Twitter Talk Tune Up Tips

Last week, Brett Flickinger, JD Gershbein, Brian Tomkins and I presented at The Business Ledger’s Newsmakers Forum. Brett started out with strategy. JD covered LinkedIn. Brian presented Facebook for business and I talked about twitter.

Thanks to my intern for sitting through a business buffet lunch, filming my presentation, taking pictures and most importantly, critiquing my “Twitter flight school: not for birds, but for business” presentation.

Getting a college student’s perspective was surprisingly helpful in tuning up my twitter talk for next time.

What worked . . .

The Five Ws is an outline people understand and works well here:
Who uses twitter?
What is twitter?
When would I use twitter for my business?
Where does twitter go?
Why do people use twitter to promote businesses?
Bonus: How do I get started?

Acronyms stay, in this case CoryWest Media, LLC’s W-I-R-E-D approach grabs attention and sticks.

Photography: people like my images, but not necessarily the ones of me.

Stats hold, which surprised me. I didn’t think college students cared that much, but stats are facts. Like these tweets per day numbers, stats give perspective.
2007 = 5,000
2008 = 300,000
2009 = 2,500,000
2010 = 50,000,000

When would I use _______________ ? is a good question to answer for any social media tool, as I did for twitter with these options.
Listen
Search
Respond
Question
Connect
Cover
Spy

Where does twitter go? Is a question someone asked me once at a conference. Here’s my answer. What would you add?
Twitter
Google
Bing
Followers
Facebook
Retweets
LinkedIn
Anywhere you send links

Social Media Action Plan steps wrap up every presentation I do – I’ll add a few more to these for the next one.
Set up a social email address
Grab your brand names
Sign up for twitter
Ask your clients if they’re on twitter
Listen to talk
Respond
Search
RSS feed
Add twitter everywhere

To change . . .
Slim down the number of screenshots to a few that tell the story and stay with them rather than fast-forwarding through too many.
Take out pictures of me with “famous” people that people in the audience don’t recognize. It takes too long to set up the story and not everyone will make the connection.
Get out from behind the podium and engage more with the audience, which is more my presentation style.
Cut the slides in half – 44 is too many for a 30 minute presentation. Ten might be just right.

Social Meida Panel Participation
Got an A on this one.

Left to right: Jonathon Twitty of The Business Ledger, Barbara Rozgonyi [me!], JD Gershbein and Brian Tomkins

Watching the video will give me another perspective.

Another reviewer, this one an audience member, came up and told me, “I finally get twitter. Thanks! Now I know exactly how I’m going to use twitter in my business.”

But, someone else still seemed confused and not quite convinced that twitter would work for their business. If this sounds like you, think of twitter as a search and research center. Start out by watching what’s happening in businesses around you and then decide whether or not you need to go to twitter flight school.

If you do, let me know. I love teaching people how to fly into twitter and attract loyal flocks of followers and customers in social media workshops and keynote presentations.

How do you critique your presentations?