In yesterday’s post on blogging, one of the tips to creating quality blog content was to always use proper grammar, spelling and punctuation.
I can’t emphasize enough how important this practice is. Incorrect spellings, unorganized sentences and improper punctuation all take away from your authority and credibility as a writer and professional speaker. They make you look sloppy and careless. So you should always be sure to proofread your online content before publishing it. And when in doubt, get a friend, family member or colleague to give your work a second read. Clean, clear and concise writing will always add an air of intelligence, experience and professionalism to your writing.
I recently came across a great Copyblogger infographic on this very topic, titled “15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly.” It outlines 15 of the most common – and most easy to fix – grammar gaffes. It’s a great reference to have handy anytime you sit down to write.
Do you have any tips or tricks on ensuring your writing is error free? We’d love to hear them! Share them with us here or on our Facebook page. Till next time!
Today I’d like to talk a bit more about blogging by sharing eight tips you should keep in mind when it comes to crafting and creating content for your online platforms.
1. Be passionate about your subject It’s important that you have a passion for the subjects you are writing about on your blog. By writing only about topics that interest and inspire you, you’re sure to craft informative and enthusiastic blog posts that are sure to inspire and engage your readers.
2. Conduct research Even if you think you have a solid base of knowledge on a particular topic, you should always conduct research and gather further information before beginning to write a new blog post. You want to present your readers with the most thorough and complete information possible. So be sure to always carry out in-depth research before drafting any new content.
3. Keep up to date You should always keep up to date on your areas of expertise. Subscribe to news channels, blogs and websites on the subjects you speak and write about, as well as on any other topics that interest you. And stay tuned to current events. Online audiences want to be kept abreast of the most current knowledge, information and news about any given subject. If your audience finds your content stale or boring, they are likely to switch to another web source with more up-to-date information. Providing the latest information about your areas of expertise will help you keep ahead of the competition.
4. Use proper grammar, spelling and punctuation It’s extremely important that you pay attention to the language you use in your writing. The proper use of grammar, spelling and punctuation helps you generate credibility. Nobody wants to read an article that is rife with spelling errors or typos. By writing in a clear and concise manner – and by paying attention to your grammar and spelling – you demonstrate your intelligence and attention to detail.
5. Develop a writing style It’s important to develop a writing style of your own. People will appreciate your writing if it has its own unique tone and flair. It will set you apart from the crowd. Even if you’re sharing the same information as other writers, the words you choose and the way you express your ideas can make all the difference.
6. Set goals Before writing an article, you should develop a list of goals and objectives. You should have a clear idea about the return you are seeking from your work. You should know what reaction you want from your audience and craft your content to achieve those outcomes.
7. Identify your audience’s expectations Put yourself in your readers’ shoes and think about what they want and expect from your content. Determine what your readers already know and what they want to learn more about. Why do they come to your website? What knowledge can you provide them? Knowing what the readers want and expect from you will help you provide your audience with the right type of content.
8. Predict any problems or questions your audience might have A little research and brainstorming will tell you what issues or questions your audience might have with the content you’ve created. Predicting probable questions and then answering those questions within your content will help you solve your audience’s problems in advance.
What steps do you take when crafting and creating content for your website or blog? Share your blog writing strategies with us here or on our Facebook page. To your blogging – and speaking – success!
I recently came across an interesting blog post by Mitch Joel, the president of digital marketing agency Twist Image and the man behind the blog Six Pixels of Separation.
In his post, Joel states: “Blogs are one of the most valuable marketing tools ever created.”
And considering his success, I’d have to agree completely. In fact, we’ve already talked about the importance of having your own blog here and about creating online content here.
I specifically wanted to share some aspects of Joel’s blogging philosophy.
He writes (almost) every day. As we’ve discussed recently on the Inspiring Speakers Blog, there’s something to be said for having a creative routine. The more you write in general – and the more you write about what interests you and what inspires you – the more knowledge you’ll gain and the more innate that knowledge will be. Essentially, the more you write about and interact with your ideas, the more complete of a professional speaker you’ll be.
He is consistent. Joel writes six unique blog posts every week and on the seventh day of the week posts an audio podcast. So as a reader you are guaranteed new content every day that you visit his blog.
