Most speakers use images in their Powerpoint presentations. A lot of them look great, but it doesn’t end there. Many speakers talk ABOUT the image. But that’s wrong. The image supports your story. It’s not a story on its own.
Bas van den Beld explains.
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I wrote about ways to connect with your audience before. One topic I didn’t address then was asking the audience questions. Sometimes speakers want to engage with the audience by asking them a question. Often, these are simple questions (“who in the room works for an agency?”).
Sometimes the questions are more complicated. These have a high-risk factor in them. The audience might not respond. And if they don’t, it leaves you with an awkward ‘silence’. Unfortunately, you can see this happen quite often.
To avoid this from happening, there is a different way to get the engagement of the audience, using questions.
Let me start by saying what you shouldn’t do when asking a question. The first thing is simple: don’t ask a rhetorical or vague question. Asking ‘Don’t you feel this is a bad idea?’ will only make your audience gaze at you. You’re more or less saying you don’t want an answer.
If you don’t want an answer, don’t ask a question!
Second, if you are not specific enough, the audience will not know what you want from them. Asking ‘what do you know about X, Y or Z’ will not get you many answers. A question like “what are common believes you’ve heard about topic X, Y or Z’, will get you more answers. Why? Because it’s more specific and less ‘personal’. People are not afraid to answer that one.
Before asking any question, you need to realise why you are asking a question. Is it ‘only’ to connect? Or are you trying to make a point? Chances are, you want to make a point. That means you want people to interact with you on a specific question.
You can ask a series of questions, building up to the ‘big one’. Build towards the answer to the ‘big question’ by asking several smaller ones.
Let’s say you want to emphasize the importance of using the right icons on an app to an audience of marketers. The point you want to make is that if you build an app, you want to use icons that people recognise.
To get them involved, you want to draw upon common concepts that are familiar to the audience. This will help lead them to the answer you want. In this case, you want to make clear that when building an app, use icons that people will understand.
You can then show a group of icons on the screen and ask “which icon represents the call button?”
Most likely, the audience will be able to point that out, since they’ve all seen these icons before. The follow-up question would then be “how do you know that icon represents the call button?” Again the audience will know the answer. Chances are they will say “because it has a phone on it”. The third question then is the key question. “Why do you think they use a picture of a phone for this function?” The audience will answer “because people recognise it.”
You’ve now made your point. If you build an app, you want to use icons that people recognise.
Of course, this is a very simple example of a relatively easy concept (we all know this, right?). The concept stays the same on different topics. Draw upon what people know and build towards the desired response.
Some speakers come into the venue they are going to be speaking at last minute. It will make for a bad presentation. Here’s what you should do.
Instead, come prepared. Be there early. Get to know the room. Get a feel of the audience. And very important: test your technical settings. So you know it will work when you get on stage.
Watch the 2 minute video:
Full transcript:
Hey there! I’m going to say: ‘good morning’, even though I have no idea when you’re actually viewing this video. But I’m saying good morning because for me it is morning.
It’s actually just about eight o’clock, and in about an hour’s time, I have a training session that I’m doing, that I’m teaching. On the speaking course.
It’s actually right over here, in a nice castle. Which is great. But it reminded me of something on the way here. I thought: well this is something and I need to share with you guys. Because there’s a reason why I’m here an hour before. I want to get in early, I want to be prepared.
And this is something that I’ve always been amazed about when I attended conferences. I saw other speakers walk in like two minutes before the talk. And kind of rushed. They didn’t know where they were. They hadn’t prepared well enough. Knowing like the setup. So often times, it went wrong.
Because the technical stuff didn’t work. And they would like almost blame the technical guys. While actually, it was the speaker’s fault. I think that one of the most important tips I can give you is:
Be there on time! Get ready. Get acquainted with the room. Get acquainted with the people in the room. With the technicians. Know that your technical stuff is working. Be prepared
and then your actual talk will go a lot smoother and a lot better.
Also when you might not have any technical issues. But people’s sense it. People sense that you are not relaxed. That you’re you’re uptight because you just came running in. So my tip for today:
Be there on time and be prepared!
Good luck!
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I’d like to talk to you about your audience. Many speakers don’t know much about who they have in the room.
I believe you should know a lot about them. Here’s why!
A few months ago Bas van den Beld was interviewed for the Sitevisibility Podcast on the topic of Public Speaking. Bas talked about why it is important for marketers to be public speakers as well and how to approach this.
You can listen to the interview below, download the mp3, go to the Sitevisibility website or listen on iTunes. Do let me know what you think!
One of the most important parts of your talk is the end of it. How you end your talk, decides on how people walk away from it. So you want it to be good.
