How to Write a Killer Abstract for Your Next Presentation

Marketer Tony Compton contributed today's post. He is the founder and managing director of communication coaching consultancy GettingPresence.

When you’re scheduled to give a presentation, chances are you’ll have to provide a session abstract that titles your talk and describes your session.

Session abstracts enable readers to evaluate an event in advance, playing a vital role in helping them determine if the event is worth the investment in attendance.

On site, abstracts compete for attendees, as they choose which sessions to attend when multiple presentations are being given.

Unfortunately, far too many session abstracts are poorly written. Writing one is an afterthought to most presenters, and is usually delegated to a marketing manager who isn’t the presenter and who's largely unfamiliar with the presenter's content.

Writing concise and compelling abstracts for your presentations will give you a clear competitive advantage.

My recommendation is to write your abstract as a condensed case study:

• Title your session with the solution to a common business challenge; for example, “Increasing Customer Retention by 30% with Predictive Analytics." 

• When writing the session description, state a common problem your audience faces; summarize your strategy behind solution-development; and itemize supporting tools you have used to help solve the problem.

• Close by hinting at the payoff of the work, using several bullet points that quantitatively highlight results.

Remember, too, that audiences see through thinly-veiled sales pitches, and their session descriptions. Always keep in mind what the audience will learn from your presentation, and your session abstract will be a winner.

Chipotle Serves Up Nonsense

"I have a bluntness problem," says a character in Mozart in the Jungle.

I wish Chipotle had.

Fresh from rehab, the chain tells us it's cured, in a January 19 news release:

Chipotle’s enhanced food safety program is the product of a comprehensive reassessment of its food safety practices conducted with industry leading experts that included a farm-to-fork assessment of each ingredient Chipotle uses with an eye toward establishing the highest standards for safety.

Chipotle may now wash dirt off its tomatoes.

But it obviously won't scrub its announcements of corporatese.

Jargon destroys credibility, as journalist Phil Simon says.

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein called quaggy statements like Chipotle's nonsense.

And as he insisted, there is no such thing as deep and important nonsense.

There is only one kind of nonsense, and it's fundamentally suspect.

PS: To be blunt, I would've advised Chipotle to say, We asked food-safety experts to help us improve both our own and our suppliers' procedures.

Storytelling Traced to Bronze Age

"Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology," philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote in 1949.

Little did he realize the chains are made of 5,000-year-old bronze.

Two social scientists have discovered that storytelling began in the Bronze Age with "The Smith and the Devil," a tale of entrepreneurship, evil and technology (in this case, metallurgy).

A blacksmith offers his soul to the devil, in exchange for the power to weld any materials together. The wily smith then uses his new-found power to weld the devil to a tree, reneging on his side of the bargain.

The scientists' findings confirm the suspicions of the Brothers Grimm, who claimed their stories were artifacts of a "great race which is commonly called Indo-Germanic."

With hard evidence of storytelling's Bronze Age-origins, it's time to consider renaming Bog Man.

You guessed it. 

Blog Man.

Where Have You Gone, Corporal Agarn?

When media were scarce—as they were when I was young—our states seemed united.

Nearly everyone, if not delighted, was at least familiar with Corporal Agarn, Samantha Stephens, Norman Mailer, Helen Gurley Brown, Perry Como, Chubby Checker and Walter Cronkite.

Today, no one knows who's who, or what’s happening.

You can no longer catch the pulse.

But we yearn to.

That's why Taylor Swift and Star Wars: The Force Awakens are blockbusters, while Vine and Snapchat aren't.

We long to consume and communicate as a nation.

Life in tribes can grow stultifying.

Marketers, You Have Work to Do

The second in a two-part series, today's post was contributed by Margit Weisgal, author of Show and Sell: 133 Business-Building Ways to Promote Your Trade Show Exhibit. She writes for The Baltimore Sun.

“If it weren’t for customers, we could get our work done.”

Adults indeed say the darndest things.

Don’t you wonder how some companies stay in business? They spout platitudes about how much they care about you and that customers are paramount. 

Then they go and do something incredibly stupid.

Here's an email I received recently (identifying information deleted):

Thank you for contacting us. As for as why our department does not receive incoming calls, there are many reasons. The greatest of these reasons is that if they were required to answer phone calls in addition to their paperwork that is sent to them every day, they would have a much more difficult time processing the requests they receive. Please be patient as our department looks into your request. Thank you and have a wonderful day.

In other words, paperwork trumps customers. 

It’s marketing’s job to make sure there is consistency in everything a company says and does.

Marketers, you have work to do!