Laurie Brown has over two decades of experience as a trainer and speaker, helping her audience improve their customer service, sales and presentation skills. She started her career as a professional actor, performing in hundreds of training films, commercials and movies. This experience has provided her with the ability to engage and keep her audience’s attention. Laurie has written extensively on presentations skills. She is the author of The Teleprompter Manual and Brand-aid.
A tech primer in NetworkWorld, authored by Cisco Systems, presents startling evidence of the coming surge in business video:
Video traffic is expected to grow from 50% of all Internet traffic today to 90% by 2013. In volume that will be equal to transmitting the equivalent of 10 billion DVDs across the network every month.
Cisco, being the network engineering company they are, provide end-to-end solutions for important technological solutions that support the growth in video, from high-resolution TelePresence systems to media-ready network architectures that will support multimedia.
However, the missing piece of the puzzle is not the technology, it’s people’s comfort-level and effectiveness being on camera.
As video becomes pervasive, it challenges the abilities of executives, trainers and “virtual experts” to present themselves on camera with poise and authenticity.
Looking into the camera in a brightly lit studio is an environment which most of us must be trained to be effective in. As challenging as it is to emote with a fish-eye lens, it is something to get over. Practice makes perfect, so invest in a personal video device and practice until you are natural.
Here are some areas to focus on.
A bad hair day is not an option
Communication is about more than the words you use. On a phone call, tone of voice, emotional intensity and volume all “color” the way communication is received. In person, add in facial expression, stance, angle relative to the listener. How you look is as important as what you say. You cannot help but leave a visual impression. Studies have shown that people are influenced more by the non-verbal clues we present when we communicate than by content alone.
So pay attention to clothes and grooming. Invest in make-up or at least a powder to remove shine (yes, guys, you too) and avoid fabrics with busy patterns, narrow stripes or herringbone tweeds.
Body Language Best Practices
Body language is a crucial factor to consider when you are on camera. Your posture and body language are crucially important. In fact, good posture is even more important in virtual communications than in person. It is best to try and deliver video messages when standing, feet apart. When seated, you should sit on the first third of the chair with your legs at a 90 degree angle and your feet flat on the floor. Sitting this way, keeps your diaphragm free so that you can breathe properly and speak dynamically. It also gives you a firm base, thereby reducing any unnecessary movement.
Movement
Movement on camera can be very distracting. Watch newscasters or actors and you will see that for the most part their bodies and heads are very still. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use gestures — you should, but do so intentionally. Be careful to avoid movement that doesn’t have purpose.
All movement is exaggerated on camera. If you want to lean forward to show interest, make it a slight move. Avoid frequently moving toward and away from the screen.
Gestures
Gestures are a great way to add interest to your communication. Be aware of the range and framing of your position in the studio. Never move any part of your body that is not in the shot. It will seem like disconnected movement. Also, how much of your body that is visible on-screen will impact how much movement can be used. Remember that unlike with in-person communication, less of your body can be seen by the other person. The less of your body that is visible, the smaller your gestures need to be. It helps if you imagine your viewer seated no more than a foot away from you. In “real” life, you would naturally make your gestures smaller so you don’t overwhelm the person to whom you are speaking.
Eye Contact
When you speak to the camera, maintain eye contact. If you are on a panel and not speaking, make sure that you are looking at whoever is speaking.
So, how are you finding the move to video? Is it something you are involved with? How’s it working out for you? If you have any comments, suggestions or questions please share them below.
Using the “single most powerful question anyone could ever ask”, Terry Barton helps individuals and businesses connect to what is preventing them from moving in the direction they want to go. Whether it is an operational issue, a performance issue or a problem with a team, Terry helps people and organizations get to the root of the problem, identify their role in it and connect to solutions that get them moving again.
An accomplished leader, facilitator and executive coach with more than 20 years of management and leadership development experience in the retail, container shipping and biotech industries; Terry founded The Barton Group to provide leadership development and performance coaching services to individuals and businesses. After seeing firsthand how organizations and individuals get in their own way, Terry now enjoys helping her clients come to the “Ah-ha” moment that inevitably gets them moving in the direction they want to go.
Terry is a contributing author of Savvy Leadership Strategies for Women and a sought after speaker. Her topics include; Get Unstuck and Get Moving, Get On with It – Managing through Change and Transition and So, that’s why you bug me – Understanding personality differences and preferences.
