Posts Tagged ‘connect with your audience’

Good Speakers Know How To Work A Room

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
Image Credit Meeting Your Audience Is The First Step In Connecting With Them

Meeting Your Audience Is The First Step In Connecting With Them

Speakers who want to be successful know that they have to connect with their audience. How to do this is the ultimate question that we’ve struggled with for years. I’m not claiming that I have all of the answers, but when I recently gave a keynote speech I had a chance to practice my “working the room” skills…

Arrive Early, Make Friends

Making a connection with your audience starts with you taking the time to meet them. In my case, I had been invited to deliver the keynote speech at ProductCamp Chicago and the event was scheduled to start at 9:00 am.

I showed up at 8:30am – pretty much the same time as the folks who were setting up the event started to show up. This gave me a chance to meet the organizers before attendees started to show up and things got really crazy.

Since I was there I also had an opportunity to meet just able everyone who came when they arrived. This was no more than a handshake and a quick greeting. However, what it did was to transform me from “the keynote guy” into somebody that they actually know.

Talk, Talk, Talk

Once everyone had arrived, I really started to work the room. You’ve probably heard this phrase before, but knowing what it means is the trick.

In my case, I took the time to move around the room where the audience was assembling. I’d approach a group of two or three attendees and start to chat with them. Instead of saying “hi, I’m the keynote speaker” (that’s all about me), I’d say hi, ask for their names and ask them what they did for a living (all about them) . Most of the time we’d end up talking about what they did and why they were there and who I was or what I was doing there often didn’t come up.

Add Local Content To Your Speech

If you want to make the words that you say during your speech really connect with your audience, then you need to make sure that those words are words that they can relate to.

One of the simplest ways to make this happen is to work local content into your speech. I think that I can provide an example of this. During the discussions that I had with audience members before giving my keynote, I happened to discover that a number of them happened to be working in the casino gaming industry.

I was able to use this information to add local content to my speech. I worked a number of comments about “placing your bets” and “spinning the wheel” etc. into my speech. This was a wink and a nudge to the folks who were in the gaming industry and they all understood the references.

Leave Last, Make More Friends

All too often speakers think that when they stop speaking, their job is over. It turns out that this is not true. What folks don’t realize is that your opportunities to connect with your audience continue long after the actual speech is done.

When my speech was done, I attended other speeches that went on that day, ate lunch with folks, and generally tried to make myself as available as possible. I met some great people and also made myself more approachable to just about everyone who was in the audience.

What All Of This Means For You

The success of any speech that you give will be judged by the connection that you are able to make with your audience. The words that you use during your speech are important, but they don’t do the entire job.

To make a good connection, you need to make yourself available to your audience. This means showing up early, chatting with your audience, working local content into your actual speech, and hanging out after your speech is done to further connect with your audience.

As speakers it’s how you are going to be remembered by each audience that really matters. You control how this is all going to turn out. Take the time to really meet and interact with your audience and you’ll be remembered in a positive way long after your speech is over and done with.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: If you can’t arrive early, what do you think that you can do to connect with your audience?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Will these Internet crazes never end? Just in case you’ve been living under a rock someplace and haven’t heard about the “Twitter” revolution, guess what: it’s arrived and this time around as a public speaker you should be an active participant.

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Posted in audience | 5 Comments »

Never Be Lonely Again: How To Include Your Audience In Your Speech

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
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Friends Don’t Let Friends Speak All Alone

Friends Don’t Let Friends Speak All Alone

Why Does Giving A Speech Have To Be So Lonely?

Let’s face it – anyone can give a speech. However, not anyone can give a good speech. It sure seems as though if you’re going to go to all of the effort of preparing and delivering a speech, you sure would like to do a good job of it. That means that you’re going to have to find a way to really connect with your audience. Guess what – it turns out that this is actually pretty easy to do. The trick is that you have to start to use more “people words” when you speak…

It’s All About How You Say Things

Once you understand what I’m talking about this is going to be a simple concept – it’s just that it may be a bit difficult for me to explain. Let’s start our discussion by thinking back to the last time that you sat down to create a speech. I’m sure that what was front and center in your mind as you wrote your speech was the point that you were trying to make by giving the speech. There’s no problem with this.

