Meg Pickard, Head of Communities & User Experience – The Guardian (London)

There are many ways for users to consume content online, begins Pickard. They consume, react, curate and create. Unfortunately we spend most of our time and efforts engaging them to consume and not enough engaging users to react, curate or create.

UCG or user generated content is considered a pretty dry term by Meg, she’d prefer to think of it as users expressing themselves about stuff they are passionate about.

People also tend to get social media and social networking confused. To often the media tends to provide social media tools in a separate environment to the content, rather than having that engagement interacting with the content.

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I’ve made some quick from reading and thinking about speech writing this afternoon. These notes are good for reading through before you get started and assessing first drafts against. This is a first rough.

You Should:

1. Reflect your personality, passion & perspective
2. Establish a purpose – what would you like the audience to take away from this?
3. Keep it fairly simple – try not to confuse the audience ( clear sentences & clear arguments)

Audience analysis

1. Who are they? What does each member have in common?
2. Why would they want to listen?
3. What do they have to benefit?
4. What level of detail is useful to them?

Opening:

1. Thought provoking
2. Ask a question, show a stat, tell an anecdote
3. Establish context / motive – why is it important
4. Tell your audience your what you are proposing & how it will be supported
5. Tell the audience what you will cover

Middle:

1. Make few points and do it well than bombard with many
2. Reiterate throughout – remind audience of the main point & refer to how the information supports your argument

End:

1. Recap
2. Summary
3. Leave food for thought… pose a question, tell an anecdote
4. Call to action / where to from here / recommendation

Theme:

Choosing a theme throughout helps audience remember main points and retain the central message

Evidence:

What backs up your thoughts?

Illustrations:

Stories to convey a message in a more interesting way

Terminology / language:

Don’t use new terminology or add variety in that way, this dilutes the message. Ie, say “review” throughout rather than – “reflection”, etc.

Tone:

Be careful of content that may offend

Ensure you don’t condescend your audience or talk over their heads

Know who your talking to (see audience above)

Here it is… you’ve heard me rave and finally they’ve put it online…

Great to listen over.

Mark has also written a post on Hyperpolitics which I’m looking forward to reading.

Oh yeah. My organization paid for me to attend Web Directions South and I’m a bit of a speech addict. So I looked up two of the stand out key note speakers who were inspirational and also people who I think focus on the universal issues. So this is stuff I think my media loving, artsy, creative and deep thinking friends would be into. If your not one of these – look anyway. He he.

Video Links:

http://www.scottberkun.com/services/speakingsamples/

http://markpesce.com/

I love casting.