Archive for the ‘Written Speech’ Category

Are You Adding the Value of Wisdom?

Monday, November 12th, 2007

Far too many speakers attempt to look and sound smart by drowning their audience members in a sea of facts. “More is more” is their philosophy. The problem is that no matter how quickly you speak during a 20-30 minute speech, there is no way you can get your audience to know as much as you do on your area of expertise.

The other reality is that your audience can already get all of the facts on your subject from the internet. People are not suffering from a lack of information or facts. There are more than 100,000 books published every year and, seemingly, another 100,000 blogs run by self-appointed pundits published every hour.

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Don’t Give Your Script In Advance

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

Get the latest TJ Walker video tutorials at the Speaking Channel homepage, or add to your arsenal of speaking tips and tools at the Media Training Worldwide Store
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Don’t Leave Out the Details

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

When telling stories about yourself to make an important point to your audience, it is imperative that you give enough details so that the audience makes the right conclusions about you. It’s fine to tell self-deprecating stories. It’s even Ok to talk about your mistakes and your blunders. But you don’t want to tell a story in such a way that you make the audience hate you or write you off as a flake or an unstable person.

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Know Your Draft Needs

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

When writing an important letter that will go to all of your clients, customers, colleagues and boss, you usually want to go through several drafts. There are very few among us who are so confident in our writing skills that we simply dictate a first draft and then say to an assistant, “Send it out, as is, to the media and the rest of world:”

No, most of us like to write a rough draft. Then we hit spell-check, and perhaps grammar check. Next, we may ask a colleague or a public relations counselor to take a look and give a critique.

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Be Different!

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

What separates the good from the great when it comes to making speeches or media appearances? The biggest difference is that great media performances or speeches contain some message that is different or unique.

If you want to be considered a great interview, you have got to come up with a message that sets you apart. Too many of my clients come to me with boring media messages or speeches. Sure they get through the interview OK. No harm is done to their career. But the real question is how much more could they have helped their career if they had spent more time coming up with something genuinely interesting to say to the media or their speaking audiences?

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Create A Core Speech

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

Many people are caught off guard when asked to give a 20-30 minute speech. Most of my clients act as though this is some weird, special request, as if the topic were �What Should U.S. Foreign Policy Be Toward North Korea?�

The reality is that most of the time when we are asked to give a speech, it is on a topic on which we are experts. Typically, most people are asked to speak on subjects that they work on every day for weeks, months, years and even decades. Hence, Bill Gates is asked to speak about the computer industry. Henry Aaron is asked to speak about baseball. You are likely to be asked to speak about your mutual fund, if you run a mutual fund.

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Posted in Corporate Communication, Written Speech, keynote advice | No Comments »

Don’t Read, Even If Your Audience Can’t See You

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

If you’ve been asked to deliver a presentation via a teleseminar or a webinar, this is likely to be your first reaction:

“Great! This will be simple. I can just read my script or PowerPoint. No one will see my face or my eyes. No one will know. This will be a piece of cake!”

Wrong!

Your audience can hear you reading. This is a big problem. If you haven’t rehearsed your presentation dozens of times or unless you are a professional newscaster, your reading will sound awful. Here’s why:

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Posted in Written Speech, notes, teleconferencing, webinar | No Comments »

Contract and Shorten

Thursday, August 9th, 2007

Sooner or later, if you are a busy executive, someone will thrust a script in your face and ask you to read it. It may be audio for a teleseminar, a webcast, an audio book intro, or a radio or TV Public Service Announcement.

Here are several tips to help you make the best of a hurried situation.

1. Convert (quickly in your own mind) everything into contractions. Say “I’ll” instead of “I will,” say “don’t” instead of “do not.” Chances are your script was written by someone who isn’t a professional script writer. That means it was written for the eye and not the ear. If you don’t use contractions, you will sound stuffy, pompous, and non-conversational.

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Is Your Speech Taken Seriously?

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

One of the most effective ways to get your spoken words taken more seriously is to back them up with text. This works for two reasons:

      Most people are too lazy to put their words into text.
      By putting your words in text, you create a way for the ideas in your speech to be accessed at anytime, permanently.

This advice seems glaringly obvious when it comes to a candidate running for US President—of course you have written position papers and speeches to hand out to voters, supporters, and the media. But it is also true for much of the day-to-day communication that average people experience.

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Speechwriters… An Underappreciated Lot

Friday, December 23rd, 2005

I have a lot of sympathy for speechwriters because they have a nearly impossible job. If the boss gives a good speech, then the boss receives (and takes) all of the credit. If the boss bombs during the speech, well, then it must have been the speechwriter’s fault, or so the blame game goes.

I can vividly remember slaving away for days on a foreign policy speech for a member of congress when I was a staffer on Capitol Hill in the early 90’s. When the Congresswomen finally started to read it in front of me at 1:00 am in the morning she got through one page and then cried, “This…Is…Terrible…” and with that she tore the paper in two. This is the life of the speechwriter.

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