Where we run into problems is when you sit back and take a look at the speech that you’ve written: I’m willing to bet you that it’s pretty cold and impersonal. Don’t get me wrong, you’ve probably did a great job of getting your main point across; however, it’s not going to be an effective speech because you’re not going to be able to connect with your audience.

The way to fix this problem of great speech / lousy connection is to go back and plug in more “people words” . These types of words are very clear references to human beings just like you, me, and your audience. The more of these types of words that you can include in your speech, the warmer your speech will appear and the easier it will be to connect with your listeners. Oprah does this all the time.

Kevin Johnston and Tennille-Lynn Millo are writers who use this technique in their work. The most effect technique that they’ve found to use is to start to ask the question “who” when you are reviewing your speech. What you will be trying to do is to replace the impersonal “the sales department” with “Mike and the rest of the team in the Sales department”. See how much warmer that is?

The Problem With Statistics

I can already see some of you rolling your eyes – look Dr. Jim, my speech is filled with facts and stats – there’s nothing warm and personal about it. Well, you’ve got a point there but never say never. Even this type of speech can be warmed up with some more people words.

Take an ugly stat: about two thirds of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese. Ouch, but who cares – that’s cold and impersonal. How could you warm this one up? Simple, say something like “If you and your two best friends were in the room with us today, statistics say that that at least two of you would be either overweight or obese”. Much better!

Does Anyone Have A Body?

One of the reasons that so many speeches fail to connect with their audience is because what’s being discussed is not human – and so your audience tunes the discussion out. If you take the time to apply human words to non-human things you’ll be able to get your audience’s attention back.

The classic phrase “take a bite out of crime” is known by everyone. You can apply the same technique by saying “we’ve got to kick the competition” or “we want to stop crawling towards our goals and get up and start to run.”

It’s Name Time

The final way to warm your speech up and make a better connection with your audience may be the simplest of them all: start name dropping. When you are looking over your speech, search for places where you reference a position or a role and instead of saying “the company’s treasurer”, replace it with “Tom, the company’s treasurer”.

If you want to take this up a notch even more, if you can insert names of people who are in your audience you’ll score even more points with them. This is one of the reasons that the great speakers show up early for a speech and chat with the audience – they are collecting names to use later on in their speech.

What All Of This Means For You

It’s all too easy to write a cold and impersonal speech. It might do a good job of discussing our main topic; however, it’s going to be a waste of your time to deliver it if you can’t connect with your audience.

Taking the time to review the speech that you’ve written and working in “people words” will provide you with the opportunity to warm your speech up. Every speech can benefit from this kind of attention including speeches that have lots of statistics.

The more names that you can use in your speech, the more of a connection you’ll be able to establish with your audience. If you can work the names of actual audience members into your speech, then you will be well on your way to becoming a great speaker…

Question For You: Do you think that it would be possible to make a speech too warm – should some speeches not connect with an audience by design?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

I don’t know about you, but more and more I’ve been finding myself being asked to deliver speeches that have technical information in them. I’ve got a great deal of self confidence; however, having had to sit through more than my share of boring technical presentations this is the one type of speech that scares me the most. There’s got to be a better way…

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Posted in connecting with your audience | 2 Comments »

You Are A Superhero Speaker: You’ve Got Word Power!

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
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Words Have Power – Careful How You Choose To Use Them

Words Have Power – Careful How You Choose To Use Them

The Thing About Words

As speakers we have a tendency to focus on the things that scare us the most – forgetting our words, nervous body tics, etc. and we can often overlook the things that really count: making an impression on our audience. We see these images of sharply dressed orators presenting fantastic multimedia presentations and we sigh to ourselves and say “I could never do that”. Well it turns out that you don’t have to. You can be a powerfully effective speaker who is sought after by many just by taking the time to carefully pick the words that you use.

