Patrick Schwerdtfeger is the author of Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed and Webify Your Business – Internet Marketing Secrets for the Self-Employed. He is a regular speaker for Bloomberg TV. He has spoken about Modern Entrepreneurship, Online Branding and the Social Media Revolution at conferences and business events around the world.

This article was first published in his own blog. It is an honest, first-hand report on the steps to take to become a professional speaker.

How to become a Keynote Speaker

by Patrick Schwerdtfeger

I earn about 80% of my income from speaking fees and the remainder from book sales. I haven’t done any coaching or consulting in almost two years. My speaking career has taken me to every major city in this country as well as destinations in Canada, Mexico, Aruba, Sweden, Finland and India. I absolutely love what I do.

A lot of people ask me about the speaking business so in this post, I will describe the path I’ve chosen and the things I’m doing to push my career forward.

First, it’s important to understand that there are two very different categories in the speaking business: platform and keynote. Read Platform Speakers versus Keynote Speakers for more information. This post focuses exclusively on keynote.

Second, speaking engagements tend to fall into one of three different strata: the free circuit, the cheap circuit and the pro circuit. Read 3 Levels in the Speaking Business for more information. Becoming a keynote speaker implies that you’re getting paid to speak.

Saturate Your Market

Darren Lacroix (the Toastmasters 2001 World Champion of Public Speaking) frequently cites “stage time” as being critical to success in the speaking business. Bottom line; the more you practice, the better you get. I agree 100% and recommend you start with the free circuit in your local community to refine your message and fine-tune your delivery.

In 2008, I spoke at 47 Rotary Clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area and didn’t get paid for any of them. In 2009, I spoke at 127 events (!!) and got paid for six of them, all in the cheap circuit. In 2010, I spoke at 68 events and got paid for 21, split evenly between cheap circuit and pro circuit. And in 2011, I will probably do 60 or 70 events and will get paid for 35 or 40 of them.

Let’s look at travel. In 2008, I traveled for two events (Vancouver and San Diego). In 2009, I traveled for four events (Sweden, Aruba, Phoenix and Chicago). In 2010, I traveled for 20 events (including India, Finland, Calgary, Vancouver and more than a dozen domestic destinations). And in 2011, I have been to every major city in the country as well as destinations in Mexico, Canada and one coming up in Portugal.

This is a process! On the one hand, it has gone slowly. But on the other, it has gone extremely quickly. But the point is that I have “walked the path” and encourage you to do the same. So far, I have four years invested.

Getting Started

Looking back now, those days in 2008 when I was driving from one Rotary Club to another were dreadful. But at the time, it was exciting. Yes, I was broke (seriously, I was living on roots and berries!) but I didn’t mind. It was all new territory for me and I felt like I was making progress.

How did I book all these Rotary Clubs? I used the club locator function on their website to compile a listing of 194 clubs in the Bay Area and Sacramento. Once compiled, I spent two days making phone calls and sending out emails. I created a 1-page PDF file for my programs and emailed it off to the Program Director of each club. The PDF file had the following elements:

• Program Title
• Program Description
• Personal Biography
• Personal Head Shot
• Contact Information

When I first started, my program was entitled “Driving Internet Traffic” but many of the Rotary Clubs rejected that topic because it was too business oriented. Rotary International is a non-profit community organization. Even though they function as business networking groups, they focus a lot on charitable causes and community development. As such, my topic wasn’t a good match.

During the afternoon of my first day of outreach, I developed a second program that would better fit the community-oriented mission of the Rotary organization. And to this day, it was the worst title I have ever crafted for any reason. It was awful. And it took me almost a full year to realize how bad it truly was. The program I developed that day was called:

“Touching a Younger Audience”

So bad. Embarrassing. But anyway, the point is that I only invested two days for outbound calling and emailing. Now, to be clear, I didn’t have all 47 events booked by the end of the second day, but my outbound efforts were done at that point. There was a bunch of back-and-forth with different clubs and some didn’t get confirmed for weeks, but my job was done. All I had to do was follow up. You can obviously do the same thing. Here’s the key:

• Think of an awesome juicy sexy title.
• Write a captivating and enticing description.

Rotary Clubs are easy to get into because they meet weekly and are always looking for speakers, but they’re not the only ones. Kiwanis Clubs and Lions Clubs are in the same boat and these days, you can find dozens of local Meetup Groups that would also make great opportunities. Finally, I suggest checking with your local Chamber of Commerce. Not only do they hold events themselves, but they usually know about a lot of other events too.

Climbing the Ladder

Obviously, the objective is to rise above the free circuit and start earning speaking fees. Over and above all the outbound marketing I’ve done, the #1 thing that has helped my career move forward it positive word-of-mouth advertising. If your speech is insightful and impactful, people will pass your name along.

This is critical for success. That’s why I recommend saturating your local market first. As Darren Lacroix says, stage time, stage time, stage time. Practice makes perfect. Someone once asked Tony Robbins how to become a great speaker. He said, “give the same speech 1,000 times and you’ll be good at it.” Your career will not advance if your speech isn’t insightful and impactful.

Anyway, assuming you’ve crafted a powerful keynote, people will pass your name along. The interesting thing is that referrals from free circuit gigs are generally for more free gigs. Referrals from cheap circuit gigs are usually for more cheap circuit gigs and referrals from pro circuit gigs are usually for more pro circuit gigs. They are like parallel worlds. They seem to function independently of each other.

The easiest way to start pushing referrals higher up the ladder is to start telling people what your speaking fee is. When I first started referencing a speaking fee, I said it was $2,500. Later, it increased to $5,000 and then to $10,000. Anyway, as soon as you mention a speaking fee, the free circuit people start to think differently about you and your services as a speaker.

Referencing a speaking fee does not mean you can’t do events for less money or even for free. As I mentioned above, I still do free events today, when I have a hole in my calendar or if I want an opportunity to address a particular audience. The point is that you need to muster the courage to request a speaking fee before anyone proactively offers it to you.

The big events (with big budgets) usually book 6 or 8 months in advance. Generally speaking, as I get closer to a particular date, I will accept lower-paying opportunities. For example, I will no longer book any free events more than 45 days in advance. Beyond that, there’s still a reasonable chance that a paid opportunity will turn up. But within 45 days of the date, if I still have an opening in my calendar, I will book free events that contribute to my career objectives.

If a particular organization asks me to speak for free or for a low fee, I will give them a date when I will confirm my participation. At that point, if they need to finalize their schedule, they will raise the fee to a point where I will confirm immediately. Otherwise, they will have my tentative acceptance but will also know that something else may come up, requiring me to back out of their event. For me, this approach has worked well.

Essential Marketing Collateral

As described in this post, most of the pro circuit opportunities are booked through speaker’s bureaus and agents, but don’t go knocking on their door too quickly. You only have one chance to make a good first impression and if you screw it up, it’s really hard to go back a second time. Trust me.

Always think about what the salespeople at the bureau (or the agents) need in order to do their job. More than anything else, they need a good demo video. I highly recommend making a good demo video before you approach any bureaus. Here is an example of an excellent demo video. Here are the four things you’ll need to enter the pro circuit:

1. A good 3 to 5-minute demo video.
2. Some great photos of you speaking.
3. A printed one-sheet with your programs.
4. A professional speaking-oriented website.

