How to Produce A Booklet Handout Before Starting A Meeting
A booklet can be a handy tool when it comes to educating your audience regarding important information prior to a big meeting. In a booklet, you can mention all of the crucial points rather than printing out pages and pages of lengthy notes. So what are the different scenarios where you need to create a booklet for a meeting?
- A workshop that will help your employees in developing new skills.
- An important staff meeting that is about to introduce new company procedures or policies.
- A sales meeting that’s taking place with a partner or new prospect.
- Introduction of new products or services.
These are just a few examples where booklets will greatly help in making your audience understand what it is that you are offering when it comes to information.
Listed below are the important factors you need to consider before working on a booklet.
Think about Your Audience
When you are planning for your booklet, keep your audience in mind. Tailor the contents of your booklet according to your audience. Think about how much they already know and what additional information can you provide them.
If you have a meeting with the employees, for example, you aren’t required to provide any background information about your company. However, if you are meeting up with the media or with prospects, then it helps to add a little snippet of your company and what they are all about.
Summarize the Key Topics
A booklet that’s created for the meeting should always work on summarizing the important key topics that were covered during the meeting. You don’t have to include long and lengthy paragraphs; this will just interfere with the main message that you are trying to get across.
What works is to include at least three to five of the critical points you want your audience to understand. You can start the booklet by mentioning the main topic of your meeting, and then state the key points for your audience.
For example, if you are creating a booklet for your employees, you can include a summarized paragraph about the main topic and mention three important points that your employees should focus on and implement in their work from now on.
Have Space for Writing Additional Notes
Effective booklet handouts come with a ton of white space that’s surrounding the text. This greatly helps in making people understand and absorb the information that they are reading. When you leave a lot of white space around your written material in the booklet, people can jot down their own important points and notes in their own words. Plus, having more white space in the booklet also makes it easier to read everything, a hence better understanding of what’s written.
Avoid stuffing in a lot of text when working on your booklet. Instead, focus on the page you just created and make sure that there is enough white space around every section of the booklet. If the content is written in paragraph form, you can change some of it into a list of bullet points. This will further add more white space in your booklet and also make it easier to read everything.
Offer Extra Bonus Content
You can include additional information within your booklet that wasn’t discussed in the meeting. When you provide extra bonus information to your audience, it helps them learn more about whatever was discussed during your meeting.
In a sales meeting with prospects, for example, your booklet will include all of the relevant information regarding your products or service. However, you can add more material such as positive reviews from customers who have used your products.
Include Interactive Material
You can include interactive and actionable material when working on your booklet. This is the type of material that requires your audience to use whatever information they learned in the meeting and apply it somewhere else within the booklet.
You can include a worksheet where your audience can answer questions about the material they learned; this will further help them in solidifying the main concepts of your meeting. You can also include extra resources which your audience can get more information from.
Synchronize All of the Designs
If you are showing a presentation or slideshow during your meeting, make sure that all of the designs match that of your booklet as well. This includes things such as logos, colors, branding, and so on. If the design of your booklet is different from that of your presentation, then your audience might find it hard to connect the two things and remember important information.
It Should Be a Separate Document
The booklet that you create should also work as a separate document. This means that you should create your booklet in such a way that people who were unable to attend the meeting will still be able to have all of the important information by just reading your booklet.
Use Professional Quality Printing Services
When creating or planning for your booklet, you want to make sure that it looks professional. Only a professional printing service will be able to provide you with that premium quality. Booklets can be printed in an either a glossy or matte finish; this is usually based on the company’s branding and preference.
However, in the case of professional presentations, the matte option is always the ideal way to go. Matte booklets tend to cost a little extra sometimes, however, it adds a new sense of professionalism to your booklet and leaves your audience with a good impression. Plus, there are more chances of higher engagement; hence the extra cost is worth the effort.
Conclusion
If you want your meeting to be successful, then a booklet handout will greatly help. Not only do they help in holding the attention of your audience, booklets will help them remember all of your important points that were discussed in the meeting. With all of the right information, print booklets will make your meeting standout and provide you with a ton of success in the end.
