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The social speech starts long before you take the stage

Engage your audience before your speech

12 December, 2011
0
by Rob Cottingham

A lot of speeches begin with someone introducing you to the audience - reciting your background and qualifications, and then encouraging them to greet you warmly as you head to the microphone.

And once the applause dies down, you're looking at a sea of people who are probably as unfamiliar to you as you are to them. Your first few lines not only have to launch your speech, but establish a rapport and some degree of trust with your audience.

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The social speech

Using social media to turn your next speech into an ongoing conversation

27 November, 2011
4
by Rob Cottingham

For all the effort that goes into a speech - especially a big one - they're over surprisingly quickly. You reach a few dozen, a few hundred or (if you have a huge crowd) a few thousand people for a brief while, and then you walk off the stage, and the audience walks out the door.

For a few minutes, you've made a significant connection with those people. But all the potential relationships and conversations that could arise from that connection walk out the door with them.

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Public speakers, Cliff Atkinson has your back... channel

Book Review: "The Backchannel"

10 February, 2010
2
by Rob Cottingham

Intro paragraph with hoverpodium Just as newspapers are scrambling to adjust to a world of blogs and YouTube, speakers are suddenly discovering they're not the only ones in the room who have a microphone. Tools like Twitter and wireless connectivity have broken the monopoly of the speech on, well, speech.

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Welcome to the no-pitch zone

Make the most of your conference sponsorship

7 July, 2009
2
by Rob Cottingham

Hey, you've sponsored a conference – good for you!

Chances are good you wanted to help these folks out, and support some productive conversation, learning and networking. Chances are also pretty good you want to get some benefit out of the sponsorship yourself with goodwill and exposure.

And when they said you'd have an opportunity to speak to the participants, you jumped at it. And you have a great 15-minute pitch carefully crafted by the folks in marketing, including a PowerPoint video that hits all the key selling points.

So why do you have this nagging feeling of impending disaster?

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