Keep your presentation short and tweet
Posted on October 20, 2010 by Baxter Dickson
Communication skills get Twitter-ized
I’ll be honest. Twitter sounded like a crazy idea to me. Who can say anything about anything in 140 characters? And who cares anyway? After two months (and realizing I’m not omniscient), I decided I should get a Twitter account to see what it was all about. (Experiential learning is part of VoicePro’s core philosophy!) I immediately saw the draw. Fun and slightly addictive, but it still felt like a novelty to me.
Did you hear that? It’s the sound of the paradigm shifting. Everything changed when professional communicators got into the Twitter game: grocery chains, coffee shops, TV networks, celebrities, Senators, pundits, and comedians. Tweeters suddenly could take 140 characters to make you laugh, cry, call your Congressman, buy a new pair of shoes, and, maybe most importantly, click on a link to find out more.
Wow, that was the epiphany. Isn’t that succinct, persuasive, get-to-the-heart-of-the-matter approach at the center of good presentation skills? Fewer words, more engagement? Something that captures the imagination (or mind, or heart, or pocketbook)? A gift-wrapped box you want to open to find out more?
As you prepare for your next presentation or sales call, don’t start by organizing those 27 pages of data into your 45-minute narrative. What’s your short, sweet Tweet that will make brains “click” on the rest of your presentation? Be imaginative, be bold, be captivating. Check out some favorites from the Twitter folks I follow, each with a link to more content.
- Having a great idea and not selling it well is like sitting on a pig and hoping for a ham sandwich. (That’s making your headline a punchline.)
- The Spending Habits of The Poor – Sitting on my high horse it’s easy to make quick judgments about the poor. (Start personal and make a connection.)
- Leadership & Skydiving: Lessons in Informed Risk-Taking (That’s a metaphor that gets an audience moving in the right direction right from the start)
- National Pest Management Association offers tips to consumers to avoid bringing bed bugs home from summer vacation. (Itching to find out more?)
- What does Steve Jobs love? (This one didn’t need 140 characters, just 29!)
Admit it. Those are tweets likely to get some attention from the audience, right?
A little tweet-ology can be a helpful, disciplined way to approach a presentation, first as you set the overall message and then as you think through each sub-section or topic area. What’s the nugget that captures your message – and your audience? Put your presentation together with thought and people will be listening, remembering and re-tweeting it!
By the way, you can follow VoiceProInc on Twitter, too.
Image By Barb's Photos2006
