Public Speaking Advice

Related entries in Marketing, Social networking

Do you have a fear of public speaking? Or do you just feel odd getting up on the podium?

I personally used to hate speaking up, in any form. I was super shy. And still am in some situations, but I have learned to love public speaking. I think of it as a great privilege - to share knowledge, to learn from others, and to connect with an audience.

Whether you love it or hate it, here are some great Lifehacker tips for public speaking:

  • Know what is expected of you and if you’re flying solo or not
  • Do the organizers want you to be more interactive? Or to do a speech only?
  • Who are you presenting to? What is their level of knowledge about your topic? Are they C-levels who just "want to know", or the actual "do-ers"?
  • What is the overarching message of your talk? Write an outline around this, but make sure to summarize it too.
  • Put the most polish and practice into your introduction. Establish rapport early on and things will go easier.
  • Tell people about who you are
  • Finish early - be concise at all times
  • Adapt - you often find that interests vary, or questions sway your outline. Know your stuff and be prepared to leave out stuff that may not suit your audience, and to expand in other areas.
  • Be confident. Have fun.
  • Engage
  • Run your outline by someone to see if you convey
  • Don’t memorize, and don’t read. Have an outline, not an essay.
  • Give people your contact info

My tips:

  • If you choose to use a PowerPoint, do not read from it. People can read - what you say should add to that summary or enhance it in some way. A PowerPoint is like a structure for your presentation, but should never be used as your entire presentation. Otherwise, why do they need you? Use bullets & pictures instead.
  • Make eye contact
  • embrace pauses
  • Never, ever, say "um"
  • Smile
  • Watch for confused faces - they are a sign to take note, pause, and ask for questions
  • Slow down. Most people talk too fast.
  • If you need to write something, write it clearly
  • If you are a woman, wear comfortable shoes
  • Present yourself well - clean up, press your clothes, and look put together
  • If you are doing a demo, test all your links and materials
  • Have a dry run with any technology you will be using

Hope that helps!

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Posted by Arieanna | March 22, 2006 | Link to this post | 2 Comments

Bloggies Winners

Related entries in Blogging news

The Bloggies Winners 2006 have been announced as:

Congratulations to all the winners! Although the list is skewed slightly to very large blogs, I always get a kick out of reading the country-specific winners and all the nominees - lots of great new blog finds in there!

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Posted by Arieanna | March 13, 2006 | Link to this post | 0 Comments

AdZaar - bad monetization?

Related entries in Uncategorized

Ok, I was really excited to be a part of AdZaar - up front payment for links, who wouldn’t be?

However, they are pulling out of sites. I still have AdZaar on one site, but that’s it. At month end, they seem to be a little upset.

Is this evidence of a bad revenue model? That it could perhaps be a bad thing to base blog value on PageRank? Without traffic or other measures?

What do you think?

Posted by Arieanna | March 9, 2006 | Link to this post | 4 Comments

Traffic versus subscribers - which means more?

Related entries in Social networking, Making Money with Blogs, Professional Blogging

I was reading this post about the over-reliance on traffic by many bloggers - and how, in many cases, this traffic-is-the-only-goal mentality has meant community falls through the cracks.

When it comes to what blogging means to both readers and writers, the numbers ultimately matter very little. I don’t go up to someone and say "hey, I found you because your traffic is increasing this month" - I’d be more likely to say "hey, that was a great article" or something. The difference is apparent - it’s not just the focus, but also the dialogue.

When bloggers get focused on increasing their traffic, they will be meme trackers - following whatever is hot enough to bring in spikes in traffic and subsequent links. But their all-over-the-place-ness can leave the readers who arrive and decide to subscribe a little confused. "Traffic whores" don’t really care about the subscribers - about inviting comments or dialogue - but more about climbing in Google.

When you shift your attention to an abstract thing called PageRank and away from actual people, you lose something. Your point becomes only money and not community. And, to me, that misses the great opportunities in blogging.

Now, you might bash me for following these lines with blogs like this or this, but I have trouble straying too far away from the importance I place on community. I’ve added new content areas when readers ask, shared emails with readers, and started up an active set of polls to keep readers having fun. So, while I may blog anything hot on the gossip pages for the money of it, the community of it is just as enriching.

In other cases, traffic is completely unimportant to me. This blog, for example, is highly skewed towards subscribers rather than search traffic. And that’s great by me. The goal of Blogging Help is really not money - nor has it ever been.

So - do you place too much reliance on traffic for your goal setting? How do you think that could bias what you write about or how?

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Posted by Arieanna | March 2, 2006 | Link to this post | 12 Comments