Terry holds a Master of Science in Management and Organizational Development from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communications from the University of Maine. She is an adjunct faculty member at Chabot College and serves on the ASTD Golden Gate Board of Directors.
Pro-Track Profile
Terry enrolled in the NSA/NC Pro-Track program for 2011 after reading about NSA membership requirements on the national website and realizing it would be the perfect vehicle to help launch her career as a professional speaker. To hear what she told me click on the podcast icon below.
I was fortunate to volunteer as a speech contest judge for an impromptu speech contest for High School students held Friday and Saturday as part of the State Leadership Conference of the California Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA).
FBLA is the largest and oldest business student organization in the world. It promotes competent, aggressive business leadership and helps students establish career goals and develop character and self-confidence. The goal is to facilitate the transition from school to work. To accomplish these aims, FBLA holds conferences and seminars; sponsors a competitive awards program; produces national publications; and provides scholarships, programs, and other services for its members.
Impromptu speech contest
The 2011 State Leadership Conference took place on April 14-17 at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, CA. I had responded a call for judges for a speech contest which came through at Cisco, where I am currently an executive communications manager.
The speech contest, similar to a Toastmaster Table Topics contest, requires students to speak for three to four minutes on a specific topic, such as No amount of travel on the wrong road will take you to right destination. I helped judge an elimination round on Friday afternoon where 15 students competed for a place in Saturday’s final round, with the top two winners from the State going on to the national conference this summer.
Suit Up for Success
FBLA conference regulations dictated a dress code requiring professional attire to a quite persnickety level of detail (Males: Banded collared shirt may be worn only if sport coat or business suit is worn. Females: Capris or gauchos with coordinating jacket/suit, worn below the knee). It was a unique experience to walk the hallways of the hotel surrounded by so many perky adolescents putting their best foot forward.
I wondered if the irony of choosing this conference theme for an event held in the heart of Silicon Valley – where leaders such as Scott McNealy, Steve Jobs and, more recently, Mark Zuckerberg, dress in anything but suits – occurred to the FBLA? Of course, there is something to be said for knowing how to suit up, and I’m sure there are still industries where dressing in suits is key to success (perhaps if you want to rise to the top in the Funeral Home Industry?). But, seriously, these students were anything but an “empty suit”.
Scary smart scholars
These 16-18 year scholars showed a scarily smart level ability and confidence. They were, as public speakers, almost without exception, at or above the level of many adult Toastmaster members, and equal, in some cases to the most accomplished Vice-Presidents I’ve worked with in corporate America over the past decade. In fact, most adults would be challenged to match their ease and ability to stand in front of a room and communicate clearly and confidently.
Be afraid, be very afraid…
If you are a student who intends to pursue a career in business or a parent of a student and you are not aware of FBLA then I urge you to check them out. If you ever find yourself competing for scholarships or college places with FBLA members then you should not underestimate the abilities of these students. They would easily bury most other candidates.
If you are an employer looking for top-notch talent, look no further.
FBLA Areas of focus
In addition to the speech contest, there were a vast number of tests and presentations taking place on everything from Accounting to Cyber Security; Desktop Application Programming to Digital Video Production; Marketing to Network Design. I sat in on a ten minute presentation by three young men from a Bay Area high school on network design which would qualify any of them for a summer internship at Cisco.
Podcast Interview
To hear first-hand what being a student member of FBLA involves, and the background of the organization, I sat down with Ms. Shelina Noorali, Vice President, Central Section, who is a Junior at Monache High School and Mr. Robert Franklin who is Board Chair and a teaches business education at Los Banos High School.
To hear what they told me, click on the podcast icon below.
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.
Don’t move on the punchline.
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.
Play to the cheap seats first which means address the back of the room and the balconies at the opening of your talk.
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.
Roberta Guise works with experts, small business owners and professionals who want to be extraordinarily visible and sharpen their marketing edge. She also enables successful women to become thought leaders. A marketing consultant and speaker, she is the founder of San Francisco-based Guise Marketing & PR.
The Seven Deadly Sins of Writing
By Roberta Guise, MBA
There’s an epidemic of bad writing. Whether it’s Web sites, print ads, marketing brochures, promotional fliers, e-mail messages or business writing in general, I frequently find myself baffled as to what the writer meant to say.
