Legal Marketing & PR

5 Practical Tips to Make a Speech Go Viral

By Larry Bodine

Lindsay Kolowich has written an excellent article on the Hubspot Blogs "The Science of a Great TED Talk" and five steps to make the speech go viral.

To uncover why certain TED talks are more popular than others, the folks at Science of People, a human behavior research lab, recently conducted an intensive experiment on nonverbal communication. For the experiment, they had 760 volunteers watch hundreds of hours of TED talks and answer questions about charisma, intelligence, credibility and more.

They found that five specific, nonverbal patterns differentiate the most popular TED talks from the least popular ones. And they believe these five patterns show us how to be influential and charismatic.

1) Nonverbal communication matters. A lot. practice standing up straight, purposefully using the space on the stage to move around, and using natural and appropriate hand gestures to improve your delivery.

2) The more hand gestures, the better. Use your hands to help illustrate and reinforce your ideas. When you do, you will seem more relaxed, confident, and authoritative.

3) Scripted speeches "kill charisma." Speakers who told stories, ad-libbed, and even yelled at the audience captivated the audience's imagination and attention. The same goes for delivery of webinars and other web-based materials such as podcasts and blogs. According to Dan Jaffe, Attorney and CEO of LawLytics, "people care more about hearing from you -- flaws, false starts and all -- than they care about hearing a perfectly polished yet scripted delivery." This is why LawLytics trains their law firm customers to blog authentically and speak from the heart.

4) Smiling makes you look smarter. No matter how serious your topic, find something to smile about.

5) You have seven seconds to make an impression.Think about how you present yourself, how you walk onto the stage, and how you address your audience. Be sure to deliver an intriguing opening line -- perhaps with a thought-provoking question, a short story, or a joke. For the full article visit The Science of a Great TED Talk: What Makes a Speech Go Viral.

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on April 04, 2015 (boomark / email).