Bas van den Beld explains in this video why and how to pay attention to the end of your talk.
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Almost every conference has them: panel discussions. In these sessions, they often bring more speakers on stage to discuss a topic. When they invite you to be part of one of these panels, you are in luck! The organisers see you as an expert!
In the early days, I never thought about where to sit in a panel discussion. I often chose a ‘safe’ spot, usually at the end of the row. That might not have been a smart choice in retrospect. Through experience and learning about psychology, I learned other places are better.
Which places you ask? That depends. On you. On the other members of the panel. And on what the panel is for.
What is your goal?
The first thing you want to ask yourself is: what is your goal for the panel? What do you want to get out of it? Are you looking for leads? Or are you trying to show your knowledge?
How do you want to be seen?
The second question you need to ask yourself is how you want to be seen? Do you want the be seen as the most knowledgeable member? The influencer? Or would you rather they see you as the humble person?
Who are the other panel discussion members?
You want to know who the other members in the panel are. You want to know who is most vocal. You want to know who is popular. And you want to know how well they know the moderator.
Depending on the answers on these questions, you determine where to sit:
The most vocal one: close to the moderator
Do you want to answer a lot of questions? Be the most vocal at the Q&A? In that case, you want to sit closest to the moderator. After all, the moderator is the one asking the questions. When she or he does that, the moderator will look at the panel. If you are the first one in sight, you will get more chance to talk.
Read more about how to be a good moderator
The most influential one: in the middle
When you want to be seen as the most influential person on the panel, you want to choose the middle seat. This has to do with psychology. People subconsciously feel the person in the middle is the most influential one. And it’s true. Just think about all the movies you’ve seen in the past. The popular girl in that high school movie always walks in the middle. The leader of the band? Front center. And the most important players in a football team always play in the middle as well.
Friend of the popular one: next to the vocal one!
And finally, do you feel you want to piggy-bag on the popularity of other panel discussion members? Do you feel somewhat insecure, but want to look good anyway?
In that case, go sit next to the most vocal member of the panel. People will see you when that person is talking. They will feel you are connected to that person. And chances are that the first one they will turn to after that vocal person, is you.
In the end, it’s about what you want to ‘show’ about yourself on the panel discussion. It’s what people will think of you. By sitting in the right spot, you can steer that in the direction you want.
Take your pick: where do you sit?
Your slide deck is one of the most important attributes of your talk. That is if you use one of course. Most marketing speakers do. So you pay attention to your slides.
Sometimes I see slide decks filled with great content. Content that is overwhelming.
That is why I always suggest those speakers: build in ‘relax slides’.
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Never underestimate the power of a smile in a presentation. It can do wonders for how your audience feels.
Did you know for example that smiling makes people more comfortable with you as a speaker? Your facial expressions are extremely important. The way you look says a lot about how you feel and about your message. At the same time, you don’t want to be smiling through a very serious story. Your facial expressions should be in line with the story.
Bas van den Beld explains.
Full transcript:
There’s a smile! When you smile you appear to be more likable. More competent. That’s what you want, right? Because you want to persuade people.
You will also see that your audience will start smiling with you. They will mimic you. Research at the university showed that it’s very difficult to frown if you look at someone who smiles.
Smiling is contagious. A smile affects things and it lives around us. And when you and your audience are both smiling, you will both feel good. Resulting in a better and more persuasive talk.
We’re giving you 25 minutes of tips! On Storytelling this time. This is the presentation I (Bas) have done at the Benchmark Conference in Manchester in September. The talk was recorded by Omi Sodi. Enjoy!
Find the slides of that presentation here:
Learn how to do storytelling yourself by joining our Storytelling Class!
I spoke to Craig Rayner, event organiser. My question was about picking speakers. Want to know what it takes to speak at an international conference? Searchelite conference organiser Craig Rayner explains how he picks speakers and what you should do.
When speaking in public, it is very important to have the right timing. This doesn’t just mean, stay within the time of the presentation. It also means saying the right things at the right time and the right speed.
In this video, we look at timing.
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These days you hear a lot about storytelling as a marketing strategy. Many marketers, therefore, believe they should ‘do storytelling’ as well. Whenever you do something, you want to know they ‘why’ (as Simon Sinek told us).
So, you might wonder why storytelling is such a powerful tool. What makes storytelling worth it? Do you invest time in it? And in what way? It’s important to know why it is powerful to be able to do storytelling right.
In this article, I’d like to dive into those questions. We will look into the power of storytelling.
The number one reason why storytelling is such a powerful tool has to do with the recipients’ mind. The minds of those that hear the story. As recipients, we can’t resist a good story. Stories are deeply wired into our minds.
