Category: Speaking
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You Ask, I Answer: Helping People Remember When You’re Speaking?
Bobby asks, “How do I help people remember what I’m presenting when I’m speaking?” To help people remember what you’re presenting, try to reduce cognitive load as much as possible. This means keeping your slides clean and simple, providing captions, and not overwhelming your audience with too much information at once. You can also try…
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How to Measure the Marketing Impact of Public Speaking
One of the constant questions about thought leadership and public speaking, especially when you’re speaking on behalf of a brand or company, is how do you measure the impact? How do you know when your public speaking is delivering any kind of benefit? There are several ways to quantify the impact of public speaking; let’s…
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Can You Trust Historical Marketing Data?
Shannon asks, "Are there identifiable website trends / metrics for speakers? I did some analysis on my website traffic for the last three years… can I trust the historical data and try to replicate it to increase my number of incoming leads?" As a fellow public speaker, you absolutely CANNOT build forecasts with any data…
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Best Practices for Public Speaking Pages
The topic of public speaking pages and speaking kits has come up repeatedly in recent times. What makes for a great public speaking page? What are the general best practices for a public speaking page? The Goal of a Public Speaking Page What is the business goal of your public speaking page? Though it may…
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How To Start Your Public Speaking Career
David recently asked, “Would you be able to share some advice on how I can get started speaking about digital marketing strategy?” This is a great question with a clear, defined process. Preparing to Speak Publicly First, we must have something worth speaking about. A great speaking career begins with a clear, powerful presentation about a…
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How to Set Your Public Speaking Fee
One of the questions I’m asked most is what my speaking fee is for any given event. I don’t often have a “stock” answer. Why? This is a more complex question than we might initially think. What’s really being asked of us are two separate questions: How much value do we bring to the event? (from…
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You Ask, I Answer: Adapting Presentations for Virtual?
Cathy asks, Can an in-person talk be adapted for a digital experience? What skills are different for virtual presentations? In a room, you are addressing one to many. In a digital/virtual environment, you are addressing one to one. For the most part, on the other end of a connection there won’t be a dozen people.…
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You Ask, I Answer: Customizing Speaking Presentations?
Cathy asks, So you’re a subject matter expert, but your audiences (i.e. seniority, industries, geography) from gig to gig differ. How do you go about customizing presentations while maintaining your core message? This one is straightforward: the more Q&A you include, the more every presentation is customized to what that audience wants to hear. If…
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You Ask, I Answer: Growing an Ego-Less Personal Brand?
Cathy asks, “How do you grow a personal brand without talking too much about yourself?” Absolutely. One of my martial arts teachers, Stephen K. Hayes, says very succinctly to focus on the work. You are the conduit for the work; make that your focus. Can’t see anything? Watch it on YouTube here. Listen to the…
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Speaking to an Audience of One
As I was recording a session for an upcoming virtual conference today, Ann Handley whispered in my ear. Not literally. We’re all sheltering in place. Ann said in one of her many talks on email marketing that when you write an email newsletter, no matter how many subscribers are on your list, only one person…