He goes easy on the self-promotion. Joel writes first and foremost about topics that provide value and information to his readers. If he does speak about his company and his work, he does so only when it is relevant and he does so with modesty. The purpose of his blog is to serve his readers, not his ego.
I highly recommend you visit Six Pixels of Separation and Joel’s post “Watching Me Blog” in particular. You’ll gain some real insight into what goes into writing and maintaining a smart, stimulating and relevant blog.
This week we’ve been talking about the importance of hard work, perseverance and a creative routine when it comes to building your professional speaking career. To continue a bit more in the same vein, today I’d like to share a TEDTalk by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the best-selling memoir Eat, Pray Love.
In her talk, Gilbert suggests adopting a new way of thinking that will help nurture your creativity. She suggests the notion that one’s creativity – or one’s genius – comes from some outside unknowable source, not from within.
“You know, I think that allowing somebody, one mere person to believe that he or she is like, the vessel, you know, like the font and the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile, human psyche,” Gilbert says. “It’s like asking somebody to swallow the sun. It just completely warps and distorts egos, and it creates all these unmanageable expectations about performance. And I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the last 500 years.”
I think that this is an interesting idea for creative types in general – and professional speakers in particular – to keep in mind. As a speaker, you have a message you want to share with the world, but once you find yourself in the spotlight it’s easy to lose sight of this fact. It’s important to always remember that it is the message that matters – not you. People will always expect impossible things from artists, writers and other creative types, but as long as you keep believing in yourself and working away on your message something good will come of it.
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t be daunted. Just do your job,” says Gilbert. “Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that may be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. And if the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed just for one moment, through your efforts, then ‘Olé!’ And if not, do your dance anyhow. And ‘Olé!’ to you, nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.”
I think that Elizabeth Gilbert, Henry Miller and Ira Glass would all agree that by harnessing your creativity, working hard and persevering you are sure to succeed in spreading your message. So here’s a final “Olé!” to you for continuing on in your professional speaking endeavours. To your speaking success! And have a great weekend.
In the Ira Glass video I shared yesterday, the public radio personality advised that the best way to improve your creative work – in our case professional speaking – is by doing a lot of it.
“And the most important possible thing you could do, is do a lot of work,” says Glass. “Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you’re actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.”
I agree completely. The only way your ideas will improve is by harnessing your creativity and working on them on a regular basis. The only way your speechwriting will improve is by getting down to work and writing on a regular basis. And the only way your presentation skills will improve is by practising your delivery on a regular basis. To advance yourself in the world of professional speaking it’s important to develop a creative routine and to implement it regularly.
They seem to have served him well, and it’s my belief they can be applied to the world of professional speaking just as well as to the world of writing.
Commandments
1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can’t create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it – but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.
Do you have a creative routine in place? Share your tips on how you harness your creativity here or on our Facebook page. We’d love to hear them!
Yesterday we shared a great guest post by Frank Simmons Jr. who encouraged you to be yourself – and to believe in yourself – to avoid becoming a cookie-cutter professional speaker.
To take the topic a bit further, I thought I’d share this clip of Ira Glass, the host and producer of the radio program “This American Life,” speaking on the topics of believing in yourself and perseverance.
Glass is talking specifically about storytelling — about the crafting of oral and written stories. However, I believe that what he’s saying applies to any sort of creative work, and certainly to professional speaking, which is really a form of oral storytelling.
I especially like the line: “And the thing I would just like to say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste, and they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short… And the thing I want to say to you is, everybody goes through that.”
As a professional speaker you have to find your own unique voice. And you have to find your own unique message. These two things – your voice and your message – are what will help you avoid what Frank Simmons Jr. refers to as the professional speaking cookie cutter.
I think it’s an important message for every professional speaker to remember. You don’t become a professional speaker overnight. It takes days, weeks, months and years of finessing your message, honing your presentation skills and developing your voice.
“It takes a while. It’s going to take you awhile,” says Glass. “It’s normal to take awhile and you just have to fight your way through that, OK?”
For more on how to craft your professional speaking voice and your message, check out some of the teleseminar resources in our Speaker Resource Centre. Some you may want to consider are:
I have been speaking for over 25 years to audiences of all shapes, sizes, colours and dimensions. In that time, I have trained and coached over 1,000 speakers on the art of speaking. I have found that the best speakers are not the speakers who have the most talent or charisma. The best speakers are the ones who know and understand that they are individuals who are unique and who have their own set of gifts and talents. They know how to avoid the cookie cutter. Do you?
