The Beauty and Problems of New Presentations
I’m watching myself present at the Inbound Marketing Summit from a few weeks back in Boston. This was a brand new presentation called “From Cowpaths to Mastodons,” and what I’m loving about it is that I made the presentation kind of out of nowhere and gave it instead of the original planned speech. I love that I can work on the fly.
What I dislike about this is that it’s my first go at it. I see EVERY flaw I made in my performance while watching the video. Here, you watch for a bit.
It’s technically okay that I’m all over the place, and that I’m staring at my slides a lot, and that my delivery isn’t crisp… YET.
What comes next is working on the presentation, deciding what parts make sense, removing parts that don’t, etc. What’s interesting is seeing some of the new things I tried (there were three new things), and deciding if I liked them or not.
I had a little alternate reality game going on (I guess you could call it that) where I asked a few “agents” in the room to say “Hey!” if I put my hands up and “Yes!” if I pumped my fist. It was for a test of something, and was interesting. It dealt with repetition, but also dealt with making a point about being first to the presentation.
It’s interesting to think about this, to watch myself, to be critical. The presentations I give businesses are a bit different, a bit more focused, but what I’m learning at conferences I’m applying to my business work.
Are you working on your presentations? Your daily life ones? Your blog ones? Are you learning how to move audiences, and how to bring points across in different ways?
What do you see in your own work? What do you see in mine?
Want to see me present again? I was given another handful of 50% off codes for New Marketing Summit in a few weeks in Massachusetts. Just email me: cbrogan at crosstechmedia.com , and if I’ve not run out, I’ll share these last few. Oh, and you can see about another 30 people speak there, too.
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
When Your Blog is a Grand Stage
I believe you have a very wonderful speech inside you. It is the kind of speech that inspires and equips people like me. Blogging is more powerful than we normally consider it. It’s an opportunity to try out our voice, to share our perspective, to present a point of view. In many ways, this is your chance to speak on a grand stage to an audience who is interested in what you have to say. You have our attention. What will you say?
Do you think of blogging that way? Why wouldn’t you? This is truly an opportunity that we sometimes trivialize. And yet, you are at once a publisher, a speaker, and a potential thought leader in your space. The same tools that allow others to post simple links or tweets is your platform for sharing the best of all possible human thought. How will you use your time on this stage? Why not build a beautiful speech?
Inspiration for the Speech
Your audience reads. They get around. They’ve seen some of the same things you’ve seen on the web. Give them something new. One way to do this is to look far outside the realm of where your audience normally reads. Look for materials or ideas that come from other areas. If you’re a web designer, look at cooking blogs. If you’re a marketer, read about painting.
From there, ask yourself this simple question: How can I inspire and equip others to do great things?
Okay, it’s technically a simple question, but a fairly tall order. And yet, I think it’s the most important question, and a great way to build your speech (or blog post, in this case). How does one inspire? By telling stories of triumph. By sharing the path one takes from simple beginnings to the highest highs. By sharing the dangers that came along that path, and then explaining what you did to move past them.
Inspire and equip in equal parts, if you can.
Mechanics of the Speech
There is nothing worse than an overly long speech. Unless maybe it’s a rambling, poorly conceived, cliche-filled, slideshow-heavy, self-inflating overly long speech. There are ways to make your blog post beautiful, inspiring, and well-shaped.
First, hang your promise as the North Star above the dark sky of your speech. Let’s decode that. If your speech is about how to turn a depressed downtown city block into an urban garden and gathering space, start with that. Say, “I am here to show you how you can make magic, and transform neglect into hope. With enough hands, and a vision, we can turn 144 Dalton Street into a place our grandchildren will talk about.”
Think of a decent speech (or a blog post) as if you are building a house. Your main points are the solid frame of the speech. Starting with that promise hung in the sky, you sketch out the big points, like putting up the corners of a house. You apply lumber (your supporting points), and you clothe it all stories, which help us understand the meaning of what you’re telling us.
You might think that the end of a speech is presenting us with the finished house. Oh no. You made that house as a model for us to examine. The end of a good speech is when you give us tools, and send us, inspired, on our way to build our own houses based on what you showed us.
Obligations of a Speaker
If you are here to inspire and equip me, and you’ve built a house to rest beneath the promising North Star you hung in our sky, you must be responsible for a few things.
- Do not deceive me, unless you tell me early in your speech that you intend to do so. You have my trust. Respect that.
- Do not make the house for yourself. I admire that you have stature to stand on your stage and speak to me. But I have not come to hear how great you are. Be humble.
- Equip me. Inspiration is not enough. If you give me only hope, I cannot eat hope.
- Encourage me. Be willing to see me build my house from your speech and your example. And praise me for the house I build from your instruction.
- Give the stage to me. In the end, we all want to hang stars before others. Even if they are small stars, on a small stage, or a blog somewhere out in the darkness. When you are done with your speech, your star, your house, invite me to the stage.
And with that, I invite you to create a beautiful speech of your own.
Share links to your new speeches in the comments at [chrisbrogan.com].
Photo credit Jared
Upcoming Speaking- A Busy Few Weeks
I was just going over my calendar and realized that I’ve got a fairly busy speaking schedule coming up shortly. In case you’re going to any of these events, and/or would like to meet and talk, I’ll post where I’ll be:
MarketingProfs Business to Business Forum 08 June 9th-10th in Boston. I’m speaking on the 9th at 1:45PM on lead generation.
Enterprise 2.0 Conference June 9th-12th in Boston. I’m speaking on the 11th at 8AM on social media in the enterprise, and on the 12th at 10:45AM on microblogging, both times with great people.
ITEC Indianapolis June 17th-18th in Indiana. I’m keynoting on the 17th, and I think I have a panel to moderate. There might also be a social media breakfast.
Podcasters Across Borders June 20-22nd (the weekend). I’m speaking at some point but don’t remember the details because mostly, I’m going to be a general member of the community. This will be my first time at PAB.
And then, I’ve got no conferences until PodCamp Boston3 in July, and I like it that way. : )
Will we meet up? I hope so.