Ideally, get a three-camera shoot for the video: one on either side of the room and one behind you. That way, you can get two angles of you speaking as well as one of your back and the audience in front of you. That third angle will also allow you to get some close-up shots of audience members laughing or taking notes. For the two cameras facing you, make sure to get some close-up footage to show the expressions on your face. It shows your authenticity.

In terms of audio, I recommend a two-track recording: one lavaliere microphone on you and a second microphone to capture audience laughter. Audience reaction is extremely important. That’s what conference planners are buying. They’re buying an impact for their attendees. If the audience doesn’t react (i.e., laugh), you haven’t done your job and nobody will ever hire you. You want to make sure you capture that laughter on the video, so make sure you have a microphone on the audience. In your three- to five-minute video, you should be telling a powerful story with a strong message and at least two or three laugh lines.

When you record your video, you want to be in a big impressive room. Here’s what to look for:

1. An audience of 200+ people.
2. A raised stage.
3. An impressive stage backdrop.
4. Dimmed audience lighting.

You should be able to get everything you need at a single event. If you don’t have a big event booked, find a way to get 200+ people in a room. Make sure it’s an impressive room and then bring in a professional photographer and a videography crew. It’ll cost you some money but you can get the photos and demo video done all at one time, not to mention video testimonials from attendees. Remember, a good demo video is the single most important thing you’ll need.

Other Helpful Tips

Empty chairs kill events. The tighter the seating configuration, the stronger the audience reaction. So theatre style seating is much better than big round tables. And you’re always better to have too few chairs than too many.

Remember, for your programs, make sure you get a juicy sexy title and a tantalizing description. Program Directors make their selections based on your program title and description, along with your kick-ass demo video.

If you have been featured on any recognizable media outlets, get those logos onto your website and your one-sheets. If you have spoken to any large corporations, add those logos. They build immediate credibility.

If you have been interviewed on TV, add clips to your demo video. Again, here is an excellent example of an awesome demo video. Watch it. His entire introduction is done with a compilation of TV clips. Brilliant.

I hope this post helps you chart a course for your evolution as a speaker.

20 members of the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association met on Saturday to debrief on the #nsa11 National Convention held July 30 – August 2 in Anaheim and share their key take-aways. We have held these meetings for a number of years, with the understanding that since only 12% of people act on what they learn conferences, the more key take-aways we can capture, the more likely we are to implement what we heard. Here’s my notes on the discussion.

1. Ken Dychtwald began his presentation by peppering us with key questions to draw us in on a personal level. These rapid-fire questions were a brilliant way to open a speech.
2. Dychtwald’s break-out session on the last day shared valuable rules to grow your speaking business:
   1. Use world-class promotional materials.
   2. Know the value of adding products like books, DVDs and seminar systems to your offerings.
   3. Understand the value of good PR and media coverage. Being featured in a magazine is priceless. Testimonials from a high-level person are worth their weight in gold.
3. Dychtwald also shared his fees (he’s not an NSA member so I guess he could do this):
   1. $50k for a talk on the West Coast.
   2. $62K elsewhere in the USA.
   3. $90K out of the country.
   Want to know what you should charge? Talk to bureaus and meeting planners about other speakers in your area with the same level of expertise.
4. The conference gave me a chance to stop comparing myself to people with 25 years experience in the industry. I let myself off the hook and realized I am now beginning to build my career to a point where I can be as spectacular as they are.
5. Terry Sjodin listed the reasons why people buy: time, money, security, fun and ease-of-use. Build your presentation around those and they’ll buy from you.
6. Sjodin explained the importance of having a courtroom style presentation. Start with an opening argument that lists the 10 most persuasive arguments or reasons they should work with you. Then give proof as evidence for that in the form of statistics and stories. Close with a compelling argument that meets the needs of your client. Then use the same arguments to create your brochures and website that are part of your brand.
7. Julie Morgenstern encouraged us to own our niche by researching the books and articles others are writing on your topic, see what’s missing and then address that. Speak to what’s not being said, then develop a unique point of view. Become the expert.
8. Morgenstern recommended we go to physical watering holes to meet CEOs to drum up business.
9. Glenna Salsbury said “No one can get ahead of you, only you can be you. So let go of who you should be, to be who you are.”
10. After 27 years in NSA, this conference made me realize that the world has changed. So I went to the conference to embrace and learn and have a great time, which I did. The best part was seeing all my old friends grandchildren’s pictures on the iPhone! I learned from Glenna that “if someone else can give your presentation, then you are not telling your story.” On the other hand, to be a little contrarian, there are people who tell our stories … and we must sue them!
11. I learned that I need to go deep in my area and own it.
12. This was my first conference and it was a learning and discovery process. I have just realized that people get paid for public speaking, now I realize they also get paid for coaching and consulting. One valuable tip I heard from somebody in the corridor was to ask potential clients “what’s keeping you up at night?”. Listen for things that are in your area of expertise then tell them “I just happen to have the program that can solve those problems.”
13. Concepts from speeches I heard that encouraged me:
    1. Content is overrated.
    2. Give the audience an experience.
    3. What do I have to offer that they can’t get from everybody else?
    4. Think big, start small.
    5. Delivery doesn’t have to be perfect to work.
14. Lessons learned:
    1. Be brief, clear and concise when messaging in today’s market.
    2. Be persuasive, creative and authentic.
    3. Be there to help people navigate the path to successful and healthy longevity.
15. Suggestions I plan to implement:
    1. Use humor in my stories.
    2. Use social media especially YouTube.
16. Kyle Maynard taught me that it’s important to get people to feel and then hone your story so the message is heard on different levels.
17. When I saw the keynote speaker lose her way in the speech on the main stage it reminded me of the importance of being able to just keep talking. This speaker ran into trouble because she memorized the speech and her actions. It was an unfortunate example of somebody who might be able to coach, but she can’t speak. Even professional speakers can benefit from attending Toastmasters regularly which trains against this very thing.
18. Ford Saeks encouraged us to break down what we do into speaking, coaching, products and know what percentage of revenue is generated from each.
19. Ford Saeks: “Common sense is a superpower.”
20. Larry Winget encouraged us to take a stand to establish credibility and show our expertise and share our opinion and frame of reference. It seems that some speakers at NSA are jealous of Larry. Certainly working with a Speakers Bureau was one of the secrets to him moving from $7,500 speeches up to the $30,000 level.
21. The biggest take away was that I should own my position on the web and especially make use of YouTube videos for viral marketing. It’s the second largest search engine that is now owned by Google.
22. This was by far the best NSA meeting I attended. I am encouraged to make my keynote more personal for the audience and use the term “we” more often. This is a shift from me just telling a story to thinking of things from the audience’s point of view. It was reinforced by Larry Winget who said we should give audiences an experience.
23. This was my first NSA conference in 15 years, and people asked me what it changed. Back then during the breaks, instead of reaching for their smart phones, people used to rush for the payphones!
24. Authenticity from the platform was key. This was my first conference and I found people were for the most part authentic and welcoming.
25. Speakers need to be in tune with the younger generation and not live on speeches they’ve been giving for the last 10 years. If you do that, you’re finished. We have to give the younger generation context that shows we know what’s going on.
26. Follow Patricia Fripp on Twitter (@PFripp) for excellent tips. Example: “Public speaking: Your stories will be more memorable when you tell them using more dialogue.”
27. It resonated for me when Kyle spoke about how he experienced hate and that Larry Winget gets death threats. I wonder how many others are afraid of speaking on minds and do what is politically correct out of fear? It’s so easy to be influenced by a lone audience member who takes pride in “being offended”. I don’t think we should let that intimidate us. The conference gave me the strength to be myself.
28. When I saw those excellent speakers on the main stage I thought that “One day I wanna be like them.” Just like young musicians listen to top bands to fuel their dreams, listening to top speakers at the conference fueled my dream.
29. People’s perception of your presentation style, business cards, social media presence and website should all be congruent. Just because a certain perception works for one group doesn’t mean you can adopt it.
30. A million-dollar speakers’ secret: Get into large corporations; leverage yourself; never leave.
31. Jeffrey Gitomer said don’t just lead by example, set the standard. Go an inch wide and a mile deep. Push the envelope and set the standard and you are no longer derivative. That’s where the gold is. It doesn’t happen overnight, but now I’ve got something to shoot for.
32. Jeffrey Gitomer told us to write every day. He said writing is wealth. If you’re not a writer, you’re not a speaker.
33. Brian Tracy said we cannot achieve unless we “resolve to pay the price”. That resonated with me. It takes a lot of work and a lot of practice. So beware of NSA members who glom onto and prey on the new speaker. Anyone who promises to shorten the route to success should be treated with the utmost suspicion. I really would like national to do something to alert us to these people.
34. I enjoyed the fact that Randy Gage who was so controversial in his own keynote a few years ago was the chair of this conference. He put on a confrontational conference and it was the better for it.
35. The chapter leadership session was great with a good depth of knowledge being shared. People should know about http://nsachapterone.org which is a great resource. Likewise if you Google ‘softconference nsa’ you will find a link to the recordings of past conferences.
36. Speaking can be a lonely business and the value for the conference for me was the interesting conversations I held throughout. It’s the people you meet at the bar, in the lobby and at the health club who make these conferences worthwhile.
37. NSA members should not be dismissive of people who are newbies and might not have the initials CSP after their name. You never know who a new person at the conference is and what their background is.
38. The buddy program for VIPs was a real winner. I’ve never been embraced by an organization and the individuals in it to the extent I have at this NSA conference.
39. The humor session with Mark Mayfield helped me understand that adults remember very little of our talks and humor makes them more memorable.
40. Seeing Fripp’s computer die at the Cavett Institute was a valuable lesson in how to handle equipment failure. She’s a real pro and did not let the lack of PowerPoint phase her.
41. My blog was clogged before the conference but now I understand I can be a curator and an interpreter of information.
42. Simon Mainwaring from Australia spoke about social media and storytelling. He had three lessons:
    1. Get the right mindset.
    2. Be a chief celebrant and don’t try to be a celebrity. The former has enthusiasm and engagement around the topic.
    3. Get Fan Action versus fan acquisition.
    4. Always have “How-manship” vs. “Show-manship”. Always show how.
43. I loved the Monday night music jam session in the lobby. Sitting in and playing with strangers was great. Who knew that Max Dixon played such a great keyboard?
44. Karpowitz said “The audience pays you for what you’ve survived, all your experiences in life .”
45. Lisa Sasevich shared valuable information on how to go from a free-speech to monetizing it. She showed us how to sell from the platform without appearing to. Give a free speech but structure it in such a way that they buy into the transformation offered by your system. Give them a whole piece of your program and then reference the rest of it. She is a classic information marketer. Like Ford Saeks who also has a price point for everyone in the audience. She also handled a power outage with her projector very well.
46. Lisa Jimenez said that “boldness gets rewarded.”
47. Les Brown: “courage is the willingness to act in spite of fear”.
48. Lou Heckler: “always ask who is speaking before you.” In fact it’s best practice to arrive a day earlier to conference so that you can listen to presentations preceding yours and do callbacks to them. Meeting planners respect speakers who arrive early.
49. Lois Creamer spoke at the Consultants PEG and recommended setting up committees of people who can review and comment on your blog.
50. Brendan Burchard stimulated me to think differently about social media. I have already written 52 tweets to send out on a weekly basis for the next year.

