Creating content for your personal brand is an easy way to start developing your storytelling skills. With the right tone, audience, and format, you can develop your presentation, educational writing, or keynote speaking talent.
Presenting is a skill that comes more naturally to some people than others. For those who are not very good at it, there are stages of presentations to help you learn how to tell stories effectively. These stages include the introduction, body, conclusion, and afterword (or Q&A).
The first two parts of any talk should be focused on establishing context and introducing the topic. Your introducer should motivate individuals to attend by telling them why this information is important and interesting.
After that, the speaker must establish their narrative through the body of the talk – this is where they discuss their main points and examples. Finally, the conclusion reiterates what was said earlier and asks if anyone has anything new to add.
All four components mentioned above are crucial to creating impact with your speech. When someone listens to your talk, they will remember both you and the message because of these components. Take time to review yours and see how you could improve them.
Creating a talk that people will actually watch is not quick and straightforward, especially if you are new to public speaking or even presenting to a group.
Public speaking can be quite intimidating at times. There are many different types of speeches, with various levels of complexity. Some speakers seem to get a lot of attention while others stay anonymous.
This article will go into detail about the five basic stages of any speech, as well as some tips for advanced strategies like incorporating stories and examples. But first, what is the main message of the presentation?
What should your audience take away from listening to your talk?
The main goal of every spoken word argument is to make your listeners feel confident in either supporting your position or proving yourself wrong. Either one will win them over!
So how do we achieve this? By using storytelling. A story is defined as an event sequence involving action, setting, characters, and plot.
Stories are very common and use a framework called the 5-bullet point structure to tell a tale. The term “story” comes from the ancient Greeks where they would tell tales or narrate events that influenced future actions.
Now let’s apply this to content. Your topic (argument), person (point of view), and situation (setting) have all been covered already; this article will focus on developing your narrative or story.
After you have prepared your speech, gathered your notes, and practiced it several times, it is time to start creating content! The first part of any talk is its out-the-door or final stage, called the conclusion. This is where you make an appeal or call for action, close by asking people to do something or come along with you on this journey or that one.
It can be direct, like telling someone to try new foods because they will probably dislike them at least once. It could be indirect, such as suggesting that people read more so they know how to use language properly. Either way, the call to action must leave the listener feeling motivated to take action.
After the call to action, there is usually some sort of reward or incentive for those who choose to play along. This can be a discount coupon for whatever they were talking about, free entry into a event, or a tchotchke. A tchotchke is a small gift that comes only after doing something else, so if you are giving away a book, what would better than a little baggie of popcorn?
That is all very well and good, but what happens when you don’t get enough audience participation during the conclusion? You lose momentum and things go downhill from there.
One of the trickiest things about content marketing is finding the right timing to drop off after you shared an article or presentation with someone.
If you left them with no action, they may be waiting for your next email to do something. Or they might give up and stop trying to promote your business because they think it’s a waste of time.
Either way, they won’t be doing much helping your company succeed.
So what are some good strategies for dropping off?
First, make sure that you're signed out of all their accounts (you can usually find this under Settings). This way, they'll can't send messages or update anything while you're logged into their account.
It's also important to respond within 24 hours.
Most large corporations have an internal team that creates content for them, such as an Instagram account or a YouTube channel. These teams are made up of people with different specializations, but usually include someone who writes article material, someone to take pictures of you behind the product, and then someone to edit both.
Marketing departments don’t always have these divisions, so there may be individuals assigned various tasks like writing and producing videos or posting articles online.
What this doesn’t vary is the need to coordinate all of this content! It would be impossible for anyone outside of the company to produce engaging, well-written posts on their behalf, so companies hire freelance writers and photographers to help create content for them.
One of the easiest ways to begin creating content is by picking an area that you are already connected to – and improving on it!
I’m talking about this from the perspective of someone who writes for online magazines with us here at Mpowerment.com. We have a website, blogs, social media pages, and email lists; all of these contain content or ‘messaging’ that we write.
Your potential audience will be doing the same thing so why not help them out? Starting your own business doesn’t happen overnight but there are some universal stages people go through when they’re investing their time into something new.
These stages include: preparation, decision, action and evaluation.
The next level of content is marketing or promotional videos. These are usually focused more on how to use a product, service, or concept than telling a story.
Some people call these advertisements because they seem like commercials with a product featured instead of an interesting person. That’s not a bad thing though!
Product announcements and advertising are very important parts of marketing a company. They help spread the word about your products and give potential customers information they need to know before buying.
However, too much of a focus on only promoting a product can become boring for the viewer. People get tired of watching ads for a few minutes at a time.
To avoid this, presentation content needs to have some storyline or narrative. Product reviews are a good example of this. A short movie or video will typically be longer than just one minute long review of a product.
These stories are usually related to the topic of the video somehow, but that isn't always the case. It depends on the genre of the video you're filming.