Two Important Speaking Tips
Here are two really fast and important speaking tips for you to learn and understand. Start with answering your audience’s most pressing question: “what’s in this for me?” And then finish by giving your audience actionable takeaways. Making these two speaking tips top of mind becomes vital in delivering a presentation that matters. Too often, we have a tendency to clear our autobiographical throats before we dig into educating an audience. Then, we end with no real sense of what comes next. This means we leave people excited, but with nothing to do.
What’s In It For Me? (WIIFM?)
Here’s one way to help your audience understand what’s in it for them: start by asking them a question that sounds like it came from right out of their head. If you’re giving a session on how the communications industry will be changed by audio podcasting, ask something like, “Do you think people REALLY believe that podcasting will change the world?”
This is actually two tips in one. It relates to the “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM) issue, but it also does something I love to do in presenting: take away their sword. This means, start by making sure your audience (especially if they’re skeptics) knows that you’re on their side.
So, ask a question that might come from your audience’s head, such that it sets them in the right frame of mind to absorb the brilliance you’re about to bestow upon them.
Takeaways
This is something I learned to do better after working with Stephen Saber at CrossTech Media. He stresses that every presentation I do for the company have five takeaway points: things people can do with the information I’ve given them during the presentation. That’s the whole “next steps” stuff that people seem to crave at events.
Since I started adding “takeaways” to my presentations, in one form or another, I’ve found that people have started to rate my speeches much more useful. I score high on entertainment, but now, with making sure people know what comes next, they also get scored pretty high on usefulness.
Takeaways should be very actionable. If you’ve finished up your speech on how podcasting changes communication, give people an assignment to find five podcasts on iTunes and subscribe for a month. Take notes on the ways each show introduces information, etc. Review your current corporate communications documents. Do any lend themselves to a potential audio format as well?
Things like that.
How These Help
People love structure. In my recent post on Cirque Du Soleil, I failed to note just how structured the experience was from start to finish. From buying tickets to being seated, from the opening curtain to the final bow, everything in the experience was crafted such that we, the audience, didn’t have to think much about the mechanics of the experience. We could just watch the event and absorb the experience.
By starting with WIIFM and ending with 5 takeaways - even if you do it in a creative way that breaks the mold a bit, people will feel like they better understand and appreciate your efforts to educate and entertain them.
Does that make sense? Have you done something like this? How do you improve what I have here?
Photo credit, Brian Solis
Be a Better Interviewer
I’m about to start interviewing people for my book with Julien Smith. We’re definitely planning to put our best foot forward on this, and as part of that, I’m looking into ways to be a better interviewer. Fortunately, I get to be the guest often. That’s a lot less difficult. Here I am being interviewed by the (very!) prepared Jim Canterucci.
We don’t always have to re-invent the wheel. There are some great interviewers out there doing amazing work. If you take a little bit of time to research how the pros do it, you can learn a lot. The trick is this: listen to or watch a full interview, and WRITE DOWN THE QUESTIONS and TOPICS covered. Then, go back and deconstruct what you just heard. Rate each question for how the guest answers, and whether or not the answer sung versus just flopped. Ask yourself whether it was the interviewer or the guest who could’ve done better.
Now, let’s look at some examples. Take out your notebooks and start picking this apart. Let’s look at how the pros do it, and see what we can take back.
Best of the Best
In my estimation, Terry Gross from NPR’s Fresh Air is the best in the business right now. You’re welcome to disagree. Here’s her body of work. You want to learn some great interviewing tips? Learn from Terry.
Learn from Larry
Larry King has several years of interviewing all kinds of world leaders. That can be easy. World leaders make world news. What about entertainers? That’s harder, more obscure (believe it or not). Look how Larry deals with entertainers. The lesson here? Research helps, but then, so does flexibility.
Here’s Larry interviewing Motley Crue:
Larry with Christina Aguilera:
Notice how he leads off. He gives a bit of their most recent bio. He does this thing where he says something like, “You’re doing this new thing. What got you started doing that? or Why do that?” That lets the guest go right into the thing they’re most passionate about. And that’s the good part.
Larry blows it in some of these interviews. He calls Christina a softer singer, which would be the opposite. But listen how he turns it around, and just lets it go past. That’s half Christina and half Larry. Look what Jerry Seinfeld does when Larry gets something wrong with him:
So, if you’re the guest, you have some power. If you’re the interviewer, steer that boat back out of the whitewater fast, or it could spin out of control.
What About Tricky Guests?