I’ve just spent four intense days attending my 7th National Speakers Association (NSA) convention, held July 30 – August 2nd in Anaheim, California. Over 1,500 attendees heard from some of the world’s top world’s professional speakers in an event themed Influence ’11. Fellow NSA Northern California member Susan RoAne wrote on Facebook: “In my 27 years as a member of NSA, I have never been so awestruck/enamored by any of our events like I am about Influence 11.”

I agree.

This conference featured the best of the best — professional speakers who communicate their message with authenticity and passion. As happens when watching a professional in any field, they made what they do seem sooo easy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The one session that stood out for me was Nido Qubein‘s panel on Crafting a Killer Keynote. It featured four speakers who had presented earlier in the conference discussing “how the sausage was made” — masterful presenters sharing their secrets. We heard from:

• Ken Dychtwald — How The Age Wave is Transforming Our Lives, Our World and Our Profession
• Lou Heckler — How Do You Catch Success?
• Kyle Maynard — Passion for the Platform
• Glenna Salsbury — The Essence of Presence … How to Harness the Authentic You
  

Here’s what they shared:

Crafting a speech with impact

Nido Qubein stated that great speakers ask themselves how their talk makes an audience feel, recognizing it’s not just what they say, but how they say it. Style is an important as substance. Nido reminded us that a fine diamond tossed on the floor inside a crumpled McDonald’s bag would be ignored; a semi-precious stone gift-wrapped with a bow is appreciated.

For a speech to have impact, it must:

• Convey specific information that the audience finds useful
• Use metaphor to convey meaning
• Redefine reality and engender hope

Speak from the heart, not just the head

Glenna Salsbury’s 45 minute keynote speech included 25 stories, each making a point that the audience can apply in their own lives. She keeps a file of stories to consult when writing a new speech. Glenna also speaks from the heart and soul, not only the head. “Talking to the head of the audience won’t transform them. People don’t just want information.” A speaker needs to love each audience member individually, from the heart.

Communicate on multiple levels to involve an audience

Ken Dychtwald communicates on three levels:

• At the level of the content of the talk
• What the audience will think about the content
• What he wants to alter in them, forever

When preparing a speech, Dychtwald is crystal-clear about the point he’s making. He triangulates this after each speech by asking audience members in private what they thought the talk was about, refining his message for the future if there’s any discrepancy between his goals and their perceptions. He’s focused on the audience’s reception of his transmission—always looking for creative ways to “get inside the heads” of the audience and move their perception.

His presentation style makes masterful use of the pause. This is one way he “tunes” the audience to a pace and rhythm that makes people receptive to his message. If speakers deliver a talk at a uniform pace and rhythm they “become invisible”. He believes that the more involved the audience is, the better. His talk, unusually for NSA, made extensive use of multi-media PowerPoint and video. He invests in creative design help to structure images and colors for maximum impact.

He acknowledges the difficulty of effective storytelling and takes theater workshop classes to improve his ability. A speech without stories is “terrible”.

Great speechwriters leave space for serendipity

Lou Heckler (gotta love that name for a person in public speaking!) “plays a character called Lou Heckler when I’m up on stage”. He speaks as if talking to one person: his wife of 30+ years.

