For those of you who haven’t tried it yet, public speaking opportunities are a great way to position yourself as a leader in your industry, while making a little bit of cash at the same time. With that being said, however, there are a few things you might want to consider if you aren’t planning on making your first paid speech your last.

There are seven quick tips for creating speeches that are entertaining and informative:

Don’t do “death by PowerPoint.” There was a time when PowerPoint was new, exciting, and cutting-edge… unfortunately, that was for about five minutes in the early 90s. Now, it’s just another tool to supplement your presentation. Rely on it too much, and your audience will start to wonder you are trying to hide beneath all those slides and multimedia clips.

Remember that preparation is the best way to beat stress… In surveys, people regularly report that public speaking is their number one fear – one step ahead of dying. You probably wouldn’t be reading this article if you had a crippling fear of presenting to groups, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a bad case of nerves before speech. It happens to all of us.

The best way around this problem is simply to over-prepare. The more you know, and the more ready you are, the fewer butterflies you’re going to feel in the pit of your stomach as your speech approaches.

… And that that practice makes perfect. By the same token, once you have planned out what you want to say, practice it until you feel comfortable enough with the material that you feel like you could give your speech without notes. That’s not to say that you should go without notes, of course, but that put in enough time to be sure your presentation has a good chance of going smoothly.

Avoid repeating yourself. A sign of a weak or unprepared speaker is that they will come back to the same point again and again, using it as a crutch to stand up for the rest of their presentation on. Your audience doesn’t want to hear the same thing several times over, so break that habit of repeating yourself.

Avoid repeating yourself. See what I mean?

Anticipate the questions your audience will ask, and then be prepared for them. In every topic, there are probably 5 or 10 questions that are naturally going to come up. Anticipate them, and rehearse the answers you’re going to give. By thinking about these things ahead of time, you can give replies that are quick, crisp, and insightful – everything you would want for the rest of your speech.

Treat humor, quotations, and statistics like you would a powerful hot sauce. A good joke, an interesting fact, or a timely quotation can all add a bit of punch to your speech… but only if you don’t overuse them. Consider this as you plan out your major topics and talking points; go too far and you will overwhelm your audience and risk having them lose your main points.

Let me start off this post by admitting that I absolutely love Netflix. I’m not employed by the company in any way shape or form, and I don’t receive any royalties from my recommendations (which will become apparent in just a moment), I’m just a huge fan of what they do. And so, like a lot of movie buffs in Canada, I was more than a little excited when it was announced that they were finally opening service north of the border.

Unfortunately, however, what should have been a wonderful launch turned in to something of a black eye for the company. That’s because, in their rush to create good “buzz,” Netflix decided to try to help things along entire handful of paid actors to roam around the event spread “positive chatter” about the service and the company.

Apparently the actors they hired weren’t all that great, because it didn’t take too long for many of them to start spilling the beans. And it didn’t take long after that for a public backlash against the company.

So, the question at hand is this: did Netflix do something wrong by trying to fake good word-of-mouth? Keep in mind that our opinions, as marketers, don’t mean much; it took most of Canada’s buying public a matter of hours to decide that they’d been had.

Really, I think this speaks to the fact that people don’t like to think they are being fooled. They don’t necessarily mind straightforward advertising and marketing, but when you try to slip it in “under the radar” so that it doesn’t look like marketing, buyers feel like you’re trying to get away with something. Maybe you are.

This observation is especially prudent when it comes to social media, which is probably the most powerful “word-of-mouth” marketing forum ever known. While it might not have been intentional, Netflix’s blunder has shown us that there are right and wrong ways to try to use these tools. Doing a good job in letting people talk about it is fantastic; trying to solicit “reviews” from every person you’ve ever met – or worse, paying someone else to invent them – is a different animal altogether. If it looks and smells like something you wouldn’t want to get caught doing it, then don’t do it.

Businesses and marketers have been looking for ways to get around the time and effort it takes to build positive word-of-mouth for centuries. What Netflix tried to do isn’t anything new, and the chances are good that somewhere along the line, another dozen corporations have done the same thing and gotten away with it. But are the risks worth the rewards? Before you decide they are, think about what’s going to happen if you get caught. I bet the executives over at Netflix wish they had.

…also known as Facebook Fan pages.

Our team has been busy producing badges and facebook fan pages recently.  Using Facebook Markup Language, traditional HTML and CSS, we have been developing these new fan page strategies.

Watch for more news in this area, and in the interim, here are a couple of recent samples – > be sure to “Like” when you visit.

Here is the new page for our Social Media Consulting FanPage

Here is the Facebook FanPage Design we did for our Calgary Web Design Company

If you are interested in getting a professional Facebook FanPage Design visit us here to learn more.

Our very own – eKzact page – Calgary Website Designer page