How to Write Public Speaking Articles for Your Business

Article maketing is a great tool for driving targeted traffic to websites, opt-in pages and sales letters. Using the different article distribution sites can be a bit tricky, though.

http://www.EzineArticles.com

http://www.WryteStuff.com

http://www.ArticleDashboard.com

http://www.SelfGrowth.com

There are a few things to look out for when submitting articles to sites such as:

Tip # 1 - Make sure your articles are on your own site first as a page of your website. Also, make sure that the article page on your site has been indexed by the search engines first before submitting to the article sites. This will be covered in depth in a following lesson of this class.

To find out if a webpage has been indexed, copy and paste the URL of the page into the Google search box and hit "search." If a clickable result appears, then the page has been indexed, if the result says: "Your search did not match any documents", then it has not yet been indexed.

* We use the strategy of publishing to our websites first so that we get the credit in the search engines and not the big article sites. The site that publishes the article first gets the most credit.

Tip # 2 - That being said, make sure that your name is closely associated with the article on your webpage. ie: your name at the bottom of the article, your name at the top of the article or your name SOMEWHERE on the page that is easy to see. Article sites will reject articles that they can't easily find the authorship. If they can't find your name on your webpage and you try to submit the article to them, they will think you plagerized it. This can hold up the approval of your article for weeks.

Tip # 3 - Keep articles between 400 - 500 words. Articles work best if they are not too long, and your reader is still engaged in the point. We suggest that if your article is 1000 words or more, break it up into two articles. This will give you more material anyway. Read the terms of service for the different article marketing sites to see the minimum text length.

Tip # 4 - Be sure to always use the Spell Checkers that the sites provide. We've seen far too many people submit without spell checking and the article site will reject it. Too much bad spelling and grammar, and you may not get valuable submission upgrades and could possibly have your account suspended. Don't believe that this sounds like too much trouble...it's good practice when submitting articles to other respectable websites that can provide you valuable backlinks, lead generation and credibility.

Drive more traffic to your public speaking website!

Public Speaking: Role Reversal

This technique is always good for a laugh and sometimes brings down the house.


Invite two people on stage that have opposite roles. It works particularly well with husband/wife , boyfriend/girlfriend, employee/boss

Have them play the role of the other person, i.e., the husband acts as if he is the wife and vice versa. You could have some funny props like a wig to put on the guy and give the wife a handyman's tool belt, etc. (In many cases you will find it hard to continue at this point because everyone will be laughing so hard just from the site on stage.)

Brainstorm questions to have the pair ask each other and have them answer as if they were the other person. Write these out for both of them.

Example:

Have the husband (who is playing the part of the wife), ask the wife who is playing the part of the husband, "where do you think you are going with those golf clubs?" Either write funny answers for them like, "I was going out to the garden to use them to hold up the tomato plants" or just let them ad lib.

You could have competition between pairs for the best answers and give out prizes.

This is a very fun technique, but you really need to brainstorm on some funny questions and answers in case the people on stage aren't fast enough to think up funny stuff on their own.

Humor has a learning curve to make it right. Learn the shortcuts to a better presentation.

Better Public Speaking Techniques - Presenting Like a Pro

http://www.AmazingPublicSpeaking.com

If you want to get paid for your public speaking engagements then you need to know what professional speakers know. Over 450 public and professional speaking videos.

Public Speaking Business - Handouts

=> USE A LARGE FONT. It makes more impact and is easier to read. It also makes you handout larger which makes it appear more substantial.


=> LEAVE LOTS OF WHITE SPACE. I had a complaint recently that said there was not enough space to write notes. I usually deliver very high content so this was clearly a mistake on my part in not leaving enough space for notes.

=> PUT CONTACT INFORMATION ON EVERY PAGE. You never know when people will tear out a page or photocopy a single page of your handout. Putting your info on every page makes sure whoever sees any page of your handout can contact you.

=> PUT IMPORTANT RESOURCES ON EVERY PAGE. If you want people to keep your handout make sure each page has some important resource that an audience member cannot do without. When you put all the resources on one page it makes it easy for someone to tear it out and throw the rest of your handout away.

=> USE A TEAR OFF ACTION ITEM PAGE. Make it the last page so it's easy to tear off at the beginning of the seminar or speech. Have the attendees use it for those special aha's they get. You can then have them say some of their items aloud which reinforces the value you are giving.


How could 26 cents a day change the way you do business as a public speaker?

Presentation Skills and Tips - Timing

Timing is one of the most important aspects of humor and Wake em Up presenting. Not only is timing involved in an individual piece of humor, it is also involved in the placement of that piece of humor in the overall presentation. Timing is also involved in spontaneous reactions to "expected" unexpected developments during the presentation.




