The importance of presenting academic conferences in research fields is rarely discussed in professional forums. But it’s a subject with wide-ranging importance if you’re the presenter in question.

As the speaker in an academic conference, chances are your audience is also full of professionals and experts. You want to come across as an authority on the subject and you don’t want to bore those who know possibly even more than you do about other aspects of the topic. They’re there to learn something from you, and you want to demonstrate your knowledge clearly.

To do this, many presenters rely on their conference abstracts as a way to boost and enhance their presentations. If these abstracts aren’t optimized ahead of time, though, you’re losing out on a great opportunity to make an impression on your audience.

The Importance of Academic Presentations

When it comes to getting approved to present your work in an academic conference, the pressure isn’t as high as it is for a publisher to accept and publish your research paper. But once the approval is obtained and you’re scheduled to present your findings in front of an audience, that’s when the pressure truly begins.

Before you are approved, the organization presenting the conference will likely ask for your abstract. That means you don’t have a lot of time from the minute you learn about the presentation opportunity to when you have to submit an abstract for approval before your competition does.

But if you can get approved to present in a high-profile, or even a medium-profile, conference, it could make all the difference to you as a researcher. When word-of-mouth of your work reaches the right ears, or when the right person is at the conference that night, your reputation as an expert in your subject could take off exponentially.

Optimizing Your Conference Abstract

When you treat your conference abstract with the importance it deserves, you’ll see it differently. This paper can be all that stands between you and getting your ideas out to the audience you need to reach. It’s going to be what sells you to those who must approve you to present at the conference, and then what sells your ideas to the audience.

Just like any other sales pitch, you need to stand out from the crowd of competition. You can do this by optimizing your abstract for these points:

●      Write to the audience who will be attending the presentation, and a level up from them. You want to make sure your ideas are understandable to the majority of your listeners, that they learn something, and that those who are experts in the field find your work interesting, as well.

●      Consider your niche in the subject area and focus on selling it. There are many subsections of every field, but if you have a niche that no one else is targeting, that should be the focal point of your abstract. Work the rest of the information around your niche.

●      Follow the instructions in the guidelines given to you by the conference organizers themselves. Make sure you touch on every requirement, but think about how you can approach each aspect uniquely, in a way that addresses the proper audience, fulfills the guidelines, and makes you stand out creatively.

●      Use visuals and text in a balanced abstract. Infographics are a popular way of demonstrating ideas that include statistics, and your audience will appreciate being able to get to the point quickly, without wasting their time. However, “dumbing down” content at an academic conference can be seen as condescending to the attendees and should always be carefully avoided.

When you optimize your abstract to hit all of these points, the pressure is lessened for both the concern of being accepted as a presenter and for what you’ll use as your abstract to give to the audience when you are standing in front of them. Do the hard work up front and it will pay off in the long-term!

Impactio Can Help You Create an Optimized Abstract

Your abstract’s design is only as good as the program you use to create it. That’s why many expert scholars turn to Impactio for all their publishing needs. Impactio’s all-in-one platform allows you to turn your research work into professional academic resumes and citation analytics reports for conference presentations.