Incredibly, Lou spent seven months working on his 45 minute keynote. He first thought of the theme of the catcher in a baseball game in December. By January he had ordered an LA Angels baseball outfit with his name on the back to wear when he presented. He used Google to locate relevant baseball quotes and by mid-June had the speech outline almost completed. At this point he deliberately left some “air” in the speech for anything that might occur closer to the event.

Sure enough, the Angels threw a no hitter for the first time in many years a few days before the speech and the pitcher, Ervin Santana, “…credited defensive specialist catcher Bobby Wilson — he and Wilson were on the same page, Santana said — and added that he was hitting his spots and staying ahead in the count.” Heckler was able to incorporate this late-breaking news about the importance of the catcher into his speech.

Wrapping up

Multiple speakers acknowledged importance of the conclusion to a speech. Dychtwald claimed he gets more accomplished in the last 60 seconds of a speech than in the first 30 minutes. “The audience are with me, everything I say hits home.”

Nido had the last word: “What’s so interesting about this convention is that we’ve heard from so many types of speakers.”

Look for recordings of the keynote sessions and breakouts from the conference, including the Nido Qubein panel, the keynotes delivered by each of the panelists and the Ken Dychtwald workshop on Lessons from 35 Years on the Front Lines: Maximizing Your Success as a Professional Speaker (from which some of the content above was taken) to be available here in the near future.

The National Speakers Association of Northern California March Meeting

Saturday’s meeting of the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association was one of the most valuable and informative meetings I have attended in the last five years. There were three of my Cisco communications colleagues in the room, all furiously taking notes. If we collectively implement just 10% of the tips and tricks shared by the two speakers, executive communications at our company might never be the same again.

Sticky Content – How to use Extreme Platform, Interactive, and Visual Techniques to be Massively Memorable, with Brian Walter, CSP

Brian is a “corporate humorist” with a unique blend of communications expertise. Over a 25+ year career, he’s been an advertising director, marketing & sales director, radio & TV commercial producer, copywriter, communications manager, presentation coach, video producer, management trainer, consultant and professional speaker. He’s even a Guinness Book of World Records holder for producing the world’s shortest TV commercial. Brian has earned the elite Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) from the National Speakers Association, and is a member of Meeting Professionals International.

Brian’s business is called Extreme Meetings. He provides customized “infotainment” to make meetings memorable. Brian has presented to audiences ranging from 7 to 7,000. His clients have included Starbucks, Microsoft, Costco, Pepsico, AAA, Payless, Verizon Wireless, several banks that are no longer in existence, the Social Security Administration, a regional office of the IRS…and a dairy company best known for awesome chocolate milk.

Brian shared a humongous list of tips tricks and tested techniques for engaging audiences and taking your speech from ordinary to extraordinary.

E-Ticket Ride Moments

Back in the day, Disneyland famously offered top-priced E-ticket rides.

These were the Matterhorn, the Pirates of the Caribbean – the best in the Park, the ones you told your friends about the next day. They were the exciting rides, the ones where something happened. For your speech to have impact, it must either be perfect (difficult to achieve time in and time out), or it must have built-in production values which guarantee the audience will remember what you said. In other words, it must have a few E-Ticket moments (but not too many to be overwhelming). These are the moments when the presentation goes beyond the facts and figures, the basic information, the data that make up most corporate content. Instead look for interaction; movement; unique visuals; music; costumes; video; sound effects; SFX; risk; props; volume; placement; and spectacle.

Carefully craft those memorable moments that would be included in a movie trailer about your presentation. Ask yourself, would a trailer advertising your speech feature your talking head all the time (nah!), or would it feature the moments when things happen – when you bring the guy on stage; throw something into the audience; show a video or even risk wheeling in a pallet of dollar bills to illustrate a sales goal that has been achieved?

People want content, but they want sizzle too. Brian suggests there’s a false dichotomy between the two. He offers a blend he calls “contizzle”.

How to give your speech impact

Make it:

Gettable: Most presentations are larded with too much information. Give them the data but make sure they also get the point in a memorable way. You want that “Scooby Doo” moment, when the audience tilt their heads and think “Woo-Hoo”.

Emotional: Hook into their feelings. People’s decisions are based on emotion. Understand they are not looking for two more bullet points before they will be convinced about your argument. You need your idea to go “verbally viral”, to be an idea that can be shared. Imagine what they might say to their significant other when they return home from your meeting. They’re not going to mention the fifth bullet point on the fourth slide, are they, Mr. or Ms. Exec-Comms Manager? No, they’ll summarize it in one to two sentences, sentences about what hit them at an emotional level. So why not sweat the detail on that, with as much energy and attention as you do on making sure every speed and feed is included.

Actionable: offer them a realistic next step to take after the talk ends.

Bottom line: Brian offered two ways to make a talk stick. Firstly through engaging in extreme interaction with the audience; secondly by creating mini brands for the content (as he does with the following branded techniques).

Extreme Audience Interaction

In the richest and most expansive part of his presentation, Brian offered a range of ways in which you can ask for volunteers from a live audience to participate in your talk. All avoid the whining, begging, pleading tone, that some presenters are forced to adopt with a reluctant audience, as their credibility leaks from the soles of their shoes into the floor of the podium.

My one regret is that few of these techniques are applicable to the increasingly popular world of virtual meetings. It’s a shame that some companies have lost sight of the value of that aspect of the rich tapestry of human experience that allows for these opportunities for emotional connection between the presenter and the audience; tolerating meetings where every presenter is reduced to the two-dimensional window in the remote viewer’s computer screen. What price flesh and blood and human emotion in a virtual world?

Asking for Volunteers – the Brian Walter Way

The first rule is do not ever, ever, ever embarrass people. Protect their dignity. But this doesn’t mean being boringly politically correct. It’s interesting to your audience the extent you allow your volunteers to seem to be at risk.

So how do you put people in a risky situation in front of their peers, and have their permission to embarrass them in a way that will allow everyone else in the audience to feel that vicarious thrill that comes with watching a colleague twist in the wind, out on a limb, wondering if they will make it or fake it?

Here’s how.

• Bribe them. Offer $20 for someone to come up on stage (or $50 for senior management) and you’ve got instant permission to ask them to do or say anything that might make them look the fool, because they want you to show them the money. Believe Brian when he says that this works every time. Can’t afford the money if you want a lot of interaction? Simple. Offer Starbucks gift cards for a “mystery amount” (they won’t know they’re only worth $5 until long after you’ve left the auditorium).
• Set them up. Acknowledge that this will be an embarrassing situation on stage and ask for everyone’s permission to play along. Again, this works.
• Volunteer ball. Toss a small ball into the audience. Whoever catches it can either be the volunteer, or more likely gets to choose the person to their left or right. Brian spent time explaining how this simple act engages the whole audience on both sides of the aisle emotionally – from those who are immediately relieved the ball is not coming over to their side of the room; to those in the rows immediately before and behind the person who catches it and have that moment of anxiety that it might hit them; to the delight on the face of the guy or gal who gets to point the finger at their colleague who will now go up on stage.
• Choose the pointer. Whoever you point to in the audience to volunteer is given a reprieve. They get to choose the person who must step up. This is especially effective when you have chosen somebody who emphatically shakes their head that they will not volunteer. Congratulations! You now tell me who should come up on stage. Watch the emotion on their face change instantly.