Some annoying symptoms of bad writing show up in typographical errors, such as an apostrophe before the “s” in a plural word and in the possessive word “its” (which doesn’t use an apostrophe). Or in the word “you’re” — this being a contraction of “you are” — when the writer means “your,” as in belonging to you.
Then there’s the dropped “s” that renders a word singular when it was meant to be plural, and words that are just plain misspelled. These mistakes can — and more often than not will — leave a bad impression on the reader.
Frequently, though, the writing is so bad that you can’t tell what the writer originally meant. Marketers of services have the biggest challenge communicating their message. It’s either loaded with jargon or strange incomprehensible sentence structures that render the piece meaningless.
Or, in an effort to win your business, the writer tells you all about how great they are, rather than letting you know why you’ll be better off doing business with them.
I know people say that nobody reads these days. Wrong! People do read. How else could they navigate the Web? Your Web site or brochure are full of words that you want people to read, as are event fliers, ads and other marketing promotions. Think about it: if a reader can’t decipher your writing, or if it’s riddled with mistakes, you risk losing business.
To maximize your return on investment from your marketing materials, here are my Seven Deadly Sins of Writing, and recommendations for fixing them.
Use industry jargon. It shows how smart you are. The fix: use language that anyone outside of your industry will understand.
Don’t use the word “you,” because this is about how great “we” are. The fix: Use the word “you.” It engages the reader, and will give them the sense that you’re having a conversation.
Write exclusively about your company, because you’re the most interesting subject you know of.
Use sexist language by always using “he” and “his” as generic terms, because it’s easier and most people don’t care anyway. The fix: Use “he or she,” or the plural “they,” and you’ll stop perpetuating stereotypes.
Forget to use a catchy headline. People are smart, they’ll figure it out, and what’s wrong with baffling them? It creates intrigue and they’ll call for more information. The fix: Draw readers in with a sharp, snappy headline, letting them quickly scan for the most important information and “get” what you’re offering.
Don’t tell the reader what to do after reading. Readers can figure it out, so why tell them? The fix: Tell readers what you want them to do next (such as register for the seminar or call for a free consultation).
Ignore punctuation and typos because no one really reads anything these days, right? The fix: Go to the website for National Punctuation Day, where Jeff Rubin, a former print journalist who has published newsletters for more than 25 years, offers punctuation guidelines that will make your writing sparkle and impress your prospects.
As you write your next business, marketing or promotion piece (and even your tweets), use these Seven Deadly Sins and their fixes as a checklist. And to be sure readers understand your message, ask yourself how they’ll benefit from what you offer. Then, carefully describe those benefits in simple, clear language. This will put you well on your way to convincing them that they should do business with you.
Give a little extra thought to the words you choose. Hint: generally, shorter words are better. When you’re done writing, read your document carefully —even show it to a friend or co-worker — before you upload it to your website, send to the commercial printer, lick the envelope or click the e-mail Send button.
Executive communications professionals increasingly work with video. They range from simple Flip videos which tell winning stories to full-blown studio productions with panel discussions, remote participation via TelePresence and pre-recorded transition or interstitial segments.
The challenge is to not only to research, script, edit and produce the content, but to do so in as creative a way as possible — capturing those lean forward moments when the video engages viewers emotionally and connects with the audience.
I’ve recently started watching high-quality creative video in order to see the outer limits of what’s possible onscreen. It’s fascinating to see what others have done. Corporate video won’t ever look anything like this, but watching these videos unleashes my imagination. What’s more, I find that creative videos approach storytelling from a totally different perspective from that which I’m used to. Because storytelling is such a key skill in transmitting information, the more we learn how to tell stories creatively, the better we’ll become as communicators.
Here’s three creative videos I’ve enjoyed recently.
OK Go – This Too Shall Pass
This video has been seen by 24 million people on YouTube. It’s infused with a Merry Prankster, anarchic geek spirit:
Watch it a second time and you realize the smashed television sets piled against the wall and paint-splattered overalls indicate a number of rehearsals — nothing this good would have been created in one pass. Now, you might not get away with with lining up four VP’s against a wall and shooting paintballs at them; but people won’t forget variations on Rube Goldberg-like routines if you had the courage to work them into the CEO’s next keynote. Talk your product demo guys into a pinball triggering a golf club that knocks a baseball down a ramp and presses the on button that starts the demo (that lives in the house that Jack built.)
