We’ve all been there. You’re at an event, ready to be informed and enthralled by the upcoming speaker – only to spend the next half hour checking email on your iPhone or flipping through the conference brochure to see what time lunch is at.

The next time it happens to you, spend a few minutes thinking how the presentation might be improved and you’ll learn a lot about what makes great content – whether that’s public speaking, blog posts, ebooks or podcasts.

Your Content Shouldn’t Be About You

The worst kind of conference speakers are the ones that talk incessantly about themselves. You know the type, they spend half their time talking through their resumes or telling rubbish anecdotes and ‘in jokes’ designed for their buddies in the third row.

It doesn’t matter what format we’re talking about, people don’t really care about you. They care about themselves. In content terms, that means they want to know how something will apply to them, be motivated to change their businesses or daily lives and take away ideas, tips, strategies and techniques that they can use themselves.

By all means use your own experiences to illustrate your points or add a little personality and humour, but the focus of your content must be on delivering something useful, informative or simply entertaining to your audience.

Start by asking: ‘what do my audience want to know’ or ‘what information would make their lives / jobs easier’?

You Should Share Something of Value

Bad speakers talk in generalisations and cliches. They tell you things you already know and try to pass off well-worn ideas as unique wisdom. Good speakers have the ability to both paint the big picture and get down to the detail.

Just like a speaking engagement, producing content in any format is an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge of your industry. This means tangible, detailed ideas that people can take away and use; combined with an understanding of the bigger picture and what’s happening in your industry.

And if your topic is all ‘big idea’ use examples and metaphors to make these ideas concrete.

You Need to Bring Your Content to Life

Sometimes a speaker can have interesting content but they deliver it in such a boring way that you struggle to keep your eyes open long enough to take it all in. The same can be true of any kind of content – from white-papers to video to blog posts.

Great speakers learn to use images, body language, multi-media presentations and, most importantly, enthusiasm to help bring their topics to life. How can you do the same with your content?

You Should Tailor Your Message to Your Audience

Bad speakers drag out the same presentations  and tired jokes every time they speak. This might save them some time, but it certainly shows.

Great speakers know how to adapt their presentations for particular audiences. Some may need more detail, others less. Some may be experienced in an industry, others might be relative newbies. Some audiences might be technical, or business savvy, or interested in investing, or potential customers and clients, or …..

Knowing your audience is half the battle, adapting your content to give them what they want is the other half.

You Know Bad Content When You See It

It’s pretty easy to spot a bad conference speech when you hear it. There are no boos or heckles, but there aren’t very many questions or discussions after the fact either.

Great speakers create interest and while you may never set foot on a conference stage, you canout the same ideas to use in your own written, video or audio content.

Make it great and they’ll be clamouring for more.

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons [1]

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