Lily Iatridis · Marketing & Branding Expert

Let’s face it. People’s minds wander.

With all of the electronic gadgetry and social media out there now, many of us are developing the attention spans of fleas, myself not excluded.

So if you’re giving a talk that lasts more than 20 or 30 minutes, how do you keep your audience’s attention on you? Yes, the topic has to be relevant to them. Yes, you must pepper your content with engaging stories and anecdotes. Yes, you must move on to a new subtopic, story, or activity every 10 minutes or less. If you’ve been subscribed to my newsletter awhile, you should have that all drummed i…

Last week I attended the annual New York Small Business Expo in Manhattan, and I saw some excellent presentations. One was by Diane DiResta, a speaker trainer who has worked with the likes of Les Brown and travelled around the world as a professional speaker. There was one statement she made about confidence and persuasive public speaking that stood out:

“People will adjust what you say in their minds according to how they see you.”

In other words, the audience will decide whether or not to listen to you depending upon how you appear and the way you deliver your message. This will imp…

In a recent teleseminar, I shared four pieces of information every elevator pitch must include so that your audience will know exactly who you serve and how you do so.

Since that call was mostly for private group members, I’d like share that information with all my readers here today. Toward the end of this article, I’ll also share some tips on what to do if you have to cut your elevator pitch short. Let’s face it, at informal cocktail parties, you can’t stand in a circle with four or five people and dive into an entire elevator pitch without sounding canned or long-winded. It must sound …

We’ve all been there. You’ve prepared a 45-minute presentation, and you’re ready to go. Then, before you get up to present, there’s a change in schedule, and your host, boss, or whomever suddenly tells you that you only have 20 minutes to deliver your speech.

What do you do?! How do you edit your entire presentation in one minute or less and still make maximum impact?

10 Things to Do if You Have to Shorten Your Speech Drastically on the Spot:

1) Take a deep breath. Calm yourself. Pretend that your fine with it.

2) Throw out your Powerpoint. As we say here in New Jersey, jus…

When you only have a minute for public speaking, every sentence counts, especially the first one.

The Influencer Project event took place last month online, and it was an interesting opportunity to examine the power of an initial business self-introduction. During this program, sixty very successful businesspeople introduced themselves and then proceeded to give one-minute tips on how to best influence others.

While all of the speakers gave great advice, some of them discreetly marketed themselves brilliantly with their 10-second introduction, while others did not.

There were some …

Public speaking has so many purposes. Building your reputation, promoting your business, selling products as well as self-expression are just a few.

If you’re speaking in public to promote your business and sell products, then you have to learn some techniques for selling from the stage. There are special tactics and strategies you must employ in your presentation to entice your audience to buy from you. Lisa Sasevich is a master at this. Many business leaders today receive coaching from her on selling from the stage. If you need training on selling to groups, then I highly recomme…

I haven’t bought Delivering Happiness by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh yet, but I’ve read and listened through the book’s promotional website. I like their core value of creating a happy corporate culture devoted to making customers happy.

While I don’t think a full or multi-day event is long enough to create a real “culture” by Tony Hsieh’s definition, some of the concepts he applies to Zappos certainly speaks to seminar leaders preparing to deliver their own event.

Here are a few that stood out as for me as I listened to his hour-long presentation:

1) It’s important to create a comfortab…