Another great interviewer was Johnny Carson. He did it a different way, and the show was essentially a series of promotions that could double as entertainment. But what you should learn from Johnny is velocity. Who better to test that with than Jim Carrey?
Okay, you just thought about Robin Williams as a rough guest. Here he is with Ellen:
Advice here? Go with it.
And Now for You
Lots of my blog posts end with questions. Do you know why? Because interviewers are very curious, and they want to hear from the other person. It’s a conversation, but it’s also a showcase of another person’s capabilities, ideas, and thoughts.
So now it’s your turn. What else can you tell us about interviews?
What Do YOU Think People Want From Your Site
Forever the thinker, Jeremiah Owyang posted about the future of corporate websites. He cites Kristie Connor and Christopher Smith, who won a contest for their efforts to describe such. It’s a great question. I’d recommend reading Jeremiah’s post and commenting on that, but if you want to talk about it more, it’s a great question.
People Want Information
Not marketing. When I go to Staples.com, it’s because I need a store locator, or the price of a USB drive. I don’t mind being sold potential values and bargains around the information I seek, but I sure don’t want to hear marketing-ese about whatever you think the summer value plan is going to be.
People Want Simple
When I go to GM.com, they give me three easy choices right off the bat: corporate info, vehicle info, and “experience GM,” whatever that is. That’s not bad, because they slot me pretty quickly, but the risk there is that the site is static, and definitely “cold” in color and experience.
People Want Connection
Want the real secret magic? People want to feel “seen.” There are ways to do that. One is something we do all the time on blogs: we comment back. Another is through polite (!!!) use of cookies to remember that you like things set up a certain way when you are visiting.
Further, people would like to connect with the people at an organization, not just through forms and chutes, but in as many ways as they can conceive. Know who does this well? Sun? Go to http://blogs.sun.com, and you’ll see that there are blogs to suit most every taste. That means, there are conversations to be had at lots of levels. Cisco and some other great tech companies are doing it. Are retail or consumer companies ready for this?
What do You Think?
You travel the web all the time. You need information from various companies. You visit sites to buy things, to learn about things, to make decisions. What do you think people want from your site?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Threading the Social Needle
One thing I try to do often is connect with people across all my various social networks. If you’re following me on Twitter, I invite you to add me at LinkedIn. Likewise, if you’re a reader and contributor to this blog’s community, I invite you to join me at those other two places. If you’re reading the blog, but not yet getting the newsletter, which is totally different, I invite you to get that. If we’re not Facebook friends, add me there. It’s all part of a concerted effort. The goal? Threading the social needle.
Networks Loose and Taut
Imagine you’re looking for a job. Where do you start? What do you need to know? I’ll give you a hint: the first letter is “p” and the last few letters are “eople.” I have spent time and effort building a robust social network across LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, this blog, and beyond, because it’s my goal to be helpful in as many ways possible. It’s how you were able to help me send a woman to college in under 2 hours. It’s how I help friends find work, get projects, or just connect with like-minded souls.
That doesn’t happen on the fly. Jeremiah covers this very well. Networks are the lifeblood of this new human computer we’re building. You want the network connections to be there ahead of when you need them. And here’s where we get a little more human still.
Be Human About It
Connect with people from the mindset of wanting to be helpful to THEM. Learn what you can do to be useful FAR before you ask them for anything. And do this because you care, not because it’s a strategy, not for some long flung business project. Do it because being a good human matters to you. If you do this, and I mean it, no faking, it will become a very powerful thing. People remember your efforts to be helpful. They remember all the ways in which you do good things for them. And it never has to matter a lick, except sometimes it does.
How this SHOULD Work
In the future, this will be a lot more dynamic. When I show up at a social network, it will ping my profile server, will ask me which personae of mine to expose, and then see which connections I have from other networks that have similar credentials, and offer connections without me thinking much about it. I’ll be able to write metadata above every one of these contacts, very visual stuff, that will allow me on the fly to draw little lines between one person and another few people, showing VISUALLY the networks of people that I’ve met, and how they might relate.
With this information, I’ll be able to pluck threads quickly, and know that someone who has a PHP need is connected through me to someone who’s a PHP expert. I’ll be able to see my network by proximity, by home base, by corporation, without much fuss. I will be able to apply endless filters so that I can squint into the tapestry and find the exact right two people to work with me on a project.
But until then, while it doesn’t work that way, I’m building my own variations on the theme and threading the needle by hand.
