides in the presentation then it could be 4 slides is the most important to express 80% of the core of our topic and at the same time attract the attention of most audience. So how can we apply the Pareto principle appropriately? The following are brief tips for crafting important slides.

Why do you choose the topic?

Ask yourself why choose a topic? This can give you time to think and re-explain the reasons / arguments why such topic is important rather than others. These reasons and arguments can be your hint to determine which slide is the most important to be inserted. The simplest example is emphasizing the "Background" slide content which is a reflection of why you raised a topic. The "Background" slide will greatly help the audience to understand the basic concepts and measure the relevance of the topic with themselves.

What is the main message you want to convey to the audience?

Also think about what the main purpose or message you want to convey to the audience. Why do they have to listen to your presentation session carefully? This can be stated in a slide about "Purpose of Presentation". The purpose of the presentation does not only cover what you want to convey, but also how it can benefit the audience. Examples of presentation objectives:

•  Knowing the Background of Problem X
• Knowing the Relationship between Problems with X and the Daily Life Paradigm
• Study the basic principles of how a social problem occurs
• In-depth Discussion on Social and Personal Problems

By approaching the audience, you can get closer to them and influence the way they think.

Prioritize slides with valuable topic, not useless wordy

Often the audience is bored with presentation slides that contain too many explanation that is confusing. Therefore, it would be best if the slides were constructed with flow charts or short questions that could be the subject of the slide discussion. Let the audience focus on yourself. You can also insert pictures in slide content. Make it as simple as possible regarding your presentation and maintain the audience's attention.

Know what your audience needs, not what you need

Take the time to find out profiles at a glance about your audience. What makes them interested in participating in your presentation session? Prioritize to maximize these factors. For example, when it comes to the conclusion that most audiences do come to know the concept of Bitcoin, then you should be able to maximize slides about understanding and examples of easy study cases. Rather than spending too much time adjusting the type of clothes you will wear. Define your own priority.

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Disclaimer: this article originated written in Bahasa and being translated using Google Translate hence please understand if there's any mistake of tenses and/or misunderstanding that occurred. Read the original version by switch this web to Bahasa version on upper right button. Thank you for reading!

Pictures credit to Freepik