Last week, I shared our Rugby Bricks AI content strategy at Context X with 100 of Aotearoa’s leading marketing and business minds.
With an admittance price of $1,449.50 and knowing many successful heads would be in the audience, I was experiencing more than a few pre-speech jitters leading up to the event.
But I wanted to crush it. So, to design my talk, I enlisted the help of a book called Brain Rules by molecular biologist John Medina. The result was, as voted by attendees, the most engaging presentation at the conference.
Here’s what I did to calm my nerves and keep my audience’s minds eye on content AI for 40+ minutes.
1. Thank people for coming as they walk into the room:
It sounds a little cheesy, but it reduces the “crowd” to a room of individuals in your head, which is more approachable.
2. I call my audience to action by saying this verbatim:
“It’s more fun for everyone if we’re all involved, so when I ask a question, I get people to vote with their hands up or down. It would make me feel better and less nervous if you participated. So if I ask a question, please throw your hands in the air, and if I stare at you, please either smile or feign interest in what I’m saying – both work.”
This gets people engaged with you from the outset and makes them more willing to interact.
3. Attention reboots:
Attention peaks at the start of a presentation and begins declining after 10 minutes. So, every 10 minutes I get everyone to stand and participate in an activity that has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.
Here’s a couple:
- Guiding people through a physiological sigh
- Getting people’s attention firing by getting people to stare at a blank white screen for 45 seconds (I stole this from Andrew Huberman’s learning protocol)
- Using two QR codes to get the audience to interact with their phone and watch something on their screens for 10 seconds
4. I structured each 10-minute block the following way:
Context: What led me to the story I’m about to share. (1 minute)
Story: The problem I faced, how I solved it and the emotions I experienced.
This is like a micro version of the hero’s journey. A Hollywood tested, and proven method to draw in an audience. The more emotions you can evict from your audience the more they’ll remember about your presentation. (8-minutes)
Lead: Lead into the next block with what you’ll discuss in the next ten-minute block (1-minute)
Notes:
This was my 27th public speech of sorts, and while the topics and structure have changed, one thing has stayed the same. And that’s the importance of stories.
Above all else, storytelling is the key to engaging an audience and creating a lasting memory. The best presenters tell the most engaging stories, and that takes practice (aye, Allen).
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