Like so many other areas of our lives, many people have been told to conform and to play by the rules. The same thing is true when talking about public speaking. Speakers are shot out of cookie-cutter systems to conform to the mold of what a “public speaker” is supposed to be. The result of this formula is that many speakers fail to realize their true potential, they give up and end up in the trash (so to speak) with other bland, tasteless and stale cookies. That is a sad ending for those who started out thinking and believing that they would change the world with their voice. How do you keep this from happening to you? That is a great question.
The first thing you should do is listen. Listen to the advice of – and get training from –speakers who are “seasoned” in the industry, because we all need to continue learning. You should read books, watch videos and do whatever it takes to listen and learn. What you should not do is allow your teachers to become gods. Not everything that they say is gospel. In your listening and learning, learn how to separate the necessary from the unnecessary and avoid becoming one of that teacher’s cookies.
The second thing you should do is stop listening. I bet you’re thinking, “But, I thought you just said to listen.” You are right, I did. The problem with listening, for those cookies that end up in the trash, is that they never stopped listening. And when I say listening, I mean reading and listening and any other form of taking in information. If you are not careful, you may become a listening and learning junkie and you can never shake or escape the urge to get another fix to keep you going. You cannot hear your own voice or recognize it if you are always hearing and listening to everyone else. If you don’t stop to hear your own thoughts and get your own ideas you could end up on that cookie tray that I am trying to keep you off of.
The third thing you should do is believe in yourself. One of the things that cookie makers do is they make those cookies that are different believe that they are no good if they are not shaped like and taste the same as the other cookies. How boring would the world be if we were all the same? B-O-R-I-N-G! I was once told that I would not be successful unless I learned how to speak like everyone else. I am sure that there are some people reading this who have been told similar things in their lives. Quit listening to that madness. You need to believe in YOU. The great ones are the ones who believe in themselves as being smart, creative, talented, gifted and brilliant. You get the point. If you don’t believe in you, why should someone else?
I know that I left a lot out, but this is not a book. It’s a blog. That’s a Frank Thought! What’s yours?
On Friday, March 30, the new Facebook timeline for businesses went live. Last week on Social Media Monday we talked about how to prepare your cover photo for the change. This week we’ll provide you with some more details on what you need to know.
To get you started, Facebook has provided some handy resources.
Some aspects of the Facebook page for businesses are still the same, but have moved to new locations on the Facebook page. For instance, the “About” section is still there and contains the same information, but it is now more prominently featured on the page. So you’ll want to make sure that all the pertinent information in this section is filled out. That includes basic information about when your speaking business was founded and where you are located; info about you, such as a description of who you are, what your mission is and a list of your speaking topics and areas of expertise; and contact information such as your phone number, email address, and website and blog addresses.
One of my favourite features of the new timeline is its focus on chronological history. The default setting of your timeline has your chronological history going back to the day you first created your Facebook page. However, you can add events to your timeline to have it go back even further – to the day you gave your first professional presentation – to the day your professional speaking business actually began – and even further – to the day you were born! Plus, you can highlight important posts like these on your timeline, making them cover the full-width layout of your timeline (rather than displaying it in only one column). This draws attention to the important events in your professional speaking history. To highlight a post, hover your cursor over the top right corner of it and click the star icon.
Another great feature of the new Facebook pages is the Admin Panel. This panel gives you easy access to insights and statistics about your page. It tells you how many “Likes” your page has, the number of people talking about your page and your page’s weekly total reach. It also details the number of people who are engaging with your content and the virality of your posts. It’s a handy and informative resource to see how people respond to the content you post on your Facebook page.
There are many more changes and features on the new Facebook pages. For a good overview, check out “Facebook Timeline for Business Pages – 21 Key Points to Know” written by professional speaker and social media expert Mari Smith. She has marked up her own Facebook page with all the tips and tricks you need to make your Facebook page a success. Enjoy!
Lately we’ve been discussing the use of visual aids in presentations. So today I want to share a TEDTalk titled “The Beauty of Data Visualization” by David McCandless, a London, England–based author, data journalist and information designer.