Putting more action in interaction

Each one of these interaction techniques was worth the price of admission for the day. Each showcased Brian’s real expertise at creating extreme meetings. While he freely admits he does not own these techniques, and we can borrow them for our own events, it’s a rare presenter who would have the skill to successfully implement them the first time they were tried with an audience. But, hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

• Be a poser. Ask questions. So, what is this? Who said that? No matter what the response your answer is You are right. For example, rather than playing it the way the boring SME would, show the audience this graphic:

  

  and simply ask So what is that?

  Someone in the audience will probably venture that it’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, or perhaps Pavlov’s hierarchy of needs. No matter what, congratulate them, affirm that it is Maslow’s, and move on. You’ve just rewarded somebody in the audience emotionally, making them a partner in the transfer of information in a far more effective way than the typical engineering product manager would. Use the same technique to ask people to guess percentages or numbers. Encourage the audience to shout out numbers and correct them as they over- or under-shoot.

• Be a big poser. Don’t be afraid to ask hard or obscure questions. If you want someone to guess where Starbucks got its name from, begin by asking are there any English majors in the room? Someone might guess that the name comes from Moby Dick. If not, you can start giving hints until the audience realizes what you’re asking for.
• One-on-ones. Here’s an opportunity to move into the audience to create dramatic energy. Don’t just randomly wander into an audience like some are known to do. Be intentional. Approach someone to ask a question, elicit a response, engage them in a conversation. This breaks the rules most presenters adhere to. Make that one person your new BFF. They become the go-to person for the rest of your presentation. Everyone will be rooting for you as you shine the glow of attention on them in front of the audience.
• Shout outs. Have a group shout out responses to questions you pose. Don’t be afraid of a little chaos and more noise in the auditorium that most presenters tolerate. It’s all good emotional connection.
• Two truths and a lie. This was the golden nugget of the whole day. Rather than trying to explain the technique take a look at this YouTube video from last summer’s National Speakers Association convention where Brian used it on stage in front of an audience of 2000 to get extreme meeting interaction. It’s an 8 minute video, filmed on a Flip camera, but stay with it, it’s worth every moment:

• Fluffy, fluffy, deep. Here’s how to humanize a senior executive with three questions. The trick is to give the executive a long list of potential questions beforehand and have them choose the three they would like to answer (give them the chance to fill in the blank, none will). Two of the three questions will be “fluffy” (warm, fuzzy ones) and one will be “deep”. For example: What is your secret guilty pleasure? What actor would you like to play you in real life? What species is your family pet? These allow the audience to see the warm fuzzy side of the executive. Follow with a single deep question: What does it take for someone to get recognition and promotion in the company today? If you could change one sales goal this quarter, what would that be? Realize that it’s easier to segue into the profound emotion from the warm fuzzy feeling that it is to land on it cold.
• Speed Interviewing. Ask people to form groups of three and give them just 45 seconds to come up with the answer to a question or suggestion. It’s a ridiculously short amount of time in which to accomplish the task. Yet it creates instant energy as people rush to get the group to hear what they have to say. It will send the energy of the room through the roof.
• Instant Actors. Here’s your chance to bring people on stage from the audience for a cameo appearance. Print out dialogue for them to read in large font ahead of time on cards, highlighting the text for each person. You now have permission to use humor and go way over the top, since people are playing characters from their world, rather than speaking their own beliefs. If you don’t want to use real people, Brian has had success with sock puppets. I’m currently a big fan of creating cartoons that convey content which would otherwise be difficult for the audience to handle.
• Point-Counterpoint. A time-tested of speaking truth to power since the glory days of the 1970s:

  Get your corporate actors to man up to this and you’ll be surprised how far even the most conservative audience will let you go with your content. Memorable won’t even begin to describe what they’ll be talking about around the water cooler the next morning.

Mini Brands

The key to a memorable talk is, as Brian has demonstrated with the mini branded interaction techniques above, to have snappy titles for all of the key concepts in your talk. This boosts retention and connects with people emotionally. Name your key points with phrases like “verbal ping-pong” instead of “the elevator pitch”. Take the time to develop a logo or icon for each and your talk will be more memorable. Brian has had success with:

• Fact or crap. Senior leaders quickly pick up on the keyword and have no problem calling something crap during the rest of the meeting. Okay, so it’s politically incorrect, but a proven and more memorable brand name than “fact or fiction”. No one will be standing up on the podium saying something is fiction, fiction, fiction the way they will use the four letter alternative. This is the power of a memorable brand versus the inanely bland.
• Do you pass the smile test? Are people in your team more likely to smile when you are coming into the room or when you are going out of it?

Introduce mini brands like this in your talk and listen as other presenters and the audience latch onto them during the rest of the conference.

To net it out, the goal of a good presentation is not to end up with a bleedingly obvious “Bad Dragon” story. That’s where the executive, engineer or subject matter expert stands up and tells people what the problem is; how their solution will make it better and help slay the Dragon; and how the organization will live happily ever after. The unfortunate reality is, that describes the vast majority of what passes for corporate communications in the Fortune 500 these days.

Build in some of Brian’s “contizzle” tricks; tell a good story with real obstacles to overcome; make sure there’s at least four or five memorable moments, and the audience will remember your message the next day and perhaps even the day after that.

What I Learned From Winning 29 Emmys That Speakers Need to Know, with Bill Stainton

Planning an event isn’t rocket science. It’s harder. You have to be the master of 1,001 details—everything from negotiating the hotel room block to deciding on the typeface for the program. After so much planning and effort, the last thing you need is a speaker who makes your attendees yawn, shrug their shoulders, and think, “Hmmm—I guess it’s going to be another one of those meetings.” A speaker like that can kill your event before it even gets off the ground.

What if, instead, you could get the attendees to think, “This is fantastic! This is hilarious! I’m so glad I’m here!” That’s certainly the reaction from the NSA/NC crowd to Bill’s afternoon presentation. Bill is a true showman who lived up to the name of his company: Ovation Speaking.

Bill paid his show biz dues. He spent fifteen years in front of the cameras of the top-rated local comedy TV show in the country—Seattle’s legendary Almost Live!—so he knows how to entertain an audience.

Unlike Brian, there was not as much for me to capture for the extreme meeting report. It was as much the way he delivered his material as what he delivered. The most memorable part of the afternoon for me was when he showed a video of his onstage riff at a past NSA Convention satirizing the conference theme. Take a look, it’s priceless:

Bill advises that all talks should be treated as a “show” and in that sense you have to think through three separate approaches: the producer who deals with the structure of the presentation; the writer who creates the content; and the performer who delivers it.

How to produce an effective presentation

Producers are responsible for the event details. They are in charge of driving the bus, the audience are the passengers. You have to have, as Brian indicated, a series of E-ticket moments built into the talk to keep the audience’s attention. Bill called them “bathroom blockers” – the times in a movie when you really have to go pee, but the action on the screen is so compelling you can’t leave the theater. You’ve got to think of what you can bring to the game to make your next presentation so compelling that people are blocked from going to the bathroom.

Bill shared the classic magicians advice: start with your second-best trick, end with your best trick, and put the rest of the content in the middle. Jay Leno, who Bill has worked with, always chose his ending joke first. The reason? Audiences always remember the last thing you say.

Which is one very obvious reason why you should never, ever, end with Q&A.

Find ways to build in an element of predictable unpredictability. You want to keep the audience guessing when something strange will happen next, but don’t do it in a predictable way. Avoid predictability to make sure those lean forward moments catch them by surprise.