If you’d like to connect with me on various social networks, here’s a short list:
- LinkedIn - my email linkedin at chrisbrogan dot com.
- Flickr (photo sharing)
- My newsletter (different than the blog)
Pretty much every where else, I’m also “chrisbrogan.” Feel free to connect.
What do you think? Where should this all reside? What’s the best place to put all this kind of information, and how else might we want to use it in flexible ways?
Photo credit, Twenty Questions
Buy a Domain for Email or at Least a Gmail Account
Several friends of mine recently left their job all at once (the company had a mass layoff). I checked in LinkedIN, and it looks like I’m now missing a way to directly contact at least 70 of them, because they used their business email address as their primary point of contact. My goal in writing this is to get you to consider one of two options: either buy a domain to use as your email address, or at least get a gmail account.
Why NOT to use your ISP’s email address
Say you make your home email address your primary point of contact. If your home address is yourname@comcast.net, what happens when you shift from Comcast to Verizon? You’ve just lost a bunch of folks who only knew how to reach you the other way.
Why NOT to use your business’s email address
Times change. People move. That’s one reason, but the other is this: sometimes, your company doesn’t want your company being represented by the places you visit and use that email. For example, we had a CTO who pointed out that anyone in our company contributing to security forums online using their work email address would be terminated. Why? Because every time someone from my company’s security team asked a question on such a forum, it signaled to hackers (who read the same forums) our company’s vulnerabilities.
Buying a Domain for email is easy
There are plenty of providers. I use 1&1, though I don’t give them the highest marks. Lots of people use GoDaddy, and if you use them, check around with your favorite podcasters, because some have deals with GoDaddy that save you money and give the podcaster a few bucks, too. The cost for a domain, especially if all you’re going to use it for is email, is around $6US a year right now (yes, you can find cheaper, or more costly).
Or Gmail
I recommend gmail because it’s easy. It’s web-based. It’s flexible. You can use it with a mail application on your desktop, with a BlackBerry, and in lots of other ways. It has powerful search, and is widely accepted as a good import gateway for most social networking sites, meaning you can make your friends portable.
Equipping YOU
The basic idea, in case I wasn’t clear, is that by making an email presence that points directly to YOU, people will know how to reach you, no matter what the circumstances of your employment or your choice of ISP on a given day. It’s about maintaining connectivity.
What do you think?
Photo credit, Joe Shiabotnik
Five Levels of Social Conversation
Friend, deep thinker, and prolific email friend, Bill Cammack and I were talking about how people use things like Seesmic and other media to make conversations. I told him my theory that I like to believe there are five general categories of conversation out there. Bill asked me if I’d blogged about it, so here it is.
Five Levels of Social Conversation
I believe there are roughly five levels at which we communicate on tools like Seesmic or Utterz or Twitter (to a lesser extent):
- My Dog Has Fleas - baseline social conversation. No different than what would be said in line at a grocery store, and not usually that interesting.
- Let’s Talk About X - conversation, but hit or miss on real insight.
- Hacks and Energy - lots of good stuff, still a little hit or miss, but with more engaged/engaging types. (Not sure why I call it hacks, but I mean when you suddenly get into a bit of fast energy flow).
- Production - people who understand the medium and are “making” something, but who aren’t into conversation, per se. (like Internet TV shows.)
- Serious and Deep - rarest of the rare.
Most of my conversations probably fall into 2 and 3. Sometimes I produce something, too, but not so often. Am I serious and deep on the web? Not usually in video.
What do you think? Am I missing anything? Is this silly?
Thanks for the email, Bill. I’ll reply on that a little later.
Photo credit, Bill Cammack.
The Value of Networks
Purchase a plane ticket and fly to a new city for the first time. Take a cab to the heart of the city and then realize you’re hungry for a bite to eat. Open your laptop and steal wifi, trying to find a restaurant, and realize you’ve left your laptop power cord at home, and will need to find a replacement. Get a call on your cell from your aunt saying that she needs to buy a new digital camera, and which one should she get, because she’s standing in Best Buy right now. See a new email come in from your boss stating that you’re fired.
Your Network: The Old Days
In the way old days, your network was your family, your neighbors, your coworkers, and a few scattered others. You lived reasonably close to some number of these people, and they knew your comings and goings as intimately as a Facebook news stream. These people knew you when you were a foolish kid, and knew that you weren’t very good at math, but that you were a hard worker. If you needed help with something, you could reach out by mail, by phone, by “asking around.” It took a while, but usually someone could find something.