Jack Benny said, "Timing is not so much knowing when to speak, but knowing when to pause." He should know, because he delivered one of the funniest and most famous lines in the history of comedy after an extremely long pause. He was being held up by a robber at gunpoint. The robber said, "Your money or your life!" Jack did not say a word for an extended period of time. The robber became impatient and said, "YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!!" Jack finally replied, "Im thinking." His persona as a cheapskate, coupled with a long pause indicating he was having trouble deciding whether to give up his money or die was hilarious. A pause lets the audience catch up and draw pictures in their mind. It is the audience's signal to imagine.



In joke telling, a pause just before and just after your punch line sets it apart from the setup of the joke and gives the audience a chance to laugh. Absolutely do not continue to talk when laughter is expected. Laughter is hard to get and easy to discourage. Hold eye contact a little bit longer than you think you should when delivering punch lines because time is hard to judge when you are pumped-up for a presentation.



The size of your audience will affect your timing. Your presentation will take less time to deliver to smaller audiences. Smaller audiences should mean quicker laughter. Conversely, presentations will take longer for extremely large crowds. Your pauses will be longer to compensate for the wave effect created because of the physical distance between you and the back row of the audience. (Ref: Wake em Up Business Presentations Page 89)



"In Wake em Up, Tom Antion teaches us how to get our message across, do it with humor, and keep the audience awake all at the same time. That is great, although I have learned through experience that when I am not doing 1 and 2, I prefer that the audience doze off. It makes my getaway easier."
- Gene Perret, Author and head comedy writer for Bob Hope

What do the most successful public speakers know?

Public Speaking Techniques - How to Close a Speech

One of the worst mistakes you can make as a public speaker is talking too long. Not only will you send some folks to never, never land, you will make some of them downright mad. It doesn't matter if your entire speech was brilliant and the audience came away with information that will change their lives. If you talk too long, they will leave saying, "That speaker just wouldn't quit." Don't let this happen to you! Say what you have to say and sit down. Before you do, give them a well thought out closing.

The last thing you say may be the most remembered. You must put as much time into selecting and practicing your closing as you put into any other part of your presentation. Just like your opening, your closing does not have to be humorous. It could be motivational, challenging, thoughtful, respectful of the length of the presentation, or it could restate your point in a different way. This ending segment will have a strong influence on what the audience takes home with them when you are done. Please, at sometime during your talk ask the audience to do something. Many a great NO ZZZZZs talk went no further than the walls of the meeting room because the audience wasn't moved to action. If you haven't ask them to do something by now, the closing is your last chance.

If the subject is appropriate, I happen to be fond of humorous closings for several reasons. If you leave them laughing and applauding, you will exit, but an extremely positive impression about you will remain. Another good reason to leave them laughing is that the room will not be deadly silent as you are walking back to your seat. I hate when that happens. I do love laughter and feeling good; finishing a speech humorously gives me and the audience an opportunity to feel great.Speeches that are for entertainment purposes only should generally leave the audience laughing. Finally, if the subject is not appropriate to end with laughter, you could end with a touching story or quotation that leaves the audience thoughtful and quiet.

Even the most serious public speaking subjects can benefit from humor, but the humor should be sprinkled throughout the body of the presentation. Don't put it at the end because closings are powerful and the audience will think your overall attitude toward the subject is flippant. This same technique can be very effective in ending a mostly humorous speaking engagement. Have them laughing all along while you make your points. Then finish seriously. This contrast will create a great impact. It will convey the fact that you believe in a lighthearted approach to the subject, but the results are very serious to you. Don't be afraid to use humor when you speak in public. Just make sure you learn to do it right.

Public speaking has never been easier than this...

Public Speaking Training: The Rule of Three

http://www.AmazingPublicSpeaking.com

This video teaches you how to pretty much guarantee a laugh in a presentation or speech.

Public Speaking Business - Get Website Traffic By Sharing Your Articles

You can get a ton of traffic to your websites by publishing articles that the search engines can find on distribution sites, your own website or ones that are published on other big websites. But you don't have to stop there. Here are some tips on how to share your articles with other resources that you use everyday:



- From your EzineArticles account, go to "Author Bio." From there you can enter in your login info for Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and your Wordpress blog. Now, every time you publish an article, all these sites will tell all your friends about it.

- Send tweets from your Twitter account to your followers as much as possible. Twitter followers respond best when you act as a resource for information rather than just someone who tweets out worthless links. Your articles will be the great information that your followers are looking for.

- Link to important articles from Facebook groups and pages. Find groups where your target market is gathering on Facebook and leave comments on the wall to articles that they would find valuable.

