The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

Should I give a PowerPoint presentation?

Your Corporate Communications Department: “Yes, use the PowerPoint so that we can maintain a consistency of message. This way everyone will be seeing the same thing and we can maintain control.”

You: “Yes, I should use a PowerPoint. This will make it really easy for me to give the speech. This way, I don’t have to remember anything or practice, because all my points will be in front of me.”

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Your Audience: “If you are going to give a Powerpoint the way most people do, i.e., do a boring data dump of bullet points, then please, for the love of God, please, please spare us! But if you are going to use interesting visuals, pictures, or graphs that are genuinely interesting and relevant, then, by all means, use a PowerPoint.”

From TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”

How many Points should I cover in my speech?

Your Marketing Department: “Between all of our major accomplishments last quarter, plus our general corporate message, I’d say no more than 35 key messages.”

Your Speech Writer: “Limit yourself to ten key points.”

You: “I had better cover my a*&. If I list every accomplishment of the last year, every product innovation for the next year, and then cover our company’s entire history, then no one can criticize me for leaving anything out. About 95 points should it.”

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Your Audience “Unless you are our teacher and have the ability to flunk us, you are smoking crack if you think we are going to remember more than 5 key messages. We don’t remember a single message from most speakers we hear because they just do boring data dumps. Occasionally we remember 2-3 messages from speakers who use interesting stories and examples. On very rare occasions we can remember a handful of key points because the speaker took the time to paint pictures with words and to tell relevant stories and case studies.”

Should I tell my audience how happy I am to be speaking here in front of them today?The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience” Your Speechwriter: “This is a classy way to begin a speech. It shows a proper level of respect for your audience.”Your Director of Business Development: “You must tell your audience how happy you are to be there. We don’t want to offend anyone.”You: “I would feel rude if I didn’t tell everyone how happy I am to be there today. Plus, this will give me time to calm down and figure out what I want to say before I really get going into the speech.”Your Audience: “We don’t give a d*%n if you are happy to be here at this stage of the relationship (we just met you a few seconds ago). Why don’t you forget talking about yourself for a few minutes and tell us something that is interesting to us. And if you do talk about yourself, make sure it is actually interesting and is not a boring, mundane, trite cliché like “I’m happy to be here this morning.’”

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”

How will I know what my audience will remember?

Your Marketing Officer: “Just give them as much information as possible. That way if they don’t remember anything in particular, they are at least likely to leave with the impression that you are smart and competent.”

Your College Speech Coach: “They will remember anything, as long as you tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.”

You: “It just depends on luck and the whims of the audience that day. This is completely beyond my control!”

Your Audience: “We audiences are pretty predictable. We remember interesting and relevant stories, examples and anecdotes. If you can make your points with an occasional surprise, unpredictability or humor, then we will be retelling your message to others for the next 5 years. The one thing we can absolutely guarantee you is that we will not remember a straightforward data dump.”

From TJ Walker’s upcoming book, “The Wisdom of your Audience.”

Should I tell my audience that I am very happy to be speaking to them today?

Your Speech Writer: “It is important to set the mood of you being gracious, so tell people you are happy to be there.”

You: “I want to be sincere and real, so I want to tell people that I am genuinely happy to have the honor of speaking to them today.”

***

Your Audience: “Boring! We don’t care if you are happy. Why don’t you spend your time making us happy by actually telling us something interesting? We are especially unimpressed when you read from a script with your head down and tell us that you are happy to be speaking to us in a wooden tone of voice. First tings first–tell us interesting stuff, create a shared experience for all of us, then we can all be happy together.”

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience” (The best advice always comes from your speaking audience)

What is the best way to begin my speech?

Your Director of Communications: “Start by thanking your hosts or order of rank.”

Your Marketing Director: “Be sure to weave in our branding slogan in the first 30 seconds. Then tell people about all of our locations.”

Your director of new business: “Tell people about all of our locations and branches.”

Your mother, “Tell people how humbled you are by the nice introduction you received.”

Your inner voice: “Good morning. As you heard, my name is ___ and my title is ___. I’m happy to be here today. Thank you for that lovely introduction. Before I begin today, let me tell you about the incredibly boring history of my company starting back to its founding in 1923. Next, I’d like to tell you about all of the cities we are in (that you couldn’t possibly care about, because you aren’t in those cities.)

*****

Your Audience: “Stop boring us to death! We don’t care if you are happy to be here; we don’t know you well enough to care yet. We already know your name and title; the person introducing you told us–we aren’t stupid!!! Stop talking about you, you, you. We don’t care about you at this stage of our relationship. Instead, tell us something interesting and relevant to us. We care about ourselves. If you address our needs, we’ll be more likely to pay attention to the rest of your speech!”

The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”

How should I ask to be introduced to my audience?

What the experts say:

Your in-house communications expert: “Just print your standard 2-page bio and let your introducer read it.”

Your PR Representative: “Be sure to remind people of every media appearance you have made in the last 5 years.”

You: “I’m feeling a little insecure, so I better convince them of my credibility with credentials. Of course they will want to know that I made the honor society all four years in high school and they need to know about every single career accomplishment. Otherwise they won’t listen to me.”

*******

Your Audience: “For crying out loud, don’t let your introduction go longer than 30-45 seconds. Tell us the one or two things that make you an expert on the subject you are about to address. Tell us what you have donet that directly has an impact on what we do. We really don’t care about where you went to school, your children, your dog or where you like to vacation. Please be selective in what you have your introducer tell us about you. We know you wrote your own intro, so don’t make the it longer than your speech.”

I was at a tech conference yesterday that had its presenters up on a stage with the screen for presentations directly behind them. Big problem? The seated presenters heads were obscuring the view of the bottom 25% of the screen. If you are a conference organizer, you should look at a room as it will actually be used. This means you should sit in the audience and have someone sit in the cahir where the panelist is and see if anythign is obscured. This will solve the problem.

I attended a Web 2.o Conference here in New York sponsored by iBreakfast today. Lots of good speakers, but one big problem: video in presentations. The conference was on advertising and monetizing web content, so it made a lot of sense for marketers and advertisers speaking to show video in their presentation. But speaker after speaker got up, tried to play their video, and then apologized for it not working. The system wasn’t set up properly and there was no audio feed. By my rough estimate, half of the speakers used video and all of them had the same problem.

When you think about it, this really is silly. No one did any of the following:

1. Showed up early to do a rehearsal to see if things worked properly.

2. Tested during a break between speakers to see if their system worked.

3. Paid attention to the fact that the speaker who spoke 2 minutes before they did couldn’t make the system work, so chances are they would be able to either.

Speakers must realize that if you are going to use video in a presentation, you can’t just waltz up to the platform with your flash drive and plug in 2 minutes before speech time. You need to prepare, and rehearse on the actual equipment you will be using; otherwise, don’t bother using video.

Here is an excellent tutorial on how to place YouTube video into your PowerPoint Presentations. Personally, I use a lot of video in my presentations. However, I caution most people against this–There are numerous technical problems associated with video, even after you have figured out how to get it into your presentation.  Also, make sure you don’t use copyrighted material from YouTube in your presentation. YouTube has the billion dollar resources of the Google legal department to defend it; chances are that you don’t.