In his talk, McCandless discusses the importance of visual information. “It feels like we’re all suffering from information overload or data glut,” he says. “And the good news is there might be an easy solution to that and that’s using our eyes more – visualizing information so that we can see the patterns and connections that matter, and then designing that information so it makes more sense, or it tells a story, or allows us to focus only on the information that’s important.”
McCandless’s talk has great applications to the world of presentations, in particular about how to present information so that it is most easily and effortlessly absorbed by the audience. “The eye is exquisitely sensitive to patterns and to variations in colour, shape and pattern. It loves them, and it calls them beautiful. It’s the language of the eye,” he explains. “If you combine the language of the eye with the language of the mind, which is about words and numbers and concepts, you start speaking two languages simultaneously, each enhancing the other.”
I wonder what Guy Kawasaki would think. While McCandless’s presentation involved more then 10 slides (23 to be exact) they were quite readable, and he did manage to get through everything in under 20 minutes. But still, the presentation didn’t quitefit with Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 Rule of PowerPoint.
Regardless of what Kawasaki might think, I guarantee that McCandless’s talk is sure to inform and inspire you. Enjoy! Till next week.
The 10/20/30 rule states that a proper PowerPoint presentation should involve no more than 10 PowerPoint slides, should last no longer than 20 minutes and that the text on said slides should have a font size of no less than 30 points. He may have laid out the 10/20/30 rule over six years ago, but with the profusion of presentation software today, Kawasaki and his Rule of PowerPoint are more relevant than ever.
Kawasaki came up with his rule after watching countless entrepreneurs give unfocused, unorganized and uninspired presentations to his venture capital firm Garage Technology Ventures. While the 10/20/30 PowerPoint rule is mainly directed toward entrepreneurs pitching their businesses to venture capitalists, it can most definitely be applied to the presentations of professional speakers.
Let’s begin with the second part of the equation: A presentation should last no longer than 20 minutes. While this may be true when presenting to time-deprived venture capitalists, it certainly does not apply to the varied and various types of presentations given by public speaking professionals. After all, if you were hired to give a half-day workshop, your event organizers might be a bit peeved if after 20 minutes you wrapped up your presentation and fielded questions for the remaining three or four hours.
That’s not to say that big ideas can’t be presented in 20 minutes or less. (See the TEDTalks website if you don’t believe me.) But the key takeaway here is: Be brief. Keep your presentation as short as possible – keep it to the point, keep it relevant and keep it simple. The shorter and more succinct you can make your message, the more powerful it will be. (And the more your audience will appreciate you for not wasting their precious time.)
Now on to the PowerPoint aspects. Kawasaki’s rule states: Your presentation should have no more than 10 corresponding PowerPoint slides.
We have all been witness to PowerPoint presentations that just never seem to end – where slide after slide is covered in bullet-pointed text, as though the presenters are clumsily using PowerPoint as giant cue cards that all the audience can see.
Kawasaki is right. If your presentation is only 20 minutes long, you really shouldn’t need much more than 10 slides. But more importantly, you should by no means need one slide for every point you want to make – and certainly not for every sentence that comes out of your mouth.
Again, Kawasaki’s real concept is to keep it simple. Your real presentation consists of the words and concepts and ideas coming out of your mouth. A PowerPoint presentation should serve only as a visual aid – a way of further explaining, through visuals such as charts, graphs, photos and infographics, the concepts that you’re speaking about. How many slides this will require will be unique to each presentation. There’s no tried and tested formula that will apply to every presentation ever. Just remember that less is more and that you should make every slide count.
Finally, the third part of Kawasaki’s rule: Your PowerPoint Slides should use a font size no less than 30 points. This one I’m just going to give to him. As stated previously, PowerPoint is a visual aid, and as a result your slides really should mainly involve visuals. If you will be using text on your slides, you should be certain that the words are large enough that all the members of the audience can easily read them. Plus, the bigger the font, the less words you’ll be able to fit on the slide, making each slide simple and succinct. Just the way Kawasaki likes it.
Do you use Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint in your presentations? Do you have any tips or tricks on how to create presentations that are powerful and to the point? Share your ideas here or on the Inspiring Speakers Bureau Facebook page. We’d love to hear them!
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