AIMER
A 5-step process to help you Become a Master communicator
AIMER came about because I needed an easy and repeatable method to help me write and prepare my presentations, although now I use it for most content I need to prepare whether it be a presentation, write an article, or prepare a talk for a team meeting. A few years ago, when presented with the challenge to prepare a presentation I would get anxious. Every time I thought about the content I had to put together I would feel overwhelmed and leave it for later. I kept procrastinating until I really had no more time left and then I quickly put the content together and got on with it. After the presentation I was still alive, but I had missed the opportunity to make an impact. Is this happening to you?
I want to help you get on the right track as you prepare content for your oral presentation, written article, or team meeting speech, so you make an impact. This process will help you distil a clear message that your audience will understand, care about, and act upon. Good content will help you communicate so people listen to you, remember you, and act on your ideas. The process is quite simple and if you think about it is quite logical. It is structured around the 5 steps summarized in the acronym AIMER: Audience, Intention, Message, Explain, Review.
A
Audience
Starting with Audience. This should be our first logical step because when we communicate, we should not be thinking first about us and the information we want to convey, we should be thinking about our audience. It is not about you, it is about them. It doesn’t matter what you say, it matters what they understand, remember and do with the information. As I write these lines, I’m thinking about you. I am not trying to impress you, I am trying to provide you with value.
Once you realise that a presentation (I use presentation in the broader sense including oral or written communication) is not about you, it’s time to put the principle into practice. During your preparation ask yourself the following questions:
Who is my audience? (the more specific your answer the better)
What is their level of knowledge about my topic?
What do they want to get out from my presentation?
Your job is to provide your audience with the information they want and need. If you don’t care about the needs of your audience, they won’t care about your needs. If you ignore your audience, they will ignore you. If you want to be listened to, remembered, and change your audience’s behaviour, start your preparation by learning as much as you can from your audience.
I
Intention
What do you want to achieve with your presentation? How do you want to make an impact on your audience? A large number of presentations do not make any impact and are immediately forgotten. Do you know why? The presenters did not have any intention in mind. Logically, if they did not plan to achieve anything, they will not achieve anything. To help you find your intention and make an impact there are three key questions that you can ask yourself during your preparation:
- What do you want your audience to think/know differently as a result of your presentation?
- What do you want your audience to feel differently as a result of your presentation?
- What do you want your audience to do differently as a result of your presentation?
That’s right. A presentation that makes an impact changes the way in which the audience thinks, feels, and/or behaves. Your intention should have two characteristics:
- Specific
- Valuable to your audience.
First, your intention has to be very specific. It is not enough to say “I want them to know more about what I’m doing”. What specifically do you want them to learn? “I want them to behave differently” is not good either. What specifically do you want them to do? The second characteristic is that your intention has to be valuable to your audience (remember it is not about you, it is about them). You may be tempted to answer that you want your audience to realise you are great. Unless you are in a job interview, your audience won’t care how great you are. However, if you give them something of value, they probably will think you are great.
M
Message
How often do you listen to a presentation where the presenter talks at length and when the presentation finishes you ask yourself, so what? What is the point? Most likely the presentation was missing one essential element, a take-home message. When we are presenting it’s very easy to put information… and more information… and this is nice to know… and I should mention this… and at the end we have a pile of information without making any point.
How do you know what your take-home message should be? By now you should know your intention: what do you want your audience to think, feel, or do differently as a result of your presentation? Once you have found your intention it’s time to think of a message that will achieve your intention. Let’s look at an example. Do you have or will you have kids? If yes, then you have faced or will face the problem of asking your child to tidy up his/her room. Your intention is clear: after talking to your child you want him/her to tidy up the room. What message should you use to achieve your intention? There are different messages. You could say: “tidy up now or you won’t go out on the weekend”. Another message could be: “I feel happier when your room is tidy”. My child is young enough now that I get away with simply saying “tidy up” but I know this won’t work for too much longer. Adults don’t like being told what to do! Your take-home message is the clear point you make to achieve your intention. It is what you want them to remember after your presentation so they change the way they think, feel, or behave. The one thing I want you to remember from reading these words is AIMER so you are able to use it to prepare your own content.
How do you know whether you have communicated effectively? When your audience thinks how great you are? When they think “this was such a good presentation (or article)!”? No. You have been effective when they remember your take-home message and act upon it. I will have been effective if you remember AIMER and use it to prepare your next oral or written presentation.
E
Explain
One common mistake when preparing content is starting by selecting and choosing information. Now you know that you need to start by finding our AIM (Audience, Intention, Message) and once you have your AIM (Audience, Intention, Message) then it is time to select and choose information. But now it is easy, because the information that you will select just needs to “Explain” and support the take-home message.
The Explain step is carried out in two phases. During the first phase, you select and choose information. There are different types of information that you can use to explain and support your take-home message. These include:
- Facts
- Statistics
- Stories
- Jokes (they have to be relevant!)
- Opinions
- Visuals (images, graphs)
- Activities
In the first phase of selecting and choosing information the task is two write down anything that comes to mind that explains, illustrates, and supports the take-home message. Then you discard anything that does not directly support it and leave the most relevant information. The information that you think will make the highest impact. Once you have selected the information is time to structure it which is the second phase of the Explain step. When you structure the information, you arrange it in a logical way. A basic structure will have:
- Introduction
- Body
- Conclusion
In the introduction, you introduce the take-home message and the points you are going to use to support it. In the body, you explain the points. In the conclusion, you remind them what the take-home message is and summarise the points that you used to support it. With this structure you ensure that people are able to follow you as you present the information.
R
Review
The ideal would be if we could do something the first time to the best of our abilities. But reality is that we need to go through different cycles of iteration to produce our best work. Once you have prepared your presentation, it is time to test the material before you present it to the real audience. If it is written, read it a few times, have a few people you trust read it and get their feedback. If it is an oral presentation, rehearse it out loud so you know how you sound, rehearse in front of people you trust to give you their feedback. Do you know how many times I said something that I thought was funny and it wasn’t? Review and test your material before you expose your audience to it. If something doesn’t work, if you got the feedback that something was not clear, go back through the AIMER steps and correct what needs to be corrected so your audience understands, cares, and acts on your message.