I attended a social media workshop yesterday. There were a few different reasons why I went, one reason being the speaker was to talk about how to build your brand online, especially using social media. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. What I got was an intro to social media. Although I did glean from the workshop a new book to read. (I always try to learn something.) If you are a speaker, and I don’t care what you’re speaking about, I would like to give you a couple little tips.

1. If you have handouts for your attendees, make sure you put your contact information on it. I looked all over trying mine trying to find the speaker’s name, but to no avail. (You know that someone might want to contact you for more information or, maybe, hire you.)
2. If you survey the room and discover that everyone in the room is using social media personally and/or for business, let’s step it up a notch. This can be applied to any subject, i.e. if I am teaching a scrapbooking class and everyone in the room has been doing it for over a year, I am not going to go over basic tools.
3. Tell everyone you don’t care if they are on their phones or laptops, because you figure they are telling everyone how great the presentation is. I figured I just got an excuse to goof off and not pay attention if and, in this case, when I got bored.
4. Stay routed to your spot behind the computer/podium/table while reading from your Power Point slides. That equals boring. Besides, I can read – you gave me a copy of your slides for a handout. Boring again.
5. Have interaction with your attendees, hand raising the in beginning does not count. In this case, the presenter could have pulled up different sites, even the attendees sites and given feedback – they had internet connection.
6. Don’t contradict yourself. People catch that right away, at least those paying attention, which I must have been doing as I was on Facebook – replying to posts. I didn’t feel guilty, I had permission.  Smart phones are great aren’t they.
7. Watch your time. Don’t go over and leave some time for questions. (Basic.) Have someone be a time keeper if you can’t do it yourself.

I hope all of this doesn’t sound harsh. The presenter was nice. It just was not what I was expecting, and I know it was not what other people in the room expected either. But these are great tips. In fact, it’s some of the requirements that I use (well we use – there are three of us) in determining speakers for the EDE. And if you are asked to speak for a group, but do not have much experience with public speaking, you might want to google it. Or better yet, get a hold of me and I can put you in touch with a group in Phoenix that helps you become a better speaker.

*As a side note, I apologize for the numbering being squished together. I kept putting spaces between the numbers and WordPress kept taking them out.