A keynote speech should open with a five-minute microcosm of what the entire presentation will cover. This gives the audience an idea of how things are going to be set up. Take the time to decide what elements, themes, and flavors you will include in your first five minutes.

Writing the speech

Speechwriters, according to Bill, need to keep these main intentions front and center:

• Clarity. Make sure there are no unintended questions left hanging in the air by statements that confuse or bewilder the listener. This includes the use of acronyms and industry terms that the audience might not fully understand. Control the audiences focus during the speech. Avoid the error of going from A to C without going through B.
• Use precise words and concise phrases. Jerry Seinfeld, who Bill has worked with, claimed that a good day’s work is taking an eight word phrase down to five words. Go through your speech and making sure that all of your words have energy. For example, Mark Twain liked to illustrate the right choice of words as being the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. As most speechwriters know, there is power in alliteration, rhyming, and cognitive dissonance. NSA member Max Dixon talks about the coaching relationship he has with clients as a ruthless sanctuary, which is a great example of cognitive dissonance.
• Sprinkle smartness in your speech. It’s really okay to have some things that might be ahead of the classic 8th Grade reading level of the average member of the American public. You need just enough smartness to grab their interest, but don’t overdo it. Remember the average American audience really does have an 8th Grade reading level.

When writing, follow the advice of James Thurber, “Don’t get it right, just get it written”. Then edit.

Delivering the speech

Once speakers are on the podium they need to be larger than life. Like the band in Spinal Tap you need to be a 10 in real life but an 11 on the stage. Understand:

• The art of the pause is knowing how to skip a beat and add an infinitesimal pause before the punchline, but then once you’ve delivered the zinger, silently count to three, or if that makes you uncomfortable take a sip of water from a glass on the lectern, and wait for the audience to react. Often it will be a couple of seconds after you deliver the line that the chuckles start. Likewise, when you have delivered an important point in your content, do the same pause. Think for a moment about how we often pause video recordings. Build the same pauses into your live delivery to allow the audience to realize what you’ve just said and to process how it applies to their situation. Subject matter experts and comedians alike succeed or fail by their mastery of the art of the pause.
• Commit to the bit. This is as straightforward as defining, in your own words, what the segment of the presentation means and giving it all your energy. Even for the necessarily rushed material that had to be created under deadline.
• Four quick specific techniques. These were masterful suggestions.
  1. Don’t move on the punchline.
  2. Things that happen in the past should be indicated to the audience’s left. Those that happened today center stage, and those that happen tomorrow to the right.
  3. Play to the cheap seats first which means address the back of the room and the balconies at the opening of your talk.
  4. When you start to bomb, slow down. This is the only way to rescue a disaster.
• The performer’s secret weapon: Rehearsal. Very few speakers do this right. It’s not just do a quick run through or repetition of your content. Deliberately practice and look for ways to improve. Review the speech for material you need to add or delete, for where you need to add pauses. Tip: Make an audio recording of a speech and send it to people of equivalent background to the audience to see if they get the message.

Bill concluded with the quote of the day:

Improve, to the extent that yesterday’s audience is cheated by today’s performance.

Thanks to the fascinating website Sociological Images for a pointer to this interactive map at The Chronicle of Higher Education website that presents data on the proportion of U.S. adults with a bachelor’s degree over time. In 1940, in the vast majority of counties no more than 10% of the population had graduated from college (the national average was 4.6%):

Now the national average is 27.5%:

By comparing the maps over time, you can easily track a number of changes: the increase in college degrees overall, of course, but also changes in education such as the dramatic gains women have made in earning college degrees in the past few decades — the gender gap in college degrees was over 7 percentage points in 1980 but only about 1.5 points today.

This is a wonderful example of the visual display of quantitative information that would be very effective in a presentation, similar to that used by statistician Hans Rosling.

The Ragan Corporate Communicators Conference in Detroit (May 4-7) was festival of presentations on Social Media, Speechwriting, Corporate and Internal Communications. Over 250 attended the event held at the General Motors Headquarters in the downtown Renaissance Center and hosted by GM.

Attendees generated over 900 tweets under the hashtag #ragangm. Since Twitter only maintains 10-14 days of content live they will soon disappear. Here’s the archive all of them.

I curated a list of the most interesting 108 tweets,adding links where appropriate for easy reference.