Why Do Words Have So Much Power

I don’t know about you, but when I know that I have a speech to give, I hurry to get the speech written so that I can start to practice it. Hopefully I’ve got a reasonably clear idea in my head of what I want to say and I rush to get it down on paper (ok, so I type it into a computer) before I forget what point I want to make. If I’m nervous about the audience that I’ll be addressing, then I’ll take some time and worry about the “flow” of the speech, but in all honesty that’s pretty much it.

Clearly I’m skipping the most important point: it’s all about the words that we use. Sure, the structure of the speech is important also just like the design of a house is important; however, it’s what you build the house out of that is just as (if not more) critical. Words have power.

Just think about the most powerful speeches that we’ve all heard: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” and “I have a dream…”. I don’t think that these words were in the first draft of either of these speeches, rather the authors went back and spent the time to get their words right. The fact that all of these years later we can still recall them shows that they were successful.

Words Are Like The Paints You Use To Make A Picture

When we give a speech, the big question is what are we really trying to do? We want to have our audience share an experience with us. We want them to feel and see what we feel and see. They don’t have to agree with us, but we want them to understand how we see a given situation. If we’re sad, we want them to experience sadness. If we’re happy, then we want to feel our happiness.

As a speaker, at the end of the day all that we have to work with to accomplish this goal of connecting with our audiences are words. What words allow us to do is to paint a picture in the minds of our audience. I like to think of choosing the right words as being the same thing as an artist choosing the right colors with which to create a painting.

If I gave you just a three colors, red, green, and blue, could you create a painting? Yes, in fact you could combine these three colors to make many more colors and if you had some artistic ability you could probably create a very nice painting. However, something would be missing. If we stepped back once you were done and looked at your creation I think that we’d both agree that you’d captured the essence of whatever you were painting; however, something would be missing – depth.

If instead of restricting you to just using three colors I let you use every color in the world, just imagine what you could create now! The final product would be much richer – you would have been able to capture both depth and subtlety that was not possible when you had just three colors to work with.

All of the same things can be said about using words in a speech. If you keep it simple and only use plain, everyday words then your speech will be flat and lack depth. Sure you can do it this way, but who’s going to want to listen to that?

If instead you take the time to carefully pick and hone your words so that you use just the right word in just the right spot, then you will have made a speech that allows you to connect with your audience. When you are done, your audience will have a mental image that they can take home and treasure forever.

What All Of This Means For You

The most powerful tool that a speaker has are the words that make up the speech that he / she is giving. Just racing to throw a speech together and not spending any time to craft the words that you will use means that you are missing out on one of your most powerful speaking tools.

Words are how we connect with our audience. In order to make a lasting impression on an audience we need to use the right words that will allow us to create a vivid mental image in every member of our audience’s head.

It doesn’t take that much of an extra effort to make our words work for us. Reviewing your next speech and asking yourself if the words that you are using will allow you to connect with your audience will tell you where you stand. If your words aren’t painting a powerful image for you, then get some more colors to paint with!

Question For You: In the speeches that you’ve heard, who do you think has done the best job of making their words work for them?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Let’s face it – anyone can give a speech. However, not anyone can give a good speech.  That means that you’re going to have to find a way to really connect with your audience. Guess what – it turns out that this is actually pretty easy to do. The trick is that you have to start to use more “people words” when you speak…

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Posted in speech writing | No Comments »

What American Idol Can Teach Speakers (It’s Not What You Think)

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
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Even If You Don’t Care About The Singing, American Idol Has A Lot To Teach…

Even If You Don’t Care About The Singing, American Idol Has A Lot To Teach…

Why Should A Speaker Watch A Singing Show?