It’s been like that for centuries. Humans have been telling each other stories forever. Even in the stone age, people used stories to send messages to other people and help and teach them. Cave paintings are a great example of that. They tell a story that has to help the next person that passes that cave.
We are basically raised to learn from stories. Have you ever thought about why you can still remember most of the fairy tales your parents told you?
As soon as we hear the words ‘once upon a time’, our brains are ‘in’. From that point on, we can’t resist. We have to hear what happened. It’s in our DNA and, of course, we are trained to listen and interpret stories. All the stories our parents told us when we were kids, made us crave for more.
We don’t only love stories, stories helped shape our minds. That’s why most fairy tales have lessons in them. Stories go directly into our brains. That means the best ways to give children messages, is through stories. The message behind the story of Cinderella is to not take food from strangers. The message behind the three little piglets is to not be lazy. And so do all fairy tales have a message.
When we listen to stories, we need imagination. In our brains, we picture what we hear. Good stories are crafted in a way that, when they are told, we can ‘see’ them. The stories come alive in our brains. We picture the lead characters, we ‘create’ the environment. This makes us part of the story. Imagination makes co-creators of the story. And since we are part of the creation, we remember better and feel more ‘close’ to a story.
With imagination also come emotions. It brings the same emotions shared by the characters in the story. When we imagine things, they almost become real. What you hear comes alive in your brain. And when it feels real, it has more impact. It will be easier to remember more. You will also, and especially, remember the feeling the story. If the feeling is good, it will make you happy.
In marketing, this means that when we are part of a story, we are closer to a product or brand. And when we are closer, we buy easier.
For listeners, stories give joy and structure to a story. But storytellers also get a lot of benefit from telling a story. They have the chance to send a message and have that message resonate. Besides that, it makes the storyteller important.
You can say stories bring status to storytellers and actionable insights to the good listeners. It’s good for everyone!
Powerful stories can be used everywhere. Whether it is for teaching children, marketing or other purposes. You can see the power of stories in presentations from politicians, tv, music videos, movies and books. Even commercials are stories.
As marketers, we can use stories in many different settings. We can use it when we are pitching. We can use it in a presentation, or as marketing material.
To create a connection, personal stories work best. But don’t overdo it. Important is to realise there has to be a message in it. Stories which show a struggle and are authentic are the best.
There are many ways for crafting a story. But it is important to realise that building a story needs close attention. It’s easy to create the wrong story. A lot is also in the execution. How the story is told, determines a lot of how it is received.
To learn how to craft that perfect story, the one that everyone loves, the one that has real impact, next to the email course, we created a Storytelling Class. Sign up now!
Have you ever wondered why speakers at the TED Conferences are standing in a circle? It’s about more than just the design. It’s helpful as well. And we can learn from it!
When I started speaking at conferences, I didn’t feel comfortable standing behind a desk. Some events have a desk on stage. I felt off I couldn’t really no-show what I had to show and I couldn’t really be myself.
Other people do like to desk because it makes them feel more secure. Everybody feels comfortable in a different way, in different settings. What’s important though, is that you don’t take it to extremes.
When I did get on stage that gave me more space, for example, I started moving around because it felt right. One day I showed a recording of one of my talks, which was on YouTube, to my dad. My dad emailed me back when he had seen the video on YouTube.
He said: “well I love the way you talk, but maybe you should walk around a little bit less. It’s not like you’re performing in a tennis match tennis match.”
I looked at the video again and I saw my dad was right. I was pacing too much. Moving from left to right and back. Trying to be in touch with everyone in the audience. But because I move so much, it was distracting. From that point on I started moving less. But I still moved around and I still do.
When I learned about the TED circle, I understood what I needed to do properly. The TED circle you see when speakers are speaking at the TED conference. What you will see is that there often is on stage a circle. A red circle which is also part of the logo of TED. But one thing that I never realized up until that point, is that that it also has a functional purpose. Which is that people are not allowed out of that circle. The speaker has to stay within the circle.
From that point on, I created virtual circles on stage. How can I move around but within a specific circle, not outside. When it’s a really big stage, I might create one or two or three circles. On different places on the stage. But I won’t move around too much. And the TED circle is one of the reasons of that.
And trust me…it works!
Public Speaking isn’t easy. And when you are starting out, you need some tips. Lucky for you, every now and then, we talk to experienced speakers. And then we ask them their tips for you!
One of these speakers is David Iwanow. In this video, shot at the Searchelite conference, David discusses preparation, what to do and not to do and gives a step-by-step approach on how he prepares.
Find more insights here and be sure to sign up for our weekly speaking and pitching tips!
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