1. Use Camtasia Studio to create audio “screen-casts” of apps – embed in departmental websites as training aids. Create animated preso library.
2. Internal comms compete w/lots of entertaining options for employee mindshare. Videos & Photos need to be quality & entertain to compete w/Rolling Stone & People Magazine.
3. Every internal web page should have star rating system and allow comments.
4. When developing messages for employees, ask the question “What does this have to do with the key audience how does it speak to their concerns?” WIIFM at two levels for employees: 1) What does it have to do w/ me? 2) How does changing my behavior make my life better?
5. Three steps to changing employee behavior: 1) Handle comms logistics – content, design, 2) capture employee attention and 3) do be relevant. Result = change behavior.
6. Comms is responsible for simplifying complexity of business – diagram things.
7. We can no longer have internal comms messages targeted to everyone – the branch office does not see things same way HQ staff do. Gen Y workers diff. from Baby Boomers.
8. Every communicator (esp. long-timers) eventually stops communicating 4 their audience and starts communicating 4 their boss. Do whatever it takes to avoid this. Bonus be damned!
9. 3rd party media training is often more effective. Execs seem more receptive and less defensive/dismissive about their advice. Hire an outside coach for faster results.
10. People now have now gone from having ADD to ADOS – Attention Deficit … Ooh Shiney!
11. Executives need to understand Gen Y. “Connect with the coming tidal wave.” Try reverse mentoring, people!
12. Irrelevant information is not benign. Limited reader attn means messages must be focused on benefits or risk losing readers.
13. Write for the range of target audience that has least understanding of your topic. Duh!
14. 89% of journalists say they turn to blogs for story research. Lazy or smart?
15. 78% of people trust recs of other consumers; 14% trust ads. This is why social media is so important. Who do you trust?
16. 62% of employees who tweet, tweet from work.
17. 66% of employers have monitored employees’ internet use; 1/3 of companies have fired someone (mostly for visiting wrong websites).
18. Make sure to integrate comms channels with each other. Example given: The Petco Scoop blog.
19. Wildfire has a fun ways – sweepstakes, contests and give-aways – to engage SM audiences.
20. Ideal number of words in a graf before losing reader attention: 42.
21. Listening is the most important thing you can do on Twitter – check out http://search.twitter.com/ and http://www.socialoomph.com/
22. Speechwriter Rob Friedman: Eli Lilly’s main purpose is to show “the value of pharmaceuticals” – ask: what is it for your company?
23. “A speechwriter is a playwright for the client – script them well”
24. Era of destination website is over – archival ‘.com’ sites being replaced by social media.
25. 68% of online content read by Millennial’s is created by someone they know personally.
26. Check out cool tool PubSubHubBub.
27. Real-time search engines can tell u the sentiment & reactions to ur org’s news. Look at http://socialmention.com/
28. Twitter is not a personal communication tool. It’s a news distribution service.
29. AT&T uses Twitter Ambassadors found those already on Twitter and take that passion to help your brand in a real way.
30. Write tweets in ways that add value to the reader to aid optimization.
31. Augmented reality is the next big thing. @shelholtz: “It’s going to be huge.”
32. Are u using http://www.evernote.com/ – It will change ur life.
33. Polleverywhere – Cool live polling technology. Used my phone to txt a vote and watched live results on the screen!
34. General Motors: Changing the public’s perception 1 customer at a time. Personal correspondence with GM execs. Actively seek unhappy customers.
35. Re finding/responding to online complaints, “It costs less…than finding a new customer,” Says GM’s Susan Docherty.
36. SM lessons learned by GM: Don’t be boring, don’t over-promote, cut the hyperbole, respond to people w/real people.
37. Social media “policy” for employees: if you can’t say it at your daughter’s bday party, shouldn’t say it online.
38. “Stop treating customers like a one-night stand,” GM CMO Susan Docherty. Great advice for all companies!
39. “Emerging” media is now traditional media. GM had 8-fold increase in digital media spending since 2001.
40. In communications, if you start with the consumer, you will do the right thing.
41. Qumu – great option for internal communications webcasting: Ragan Conference using them.
42. GM has “social club,” informal, regular meetings of those from all depts w social media responsibilities.
43. Remember you (your comp. or org) are a publisher and you compete with media outlets.
44. PR & Marketing need to have a ‘”happy marriage.” Audiences can’t tell the diff between the two. They just see you.
45. GM lets employees spend worktime in Twitter & Facebook so they can interact w/customers, which is now part of everybody’s job.
46. Viral is a phenomenon, not a strategy…absolutely true.
47. Any GM employee can tweet about the company, says @maryhenige. Co keeps them advised of rules, links them to info & asks them to be smart.
48. In the end – just provide value. Don’t lead w/your messages; community’s needs come first.
49. On Social Media…don’t be a brand, be human.
50. 70% of successful outcome depends on how well you communicate. The last thing u want is 4 execs to be hiding behind their desks.
51. “SM is like having a kid – you can’t just leave them when they’re done being cute.”
52. Writers are ditch diggers. Can’t wait for a muse. Get your ass back in there and DIG!
53. Any speech longer than 20 minutes is too long. If they want longer. Tell them you’ll speak for 20, QA for the rest.
54. How to determine speech length? 100 words = 1 minute is good benchmark. Anyone speaking faster than that needs to SLOW DOWN, pause for audience to absorb message.
55. Speechwriters: Make 3-4 big points. No more. Get them from the principal in ur 1st mtg, or they’ll throw ur 1st draft out.
56. Get a 2nd monitor for your computer (to monitor Twitter).
57. Use flickr to spark yr creativity.
58. Use flip cams for fast ‘scrappy’ videos (caveat: content must be good).
59. Greatest gift of YouTube culture: low expectation for video quality. BUT compelling content + authenticity is extremely high.
60. Using humor in Corp comm is not always a fireable offense.
61. Keeping it real: Bullfighter: – eliminate jargon & b.s. in your documents.
62. Hire a presentation/speech coach to help ur executives improve. Not overnight, but 3-4 months.
63. Use http://bit.ly to shorten URLs and track clicks.
64. Stay current: Read http://mashable.com/
65. Do a short 2 sentence interview with multiple ppl and mash together for a good video on a single topic. Example: http://bit.ly/aqzoCd
66. Create a presentation homepage for upcoming events, preview videos, outline, slideshare, ask for comments. Example: http://bit.ly/aWBAow
67. Flip camera tips: Clean the office behind you; use a desk light to highlight face; watch for b/g noise; bump sound with Windows Movie maker post-production.
68. Keep your language conversational. Test your writing by reading out loud as if you were talking to someone in an elevator.
69. Writers: Get rid of passive sentences; capture the essence of your press release in a Tweet.
70. Stop blocking social media from ur employees. Train them and empower them.
71. Spice up internal comms: Roving reporters and employee film fests: uncovering talent in ur organization.
72. “Who died & put IT in charge of employee productivity?” @shelholtz
73. Amplify employee voices thru low-cost podcasting. Can listen at user convenience, develops trust and community. And cheap to produce.
74. Journalism graduates today are trained to shoot, edit, and publicize. Get a dedicated staff member to focus on video.
75. @MarkRaganCEO on why authenticity matters: “We live in the age of bullshit.”
76. Useful podcasting tools: Wavepad, Camtasia Studio, Audacity, Levelator.
77. On podcasting…the tool is not the message.
78. Podcast Production Lessons: Cozy up to your radio. Get comfortable with being seen & heard. Prepare, prepare, prepare.
79. Podcasters: Think like a marketer. Create full campaign. Don’t 4get your global audience. Measure every podcast.
80. Podcasters: Your leaders make for great content. Look for your influencers. Let employees be the interviewers sometimes.
81. Internal Podcasts: You’ve got experts in your community. Help them tell their stories. Find the moment when the mike goes away.
82. Podcasts complement crisis communications. Can quickly be on the scene or respond to rumors. Easily done over the phone.
83. Time length for videos is controversial. Brevity important in most cases. 90 secs or less. BUT if it’s good, ppl will watch longer.
84. Executive communications is like a high wire act…eventually something will go wrong.
85. Public Speakers: Common mistake – spending more time on slides than on delivery. Dry runs are important.
86. Public Speakers: Conversational tone in a large audience doesn’t always work. Stage presence is important.
87. Speechwriters: Beware of tongue twisters. “Red Buick, Blue Buick”.
88. Speechwriters: Prep your exec in case their time gets cut. Provide a 60-30-15 minute version of the speech as a contingency.
89. Understand Cultural Sensitivity/Diversity issues: Resource: Culture Crossing – Beware of culturally-specific analogies (e.g. Sports US= “4th down”; UK= “batting on a sticky wicket”).
90. Think about mic’ing your exec when they present so u can re-purpose their speech/audio for other things (website, podcast, transcript, etc.)
91. “Opportunities multiply as they are seized”- Sun Tzu. Especially true for the internet.
92. @aribadler suggested we’ve moved from work-life balance to work-life blend.
93. Avoid extended online debates with ppl who disagree with a message.
94. 28 Best Praactices for virtual presentations, WebEx sessions: www.whatworks.biz
95. Best way to brief ur exec? Know them, their style. Personalize ur approach and style.
96. If your employees love what they do, make them ambassadors.
97. Pre-flight checklist for exec-comms events available as .doc source: http://bit.ly/bzzoTh
98. Blogs must be authentic. Don’t ghost write your CEO’s. Ppl expect authenticity. If they can’t write it, look for something else.
99. If ur CEO is a bad writer but a good speaker: have him dictate it + ur comm staff can transcribe to the blog.
100. Comm cascade often fails. Focus on interpretation + location! Help staff take the message, interpret, + pass it on accurately.
101. Branding: Detroit is considered “gritty”. Baby Boomers equate that to dirty. Gen X define it as “authentic”. Detroit’s brand position: Detroit is where cool comes from.
102. Ask your agency to pitch ideas they don’t think you’ll approve. Creativity will flow.
103. Whether it’s online or in print. If you don’t know if people are reading it, why are you doing it?
104. Interviewing tip: Don’t be afraid to go where your answer leads you and not where your question sent you.
105. Complaints are inevitable in any biz. Look at them as opportunities to showcase problem solving and communication skills.
106. Comms must compete for your employees’ attention – Paying employees gets them in the door, but that doesn’t engage and motivate them.
107. Measure communications by business goals/objectives.
108. Consider Prezzi.com instead of PPT: Animated visuals are dynamic and impressive. As shown in @shelhotz closing keynote.