I’m pretty sure that by now everyone has at least heard about the TV show “American Idol”. It’s the most popular show on television right now and everyone seems to be talking and gossiping about it all the time. Outside of being a great source of entertainment, is it possible that this show just might be able to teach us a few things about how to become a better speaker…?

Sure They Can Sing, But So What?

I’ve known about American Idol since it first showed up something like nine years ago. However, I had not understood its value to a speaker until I visited Disney World the other week. At Disney’s Hollywood theme park, they have an attraction called, what else, “America Idol”. You sit in the audience and three amateur singers compete to win the audience’s vote.

It was the fact that the performers were such rank amateurs and that I got to see them up close and in person that finally drove home what I had been missing. Look, all three of the competitors were better singers than I am (that’s not really saying all that much), but I don’t think that it was their voice that determined who won.

None of the three young ladies that were performing on the day that I attended the show were all that good. I mean, they had nice voices and all that, but would they make it on to the TV show – probably not. In fact, I’d say that their voices and singing ability were all pretty much equal. So what set them apart from each other?

It turns out that their stage presence is what really set these three performers apart. The first young lady came out and sang. She did a very nice job, but she just stood there and belted out her tune. From an audience perspective, we all enjoyed it and assumed that the other two performers would do the same.

However, when the second performer came out, not only did she sing but she also moved around on the stage as she sang. The difference was quite startling – the audience really responded to her song. Finally the third performer came out and not only sang and moved around on the stage, but you could see in her body language that she was “feeling” the emotion in the song that she was singing.

I probably don’t have to tell you who won – the third singer. From a speaker point-of-view the difference between how the audience responded to the three different singers was amazing. It really drove home the understanding that any speech that we give is really a performance and that we need to use our whole body in order to really connect with our audience.

Why Simon Is So Popular

If that was all that I had learned at this show, then I would have felt that I had gotten more than my money’s worth for my $74 Disney ticket. However, this show had one more lesson to teach me.

On the TV show there are three judges that evaluate the contestants. One of these judges is Simon Cowell. He has become famous for being mean – if someone’s performance is not very good, then Simon won’t mince any words and will tell them that they are a terrible singer and that they should go home.

Millions of people watch the show just to hear what Simon is going to say next. They hate him for making people feel bad and cry, but they love him for being willing to speak his mind at the same time. At the Disney show they had a stand-in for Simon who spoke with an Australian accent (Simon speaks with a British accent) and he played the part very well – he insulted all three singers.

What caught my attention was just how important a part of the show the Simon figure was. It wouldn’t have been American Idol without him. The audience knew what he was going to say, but still there was an eager anticipation to hear him each time he spoke.

Watching all of this unfold I was struck with the realization that you don’t need to have your audience like you or even like what you are talking about. However, you do need to have a very clearly defined position.

If people know what you stand for then they’ll pay attention to you. They may be listening to get confirmation of their own beliefs or they may be listening in order to confirm that they think that you are wrong. It doesn’t matter – they are still listening to you!

What All Of This Means For You

We may never have an opportunity to appear on the TV show “American Idol” and bask in the glory of millions of adoring fans. However, that doesn’t mean that the show can’t make our lives better by teaching us a thing or two.

When the voices are roughly the same, the thing that sets performers apart is how they use their bodies to support the words that they are saying. Speakers need to learn to do the same thing. Simon Cowell and his sharp personality is a key part of the show’s success. Speakers who have a well-defined position will always be able to keep the attention of their audiences.

As speakers we can learn from all of the nervousness and embarrassment that the singers on this show have to go through (including having to be evaluated by Simon!). Applying what works for singers can help all of us to become better speakers.

Question For You: How would you feel speaking if you had a clearly defined position that your audience really disagreed with?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As speakers we have a tendency to focus on the things that scare us the most – forgetting our words, nervous body tics, etc. and we can often overlook the things that really count: making an impression on our audience. You can be a powerfully effective speaker who is sought after by many just by taking the time to carefully pick the words that you use…

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Posted in body language | 1 Comment »