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Audience Engagement: It’s All About Them

by JimRaffel on July 20, 2010

When preparing to speak, choose talking points that focus the dialog around the audience point of view and will resonate with them. Here is how I prepared for the opportunity to speak for the Milwaukee Likemind group about using your blog as a homebase for all on-line activity.

Jim Raffel speaking at Milwaukee LikemindTopic selection. When Jeff Larch contacted me with only two weeks until the meeting date I knew we would need to work together to pick a topic I was currently focused on. I’m currently putting lots of effort into improving my company and personal web-sites(blogs) as homebases for the ColorMetrix and Jim Raffel brands. Blogs as a homebase also gets lots of play as a topic on the A-list blogs these days so it seemed to Jeff and I the topic would result in audience engagement.

It really is all about them. I can talk in front of a mirror or video camera anytime. Doing this will actually improve your delivery skills if that is the kind of thing you want to work on improving. When I get in front of an audience, however, it all changes. Now, it’s time to share knowledge and shorten learning curves for the attendees if you can. You’ll know if you achieved audience engagement by the liveliness of the question and answer session that follows most presentations. Seems to me lots of good questions means you achieved the it’s all about them goal.

Q & A time is the payoff. If you’ve really done your job well, you will learn as much as the audience from the questions and answer session. The questions will tell you two things for sure. First, what topic areas did you get the group thinking about. Second, perhaps you’ll want to cover that area in more depth next time you get to speak. I’ve watched the Q&A section of the video a few times and am planning to watch it more. I’ve pulled some topic ideas from it and learned a few things myself.

If you’ve got a spare 45 minutes… The video above is the entire Linkmind presentation. Even if you only get the chance to watch a short portion your feedback in the comments for this post would be greatly appreciated.

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Continue Reading 5 comments }Blogging 101, Marketer, Writing, blogging, conferences, motivation, personal development, public speaking

Public Speaking 101: It’s Not Your Slides

by JimRaffel on July 2, 2010

Presentation slides are OK if they are well done. Just remember it’s not the slides the audience came to see…..it’s you.

More speaking this year with fewer and simpler slides. It’s interesting that I have done more speaking this year and prepared fewer and simpler slides. It’s not an accident. I have colleagues who have spoken frequently for many years. They all tell me pretty much the same thing. Keep your slides simple with few words or better yet land gigs with no slides. It’s working.

No coincidences. I also find it interesting that one of the few blog posts I found time to read yesterday was Seth Godin’s – The 200 slide solution Here I am focusing this blog on public speaking for the week and Seth jumps right in and offers us all some sage advice. If you do any presenting please take the time to go read the post.

Tried and true. I read Guy Kawasaki’s – The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint years ago. It’s still great advice. I mean you may now use Apple’s Keynote or Google Docs for your software but the concepts still apply.

Chris Brogan – Presentation or Conversation a very interesting read and perspective from Chris before he became a hugely successful keynote speaker.

The point of the links above. I have written once or twice about modeling the success of those around you. Not copying them but instead looking at what they do and applying it to the unique you. That’s why I devour the blogs of people I admire and aspire to be like.

The power of search. I “re-found” the second two links in about 30 seconds with Google. So, if you too want to learn more about public speaking try Googling the name of a public speaker you respect and add “public speaking” or “powerpoint” after their name.

Posts like this don’t generate the comment traffic a blogger likes but they have helped me land two nice speaking gigs. How do you feel about posts asking at the end to contact me if you are interested in having me speak, consult, etc.?

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Public Speaking 101: One Person At a Time

July 1, 2010

Note from Jim: This week all my posts are themed around public speaking. That’s because late last week and early this week my focus has been growing my public speaking presence. Why not write about something that is near and dear to my heart at the moment and that I am immersed in – right? [...]

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Keep After Your Masterpieces

June 10, 2010

Yesterday, while working on an ebook for my ColorMetrix audience the one useful piece of information it will leave them with finally jumped out and bit me. Your masterpieces will take longer. The actual writing of a blog post rarely takes me more than and hour and is quite often done in 20 or 30 [...]

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Produce and Ship Daily

March 2, 2010

With the release of Seth Godin’s Linchpin (which I have yet to read) there has been a whole lot of buzz in the Blogosphere about “shipping it.” It’s good talk folks about the need to produce deliverable product each day and you should be paying close attention if you are not already doing so. Ask [...]

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