Next month I’m giving two presentations at the 2010 Ragan Corporate Communicators Conference in Detroit, MI. It’ll be my first ever visit to Motown and my first time at this conference. The event is hosted by General Motors.

I’ll be podcasting interviews with attendees and presenters and grabbing some video with my Flip video camera to post to YouTube. It all fits with the theme of my own workshop, scheduled for 3:30 – 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday May 5:

Speechwriting in the age of social media: Magnifying the impact of a speech to increase your reach

Social media add exciting new options to the traditional speechwriting toolkit. From researching audience interests to developing speech content, tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and blogs can save you time and make your speeches more compelling—if you know how to use them.

Speechwriters can now leverage social media to greatly improve the value of their services in the planning, preparation and scripting of a speech. Then, once the speech is written, social media can magnify its impact beyond the confines of the auditorium.

After attending this session, you will know:

• How to identify trending topics that will grab an audience’s interest
• Where to find facts, opinions and stories to include in the speech
• How to create buzz in advance of a speaking event using blogs, Facebook and Twitter
• The risks and rewards of engaging an audience in an online conversation—while the presenter is on-stage
• How to leverage the viral power of podcasts and video to reach a global audience

A full preview is available at this Presentation Home Page.

On the second day of the event I’m giving a presentation from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

What can go wrong in executive communications: Common mistakes and how to avoid them

It’s sometimes the logistical minutiae that cause irreparable damage to executive speeches. From scheduling conflicts to malfunctioning equipment, a presentation can bomb for any number of reasons. You’ll hear about a number of improbable and unexpected (even hilarious) ways in which things have gone wrong for hapless executives and threatened the careers of their communications staff. You’ll then learn ways to avoid these embarrassments, including:

• Why it’s your responsibility to sweat the details
• A range of best practices to avoid an onstage melt-down
• Safeguards that help prevent product demos from crashing
• The value of checklists and standard operating procedures
• Ways to recover from the inevitable mistakes

Again, a full preview is available at this Presentation Home Page.

Feedback and Ideas Needed

I’m eager to hear from anyone with comments on how to focus these two presentations. Go to the presentation home pages and leave me your suggestions; things you’d like to hear me cover (especially if you happen to be going to the event); war stories I can include and even witty items for my Top 10 List on “Things a client does not want to hear from a Speechwriter the night before a presentation”. (Things like “Boy, you should have been here for Obama’s talk last night, now HE was good.” – you get the idea…)

Follow the conference on Twitter at #ragangm

Dentists and Social Media

I recently attended a full day seminar on social media presented by Patrick Schwerdtfeger, the author of Webify Your Business who I profiled on this blog back in July.

After the event, I caught up with Sheila Dobee, DDS who is based in Fremont, CA and asked her how dentists might use Social Media like Facebook and blogs.

To hear what Dr. Dobee told me, click on the podcast icon below.

At the recent National Speakers Association (NSA) Convention in Phoenix, AZ I had the opportunity to see Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE, give a talk on storytelling.

Fripp discussed the inside secrets of how you can tell totally awesome stories to emotionally connect with the audience. She revealed three story formulas; the importance of great opening lines; and how speakers can go from good to great.

An audio recording of the complete presentation is available for order from the Softconference website.

A small sample of Fripp’s advice is shown in the edited highlight video I posted on YouTube (with Fripp’s express permission).

For many authors the book tour is a necessary evil. The reclusive scribe is forced into the public eye to read extracts from the podium to an indifferent audience. Authors, researchers, accountants – subject matter experts of all kinds find it difficult to speak about their passion in a compelling and engaging manner. These are introverts forced to perform unnatural extroverted acts in public. All but die-hard fans are likely to find such presentations boring.

The challenge is to take the minutia of a non-fiction book, research report, PhD thesis or chart of accounts and turn it into something audiences will find entertaining. Sounds impossible? Not so.

A modern Mark Twain

The Weekend Financial Times has a fascinating article on The Author as Performer by London ICA talks director James Harkin.

He reviews author Malcolm Gladwell’s presenting material from his latest book, Outliers: The Story of Success:

…this wasn’t a book reading or a Q&A session of the kind authors traditionally submit to. Neither was it a slide show, as you might expect to find at a lecture. Instead, the author recounted a single vignette from the book – the tale of why a plane ended up crashing, from the perspective of the pilots and those in the control tower – and burnished it into a narrative with all the chill and pace of a traditional ghost story. Even the lighting was kept deliberately low to create the right atmosphere. The performance lasted precisely an hour and five minutes, and no questions were invited after Gladwell had finished speaking. Rather than a talk about a book, it looked more like a carefully choreographed stage show.

Harkin recalls that Dickens and Mark Twain packed lecture halls in the US and Britain back in the 19th century.

Contemporary events such as the TED conference showcase “Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world”. Speakers at TED are limited to 18 minutes in which to present their case – just long enough, according to the organizers, to develop an argument but short enough to hold people’s attention and encourage an economy of language. No questions are invited.

Speakers must adhere to the “TED Commandments” of speaking. These include: “Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out Thy Usual Shtick”; “Thou Shalt Tell a Story”; and “Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.”

The speaker as showman

The TED injunctions seem to work. In 2007, following his complex graphical presentation of economic trends, Hans Rosling, a Swedish professor of public health, tore off his shirt and proceeded to swallow a sword. The following year American brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor, talking about the memory of her stroke, pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and picked a real and soggy-looking human brain from an assistant’s tray.

Al Gore delivered a masterful presentation in his award-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, by adding a touches of drama to what could have been no more than a glorified slide show.

It’s only rock and roll

Harkin notes that the trend toward speaker-as-rock-star signifies a shift in the economics of book publishing which mirrors the economics of the music industry.

Just as rock bands, in the age of digital MP3′s, give away the music and make the money off live performances, so authors might learn from the same kind of business model: supplementing meager returns from a book contract with an income stream from public speaking.

This is not news to the many author-members of the National Speakers Association. They are speakers who write, rather than writers who speak. As I’ve reported in this blog, they hold day-long seminars on topics such as publishing tips for speakers. Being natural performers, they are in the pole position to make money from the podium as well as the page.

Harkin reports that a select group of non-fiction authors with a business or technology focus have been able to command high fees for speaking privately at corporate events.

The new economics of publishing are bringing these exclusive presentations to a wider public.

Performance Piece

As in the time of Dickens and Twain, audiences seem willing to pay good money for a speech which informs and entertains.

Harkin notes:

When almost everything is available in a digital world of zeroes and ones, the thing that is impossible to duplicate is the intensely involving experience of live performance.
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That’s why people are still prepared to pay big money for live music, and why people choose to pay £20 for a one-off performance by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s why, in the past two years at the ICA our talks have been accompanied by everything from live butchery to live beard-trimming to the sudden appearance of dancing girls.

The challenge for many authors – especially of the dryer kind of non-fiction book – is how to make their words come alive on stage. It’s one thing for the author of a racy novel to hold an audience’s attention. After all, as someone once said, if you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.

But if your subject is cost accounting or nanotechnology, you’ll need a solid grounding in the ways subject matter experts can make an audience sit up and take notice when you’re presenting complex information.

The good news is that authors like Gladwell and the organizers of the TED Conference have cracked the code on this and are packing ‘em in.

Now the bar has been raised, what will you do differently to turn your next talk into a performance piece?