Metronomy – She Wants
This is a music video from Metronomy, an electonica /pop band from the UK. But it’s not just any music video. It creates the surrealistic atmosphere of the dream state in hypnotic detail. An homage to Buñuel, the video is the work of French directors Jul & Mat who have a movie called The Science of Sleep, which I’ve not seen, but is apparently filled with dream sequences:
I loved contrast between the dreamer and the dreamed (your executive and her staff?) and the sequence where she rotates through 360 degrees as does the camera (with stage hands dressed in black supporting her). From the moment she leaves her bed, with feathers flying in reverse motion, to the point at which she loses her dance partner at 3:28, the story-line builds. When the party-goers collapse the scenes unravel, the characters she met betray her, and the alter-ego she pushed down pushes back. A graphical a representation of the business cycle as you’ll ever see.
Just the thing to try and pull off for your next All Hands video, as long as Mary in Accounting doesn’t blink when the camera pans across.
London Time Lapse from Brick Lane to Primrose Hill
I was impressed by Anatoleya’s video taken on a Flip Ultra HD (with image stabilization software included). Speeding up the frame rate in the editing phase creates an engaging stop motion effect of a walk through this London street market:
I can’t wait to use this effect for the opening sequence at a corporate conference – shooting the room as it fills with people.
Or how about the cafeteria from 11:45 – 1:15? But everyone already eats their lunch too fast. It might be amusing to make one video in a company cafeteria in Europe, one in Asia, one in the USA and play “spot the cultural differences”.
Or how about a stop motion video in the lobby from 6:00 am – 9:00 am
… or one corner of a sea of cubicles
… or a call center
… or one person at their desk for a couple of hours
… or technicians installing a new rack in a data center
… or the janitors at the end of the day, moving from floor to floor.
Kurt Shaver delivers high-impact sales training and consulting to companies seeking increased production from their sales force. Kurt’s live training classes are followed by reinforcement sessions and exercises that insure the lessons become lasting habits. Consulting includes areas such as sales systems (CRM) implementation and effective compensation plans.
Kurt brings 25 years of real selling experience to each client. His “street credibility” is critical to being accepted by a room full of seasoned salespeople. As a sales rep, Kurt learned how to build rapport, uncover needs, and differentiate his solution to win the business. Kurt won numerous Top Salesperson awards in his role as an individual contributor. Major accomplishments include closing a $5M deal for AT&T’s first private satellite earth station for a corporate customer and selling some of the first electronic catalogs to companies like IBM, Sprint, and Texas Instruments.
As his management responsibilities grew, Kurt built sales teams at a number of fast growth companies. One of them made it to No. 11 on Fortune Magazine’s “100 Fastest Growing Companies” list for 2004. In the process, he developed the systems and skills to motivate and train salespeople to be successful.
After 25 years of corporate sales success, Kurt started The Sales Foundry in 2008 to share his knowledge with businesses seeking to accelerate their revenue growth. The name “Sales Foundry” was chosen to represent the blue-collar, roll-up-your-sleeves nature of Kurt’s work. It is not board room strategy. Kurt focuses on teaching salespeople the tactical skills they need to succeed. Kurt has completed just about every well-known sales training methodology there is and he feels that it is less important to pick the right one than it is to pick one and embrace it completely throughout the organization. Kurt was named a “Top 25 Channel Sales Executive To Know” by VAR Business magazine and received the “Partner Excellence Award” from Salesforce.com. He holds a Master in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology but he has never let his knowledge of complex integrated circuitry get in the way of closing a big deal.
Pro-Track Profile
I interviewed Kurt at the January 22, 2011 NSA Northern California 30th Anniversary meeting, the week before the 2011 Pro-Track class kicks off.
Kurt shared with me the reasons he is investing in Pro-Track. To hear what he told me, click on the podcast icon below.
Alan Stevens is the current President of the Global Speakers Federation. He is a PR Professional and expert on media and communications. His company ,The Media Coach, covers both traditional and social media. He’s also a member of the British Computer Society, and broadcasts regularly on technology and consumer issues. This posting appeared in his weekly newsletter.
Opening Up
The first line of your speech is crucially important. It may be the only line that every member of your audience hears, so it needs to be good. The more engaging it is, the more people will listen to the rest of your speech. If you’ve done your homework well, you will know what interests them. It won’t be the same for every audience, so don’t just have one option.
Firstly, here’s what not to do:
Tell them your name. They know that already.
Say how glad you are to be there. That’s a given.
