“I hate having my picture taken!”
“The least favorite thing I do for work is presentations.”
“I’m not good at talking on camera.”
If these are phrases you’ve thought of before or maybe even said out loud, you are not alone. Public speaking is the number 1 fear of people. People rank public speaking as scarier than spiders, heights, and even death!
Yet, some recent marketing statistics say 85% of consumers want to see more videos from brands. Another suggests 65% of consumers want to see a video about a product or a service.
What is a video? A form of public speaking!
Hi, I’m Jennifer Roberts, the owner of Back Porch Communications and you are here on week 6 of our series on Being the Boss of Your Brand. This week are continuing our discussion on how to Be the Face of Your Brand – Part 2 where I’m talking about public speaking in-person or on video.
If you aren’t sure if you even want to Be the Face of Your Brand – go check out last week’s video about that topic. I offer tips to help you understand if you should be speaking for your brand and how to do it.
But back to video and in-person presentation. I’ve got four tips for you to focus on how you can get better at Being the Face of Your Brand when you are presenting. These four tips are Perception, Prepare, Practice, and Performance. Let’s go through each one.
Just like those thoughts I talked about at the beginning of this article, our mind can tell us lots of reasons not to do presentations, but it’s our job to fix that Perception we have about public speaking. We can’t let our negative mindset about public speaking get in the way of our presentation success.
So I want to share just two negative thoughts that might be troubling you about presenting and how to power through them.
“I don’t like how I look on camera.” I hear this one a bunch! Friends who don’t need the latest fashion and a make-up artist to get in front of people or a camera. We definitely want to show up feeling and looking our best, but it’s important to remember – people that want to learn what you have to offer are not looking at your eye makeup (unless you are selling eye-makeup) – they want to hear the information you have to share that can help them solve a problem.
“I’m too busy to do this work.” I hear this statement when someone feels they don’t have the time to dedicate to presenting or videos. Sure we are all busy, but I find the busy-ness is a cover for:
· I’m not an expert in this area.
· I don’t feel confident that I know what I’m doing.
· I need a guide to help me.
The question I ask those who are too busy is – Are you too busy to talk to your customers? You don’t have time to tell them about what you do in hopes they will work or buy from you?
Of course, you have time for customers. Think about the fact that with a video or presentation you might be talking to many potential customers at once – what a time saver!!! With video, you could be educating your ideal client while you sleep. Now being too busy sounds like a bit of an excuse, doesn’t it?
Now that you have decided to talk to your customer in a presentation or video we need to Prepare. That is step 2. I want you to write a single concept that your customer might need to know about. You don’t need to talk about many ideas during one talk or video. Our listeners can get easily confused or distracted. Keep it short, simple, and focused on one topic.
There is a structure you can use to help you stay on track. A hook – is something that grabs the viewers’ attention. An introduction tells me a bit about who you are and what you are going to talk about. Find three points that you want to teach about and wrap it up with an ending that will help the audience know what to do next.
So to review – To Prepare your talk you want a Hook, an Introduction of you and your topic, Three supporting points, and an Ending where your audience can take action.
Step three is to Practice the talk. There are two ways I like to practice – out loud and mentally. Out loud means that I ready the talk multiple times to hear what it sounds like and to become very familiar with the structure of the talk and the words I’m using. I like to do this in front of a mirror so I can see how I look giving the talk. The other form of practice is visualization. I picture in my mind how the talk will go. I picture me hitting it out of the ballpark and seeing the audience engaged and interested in what I’m saying.
My fourth and final tip is about Performance. These are things like your appearance and working on looking your best self. For women, I suggest natural makeup, minimal jewelry, and wearing solid colors. For men and women, choose the clothing you are going to wear based on the topic or the audience you are speaking to. You want to be appropriate for the situation.
Think about keeping your appearance neutral and not distracting. You want the audience focused on what you are saying – not the big dangling earrings you chose that morning.
Make sure you are making eye contact with the audience or the camera – but know that is OK to look away as well. It’s how we talk to people in general conversation.
I hope you can see that showing up to Be the Face of Your Brand is not only a necessary part of attracting your ideal client but completely possible for you! It is an essential part of how you can Be the Boss of Your Brand. If you are looking for more tips on how to Be the Boss of Your Brand, stick with me. I’ll be here every week through the end of 2021, laser-focused on this topic.
Next time I am talking about Executing with Confidence!
You can find this series in a variety of places. Pick which one you like the most!
· Join the PR and Marketing for Small Business Owners and Nonprofits Facebook group to find a community of others who want to share their passion with the world just like you.
If you are interested in working together, I do have 1:1 spaces available right now. Book a 30-minute Zoom call on my calendar, and we can talk about taking your brand to the next level.