​Keynote speaker : ready for the spotlight?

Position yourself as a leader in your industry. Create a great keynote speech. Educate, influence and entertain your audience. 
Keynotes are ideal to engage people with your ideas. And with you as a person. 
​
When is a keynote challenging? (high-visibility or high-stake)
  • in TED talks, in industry and corporate events, business circles;
  • in videos, vlogs, webinars or podcasts.

​You are a chief economist, legal expert, academic, business school professor, consultant, director of R&D, innovator. Speaking in public is a cornerstone of content marketing strategy, whether you market yourself or your company. You have to adapt your talk to large and small audiences, publics with diverse interests and knowledge.

You want to : 
  • Tell everyone how you (or your company) help others and how good you are at doing it; (and how easy to understand it is)
  • Share a vision to reshape the debate in your field and move people to action;
  • Tell a great personal story to inspire others.

You hope to gain awareness, generate leads and support for your business, extend you community, create ambassadors for your ideas.

What is at stake? Your credibility, your reputation and the contact opportunities leading to you next big project.
You will struggle answering these questions:
  1. Is my talk interesting? Too technical? Loosing people? Too long?
  2. What message will the audience get? Is it the message I intended to send out?
  3. Am I ready for the spotlight?
  4. How about my body language : do I move my hands too much? Do I speak fast enough? 
  5. Are my slides looking professional, exciting?
  6. How about starting my sentence and forgetting what to say next? (or loosing the thread)
  7. How to appear natural and spontaneous when it is all prepared? (should I script?)
  8. Should I introduce myself? How about adding a video? How about storytelling?
  9. How much preparation time should I book?
  10. How to make an inspirational speech, not a sales pitch?
  11. How to speak about myself and not sound egocentric nor expose myself?
  12. (My personal favorite, especially with legal experts) How to deliver correct, precise and comprehensive information with too little time and no jargon? (and make it exciting?)
The choice is yours.
Prepare on your own
Procrastinate, then gather all material in PowerPoint or Word, then try to organise and cut, cut, cut. (Painful, isn't it?)
​Read books on TED talks, rely on peer feedback (after all, you never got any negative feedback, did you?), watch videos of great presentations trying to find out what works, re-use what worked last time you were on stage, hope for supporting reactions in the audience, hope for any reaction at all, and maybe you'll find a great opening just as you step up to the stage.

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