White Noise - are you adding to it?

Today I had a chance to do a lot of searching on the web and catch up to the blogs that I like to follow, got an Alltop page (now you can make your own personal Alltop page), caught up on some news, tweeted a few times, responded to some e-mails, listened to some NPR on the way to work...and still tried to get some work done.  What I realized is that there is a TON of information out there for us to process.  So the question I have for people who are speaking and presenting is simply this:  Are you adding to the white noise that so many of us deal with on a day-to-day basis or are you giving speeches and presentations that are leaving a mark with the audience?

Let's say you WANT to leave a mark with the audience...how do you do that is the next question.  If you want to truly be successful there is a lot of things that you need to do, but here are a couple of suggestions to help you get started.

1.  Set yourself apart with good design for your speeches.

You can do this in several ways.  First off, pick up Garr Reynolds book Presentation Zen or any of the books that are listed on this blog.  All of them contain some great tips on presentation ideas and how you can incorporate great design ideas into your presentations instead of the typical bullet-point presentations that are out there.  Secondly, read some blogs on good design.  There are a lot out there and my blogroll contains quite a few of them, but I would suggest Ethos3 as a good starting point.

2.  Be different

Does this mean wearing a clown suit?  No.  What it does mean is find something that you can do to set yourself apart from the pack.  One suggestion that I have is to use something other than PowerPoint if you are going to give a presentation.  A great new software called Prezi is in the beta phase right now and has great potential to overturn how people present.  If you can get started early using the software before everyone else, you can set yourself apart and be one of the fore-runners in this new technology.

3.  Engage People

This is done on a couple of levels.  First off, when you are presenting you need to engage your audience by talking to them instead of at them.  You can do this by working on your eye contact with the audience and making sure to pay attention to them and not your images behind you.  Additionally, engage them with on-line mediums such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.  Brett Duncan wrote a good blog about this titled "Exploiting vs. Exploring."  Don't exploit the use of these services just to build a name for yourself, but engage people with them.

Those are three simple things you can do to start setting yourself apart from all of the white noise out there: Have good design, be different and engage people.  While there is quite a bit more to it than that, this is at least a start.  

Comments

[Brett Duncan, MarketingInProgress.com]

Thanks for the linkage.

I think the white noise issue has always been a fundamental challenge for any messenger, but even so much more in today's environment. Not only do you have to strive to not be lost in the white noise, but you also have to work to make sure you aren't exposed to too much of it.

[Travis Dahle]

Good point on not being exposed to too much of it. I sometimes feel like my brain gets fried when I try to follow too much stuff and keep up to date with everything...I guess if I ever get big enough I can hire someone to do that sort of thing for me!