Start with a joke. You don’t need me to tell you why not.
List your credentials. They will already have seen your bio.
Tell them how funny your speech is. If you do, it won’t be.
Make fun of them. It’s OK to make fun of yourself, not your audience.
Now we’ve got that out the way, what are some positive openers? Here are a few ideas, with examples:
An intriguing promise “You will improve your memory by 10% in the next hour”
Something contrary to popular wisdom “The Internet is finished…”
A puzzle “How could you find the secret of success?”
A simple piece of value “Three simple steps to double your business this year”
Of course, you have to deliver what you promised. Remember you have give something of value every time you speak. Tell people right at the start what it will be, and you will grab their attention.
This information was written by Alan Stevens, and originally appeared in “The MediaCoach”, his free weekly ezine, available at www.mediacoach.co.uk
Today marks the 5th anniversary of this blog, launched on January 14, 2006 with a posting on English sports fans written after reading an article in the Financial Times.
I’d actually installed the WordPress blog software on my site the previous November. I then suffered through two months of writers block before I felt comfortable enough with the idea of blogging to actually write something.
Since then, finding topics for my blog has not been a problem. I’ve posted 597 articles and gathered 4,139 comments. It goes in cycles. Some weeks I post multiple times. At other times, such as over the past month, things are quieter.
I think my initial writers block was because I was unsure of the “tone” my blog should have. Was I in danger of being too personal? Too abstract and remote? Too English? Too American? Too political, spiritual, profane, radical or middle-of-the-road? Would I, heaven forbid, offend people?
Happily, I think I’ve managed to be all of those things. (Heck, I even had my blog censored when I worked for a major Silicon Valley computer company and my disclaimer that it was “my blog” carried no weight with my managers.)
I still find writing in response to an article in the FT, or a book I’ve finished, or a movie I’ve seen, to be one of the easiest forms of blogging.
Five years on, my thoughts on blogging are:
It’s been a worthwhile investment of my time. As a writer it allows me a safe, yet public, space to post. It feels like I have my own newspaper column.
While the blog has not brought me dozens of clients for my freelance speechwriting business, it has brought me to the attention of a couple of clients and paying work resulted. Of course, I have no way knowing if countless potential clients might have looked at stuff I’ve posted and never called because they did not like my opinions, or found the quality of my writing inadequate.
A primary benefit has been to promote my interests and area of expertise to a wide audience. This has paid off in terms of my professional reputation.
It’s been important to have a few regular sources of inspiration that challenge me to post to my blog. For example, my many friends and colleagues in the National Speakers Association. NSA conferences, meetings and the annual Pro-Track class have been a reliable source of content.
I’ve also re-posted articles I’ve written for ragan.com and made it a habit to write full-length reviews of important books in the field of executive communications.
Guest postings generate a awful lot of traffic.
I’ve enjoyed podcasting and creating videos for the blog. It’s a lot easier to record a quick interview with conference attendees than post the lengthy reports at the end of a meeting.
Posting short updates and “gee-wizz” items on Twitter has supplemented blogging, especially over the past couple of years. I’ve posted over 1,100 tweets since I joined in November 2007.
I’ve made blogging the hub of my social media presence, linking my posts to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
I’ve found the blog a useful place to archive information I need to share with others. A great example has been the Podcasting 101 article, which I refer people to quite regularly. I’ve used the Comments section to add additional references.
I’ve seen the value of blogging as a way of curating information, as with the listing of Top Tweets I created for different events, even some I didn’t attend in person.
I spend a lot less time than I used to looking at my site statistics. But here’s some stats (from Google Analytics) for one month last year:
Looking into the camera in a brightly lit studio is an environment which most of us must be trained to be effective in. As challenging as it is to emote with a fish-eye lens, it is something to get over. Practice makes perfect, so invest in a personal video device and practice until you are natural.
Using the “single most powerful question anyone could ever ask”, 
I was fortunate to volunteer as a speech contest judge for an impromptu speech contest for High School students held Friday and Saturday as part of the State Leadership Conference of the 
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.
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.
Kurt Shaver delivers high-impact sales training and consulting to companies seeking increased production from their sales force. Kurt’s live training classes are followed by reinforcement sessions and exercises that insure the lessons become lasting habits. Consulting includes areas such as sales systems (CRM) implementation and effective compensation plans.
Today marks the 5th anniversary of this blog, launched on January 14, 2006 with a posting on 