- Use sharing widgets and plug-ins such as "Share This" or "Add This" to the bottom of your website article pages so others that are reading your articles can use the widgets to share your work with their friends and followers. The widgets even make it easy for a reader to email the article to their friends.

- High content sites. A couple of popular high content sites are:

http://www.Squidoo.com

http://www.HubPages.com

http://www.Gather.com

http://www.Ehow.com

They are user friendly and give you the opportunity to fill the pages with good content articles. The keywords you use to title the modules, articles and images can be found easily by search engines.

Public Speaking Marketing - Keyword Prominence

Keyword Prominence

Your keyword prominence is simply the placement of your keywords in your content. In SEO, it is not only important to use certain keywords in your content but ensuring you have proper keyword prominence.

Typical SEO practices will get you to include your keywords as often as you can without making your content difficult and un-natural to the reader. Solid SEO practices should also include the proper placement of those keywords in your sentences and paragraphs.

Where a certain keyword is placed on your page, paragraph and sentence, a percentage can be calculated that will determine how effective the keyword will be to the search engines.

Imagine your webpage or paragraph as a big piece of paper. The farther to the beginning of the upper-left hand corner of the paper a keyword is placed, the more prominent it will be to the search engines.

Keyword prominence is placing your keywords close to the beginning of sentences and paragraphs. Simply placing your keywords at the very beginning of your content will not work. Your keyword prominence must fit in your content making sense to the reader and easily flow with the rest of the content.

You can also try the use of bulleted lists containing your keywords to further increase your keyword prominence. Of course, the list needs to fit with the rest of your content otherwise your SEO efforts will be in vain.

Using the heading tags ( H1, H2, H3, etc.), anchor text, and bolding font near the beginning of sentences or paragraphs and make the keywords stand out perfectly clear to a search engine spider.

A keyword prominence analyzer: http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

Public Speaking Business Marketing - Self Publishing CDs

As a public speaker, it's a great idea to take the availability of your training and offer it to more people than just those who attend your speeches and workshops. You can create a massive amount of 'passive' income (money that rolls in while you sleep) with products that you can sell from a website.

Cd's are still a great idea and a viable product for people to buy. Cd's have real perceived value as opposed to MP3 and ebooks. You can produce entire sets of 3 or more to offer a training 'system' that holds real value. All products like this lead back to your speaking business or personal coaching, even if the customer has never met you before. It's a great way to get your name out there and make additional income beyond the speaking fees.  

But how do you make Cd's on the cheap? How much money do you have invest to start publishing Cd's? Using the Print-on-Demand method of self publishing, you can print and ship Cd's to customers starting with no money up front.

That's right. CreateSpace.com by Amazon and Vervante.com both will produce your compact disc and ship it to your customer even while your sleeping, with no more than an investment of your MP3 file and cover art work. Realistically, you could record a CD length MP3 in your home office and have someone (even a teenager) create the cover in Photoshop, and already have everything these two companies need to print and ship your Cd's.

You can even buy your own box of copies to sell at the back of the room during your speaking engagements. You could even give them away as prizes or give them away for database building opt-ins if you want to get really fancy. Prices vary between these two companies a bit, but ordinarily a CD can produced for as little as $2.50, and they don't charge you for it until the Cd has already been purchased. That means the money is already in your bank account before you pay the costs.

How could selling Cd's change the way you do business?

Public Speaker Marketing - Unique Visits and Page Views

If you hear somebody bragging about the amount of “hits” on their site, look a little further.


The terms “individual” or “unique” visitors are defined as individuals that have come to your website. “Page views” is defined as the number of pages they actually visited. Although these numbers will be close to the actual number of people that visit and the number of pages they look at, it's not an exact science.

Just keep in mind that “page views” and “unique visitors” are much more meaningful than “hits.”

The number of hits (files downloaded) can determine how much it costs to host your website. Be very careful about where you host your site. Ask them about their costs for going over your allotted amount of web hosting usage.

Let’s look at “unique visitors” and “page views” more closely.

One person visiting your site would be a “unique visitor.” That means that a person has come to your website.

If they came back a day later, (or some other time period that your statistic package is set for) that would be two unique visitors, although it’s the same person. If they came back in only a couple hours they probably wouldn't be counted again. It’s not really an exact science. Don't look for anything to be exact here. Just watch for upward and downward trends and big spikes in traffic from promotions you do or from mentions on other big websites or when you make your big appearance on Oprah :)

The other term “page views,” is when somebody actually downloaded a whole page, including the graphics. The web automatically downloads the page to their computers when they visit a site (you do the same when you visit a site). It does not mean they looked at it, but it means they “downloaded it.”

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