Your Network: The New Days
Several of your “friends” aren’t that. They’re more “friendlies.” They agree to be part of your network. You can reach more people than ever before. They’re all over the world. They have different roles, different networks of their own. It’s exponential the difference in the combined sum of what these people know. They might not know you the way a cousin or Junior High School teacher would say they know you, but they are willing to do some level of information sharing with you.
What Do I Mean By Network?
The idea of a network is just that it’s a connection of things that form something larger in sum. Networked computers mean that you can access some resources back and forth and communicate. Social networks (in the software sense) mean that the software makes a connectivity between users. Networks in the human sense mean that we have chosen to align ourselves in some form or fashion around common beliefs, goals, values, etc.
Organized religion works on the power of networks. So do labor unions. So do governments. Business is ultimately about networks of one kind or another.
What Can A Network Do?
Networks are about sharing resources. It’s the same for computers, social networks, human networks, and pretty much all kinds. Thus, if you’re looking to build a good network of people, sharing has to be the common link. Networks can help someone raise money quickly. They can direct lots of attention at the same point. They can help someone find a job. They can elect government officials. They can shift power and resources seamlessly.
Not a Numbers Game, Or Is It?
I think some of the value of a network comes from its numbers.
In social networks, I’m fortunate to have a reasonably good number of “friends.” Partly, this is because I’ve been fortunate to attend a lot of conferences, and I’ve been diligent in meeting lots of people. Partly, it’s because I publish a blog. Partly, it’s because I do a lot of work to link things together to FORM networks by inviting people to certain social networks, to accept requests from people, to build out the digital structure of such things.
Some quick tidbits:
- I’m not in any way a “collector” of friends in social networks. At this point, I say yes to most anyone trying to connect, but I don’t gather.
- I don’t believe in the “rule” that some use that one must “really in real life” know someone before accepting them as a “friend.”
- I don’t build networks to market. I’m not a marketer. I build networks to be helpful, and to deliver value in both directions.
- I think the key to it all is: “more hands lighten the load.”
Tips on Building Valuable Networks
Quick definition of “value:” I don’t mean money. I mean the ability to deliver and receive information, help, and further development (of networks, information, capabilities).
I can only tell you what I believe has worked best for me. I imagine your mileage may vary. I hope others add their own ideas on building networks in the comments.
- Be friendly and inclusive. When I go to conferences, I look for the fringe players, the people who aren’t well known, but who are interesting. Sometimes, these turn into amazingly wonderful connections.
- Treat “big names” like real people, and oddly, they treat YOU like a real person. This comes in handy later, when you can be helpful.
- Seek to be helpful. Always. The more you can do for others, the more that wheel comes round, should you find yourself in need.
- Connect. Connect. Connect. Help others find each other. Connect people with other people as often as humanly possible. This keeps flow moving, and it shows that you’re into sharing.
- **BEWARE** network leeches. Occasionally, in trying to form communities of useful and sharing people, someone comes along who needs, needs, needs. Learn how to cut that sort away from your network. It’s not rude. It’s not elitist.
- Diversity and opportunity are great ways to build something more interesting. Homogenous networks are only useful in a narrow scope. Meaning: meet lots of good people from lots of walks of life. You never know.
- Say thank you. Often.
- Do as much as you can, and then offer to help connect them to even more help, if you can.
- Be as timely as possible. Help isn’t much help if it’s too late.
- Never take credit. Always assume responsibility. Be as humble as you can muster.
- Give often and long before you ever have to ask for something for you.
Social Networks and YOUR Network of Value
One last point before I ask you for your ideas: the power of all these social software applications is that they empower us to communicate rapidly, in a one-to-many format, and along the lines of our networks of value. To that end, be sure to use this to accomplish your goals. Make sure you know the size and depth of your personal database. Make sure your contacts and connections are well connected through these digital tools. Try to build them all such that you can respond quickly to people’s needs, and that you can reach the edges of your network, and help others extend out to theirs, so that everyone may take full effect of that work.
And don’t be evil. (Easy, right?)
I consider your participation here a value of my network. The fact that you come and share your ideas and insights is wonderful to me. I’m not always nearby a computer to respond back to every comment, but I read everything you say, and I LOVE when someone in comments communicates to someone else, and when you go off and blog your own take on the original idea that takes it in another direction. Thank you for this. I’m forever grateful.
And now, what do you think? What have I missed? What are other ways to keep a network strong?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Photo credit, Jared
