How to Write Descriptions for Your Talks and Presentations - EP:098

Okay, well, you found the red thread for your talk. You found an awesome title that combines something people want via an unexpected or ownable means to get there. Maybe you've adjusted it for TEDx. How do you actually talk about this talk? That's what we're talking about this week on Find the Red Thread. We're going to talk about how to craft great descriptions that people also say yes to. I'm your host, Tamsen Webster, of TamsenWebster.com. Please like and subscribe. I have some bad news and I have some good news. So the bad news is that we're dealing with the same problem in truth that we've been dealing with as we've been talking about titling our talks, TEDx or otherwise, that we need to make sure that we're framing our ideas in a form format that the organizer understands, because the organizer is the one making the decisions. The good news is we already know what that is. We already know what the structure of information needs to be for someone to say yes to our talk, because it's the same structure of information that anybody needs to say yes to a new idea. And that structure, if you've guessed it, say it with me now, is the Red Thread. We need to give people answers to fundamental questions that they haven't about, have about an idea before they can say yes to it. And when it comes to an organizer and the description, we also need to make sure that that description is written in such a way that it's just perfect for the organizer to pop into their conference program. We want to keep it ideally as close to how we've written it as possible, and if we've done a good job, the organizer is likely to do that. Because if we've written in such a way that the organizer gets all their questions answered, then they know that it's probably going to answer all the questions of their attendees too. When their attendees say yes to a presentation, then the organizer goes, "Yes, I've done my job." Alright, so how do we do that? Well, the first step is to pull together the pieces of your ideas red thread. So you're going to need the goal, the problem, the truth, the change, and the action of the presentation that you're about to describe. The good news is that you don't have to have built the whole presentation. You just need those pieces. And once you have those pieces, you'll have a description that definitely you'll be able to build a presentation off later and not go back and say, "Why the heck did I say the presentation was gonna be about that?" Not like I would have ever done that before I discovered this process for myself, but maybe you have. Okay, I totally did that. But this process, since I started using it, has just been able to nail the conference description or the proposal or the talk description every time. Here's how it goes. It's a simple framework that you're just gonna fill in the pieces of your Red Thread. Here's how it goes. First, you're gonna open with the goal. Open the description with the goal. Second, you're gonna allude to the problem or the idea. You're probably not gonna tell them exactly what it is, but you probably, by the way, have told them something about it in the title, but you're gonna allude to it here in the next part. In the third part, you're gonna match the outcomes that they can expect from the talk with your authority to speak about those outcomes. And then finally, you're gonna put together some actionable takeaways that are built on the pieces of the talk that you have already planned out. Now, what does that actually look like? So I'm gonna use a talk description that I built for a webinar that I did recently for Marketing Profs Pro, their pro seminar on how to build presentations. And I really wanted to focus on how do you design a presentation from the ground up, not so much on the slides, but really how do you figure out what the idea is and how do you structure it? So it was called, to evoke our titling descriptions from before, Substance, structure, style, colon, how to build presentations people say yes to. So substance, structure, style was indicating what the unexpected or unfamiliar approach might be. And then after the colon was how to build presentations people say yes to. Now I subsequently discovered that substance, structure, style is what grand storyteller expert Robert McKee uses. Had no idea at the time. So in future versions, I would probably just call this the second part, how to build presentations people say yes to, or I could use the red thread in the col— before the colon. But since we're talking about descriptions today, let's talk about this description. Now, remember the first thing I said is we're gonna open with the goal, and in this case I need to set it up a little bit, so here's how I did that. I said, "Each time we present, no matter how formally, we're asking our audience to say yes to a change in thinking or behavior." Now that's putting out a statement that I'm assuming most people will say yes to. And then I'm starting to get more specific about what specific question this talk will answer. I say, "Too often though, we get a whole lot of 'no.' Why?" So obviously since I have in the title, "How to Build Presentations People Say Yes to," that is the goal. So I'm just reframing it slightly differently in how I open this description. I'm saying, "We need people to say yes, we get a lot of no. Why do we get no?" Here's where I, second part, allude to the problem or the idea. I say, "Because we push for the yes rather than create the conditions for it." Now, I am actually telling them the answer. I'm telling them what the problem of my talk is, but not in such a way that they go, "Oh, I get it now. I don't need to listen." It's enough information that they say, "Oh, that makes sense, but I need to know what these conditions are." Why can't we push for the yes? All these other questions come into play, but those are good questions. Those are good questions that say, I want to know more, not what the heck is this about? Now the third piece, as I said, is to match outcomes with authority. Now I put the authority piece first. So I said, join recovering 20-year brand marketer and former TEDx executive producer Tamsen Webster. So I'm picking pieces from my background that I think are relevant to this particular talk. So if you go and look at my talk descriptions at TamsenWebster.com/speaking, you'll see that I treat this piece of it a little bit differently depending on what the topic of the talk is. I mean, oftentimes I'm gonna be talking about message strategy or brand strategy in TEDx, but it depends on the talk. So you're gonna pick the authority that you have, and then you're gonna match it to the outcomes of the talk. So this is going to be a little bit more specific now about the goal, but also what are the change in the actions that you've planned out when you're doing the work of your Red Thread. So I said, "Join me as she explains how to build the substance, structure, and style of your presentations that make it easy for your audience to say yes." So I'm telling you that this talk is going to give you how to build the substance, and the structure and the style of your presentations so that we get the outcome that we're looking for. You'll see also that I looped back to the goal at the beginning. That's just a way to kind of reinforce to people that when you listen to this talk, you'll get what the title promised. Now, sometimes you need to include actionable takeaways, and a lot of times, and in fact for most of the time that I put these takeaways together, I really focused on what people would learn, and I wanted to do that in a way that It was a little bit marketing-y. It was a way that would get people to say, "Well, what are the 5 ways to do this?" or "What are the 3 things that most people miss?" But I've recently started to be much more specific about that and frame it in this way: "By the end of this talk or the seminar or this webinar, you'll be able to," or "the audience will be able to." And so I'm framing some of those 5 key concepts from a truly actionable standpoint. So, in this case, I said, "Identify the 5 key concepts every presentation needs and know how to find them in your own." So instead of just saying, "You'll learn the 5 key concepts every presentation needs," I'm saying, "You'll be able to identify the 5 key concepts and know how to find them in your own presentation." Now, meeting organizers love this. I had a meeting organizer approach me with a talk that they wanted me to to give based on just that kind of phrasing, they said, that's one of the reasons we wanted to hire you because we understood that you had a focus on actual applicability of this information. So I have two more here. The second one was organize your content so it feels like a story even if it isn't one. So you'll be able to organize your content so it feels like a story even if it isn't one. Now the reason why I wanted to put that in there is because yes, it tells people you're gonna be able to organize your content, but adds a little bit more flavor into what they're gonna get. So now they know there's gonna be some elements of story and story structure and appeal to those people who really want to be better storytellers. 'Cause why do they wanna do this? And I add this as well, because I see, even if it isn't one, and keeps your audience hanging on every word, 'cause we don't just wanna organize our information, we wanna organize it in such a way that people are interested in it, that they're excited about it, they keep listening to it. So the third piece here was choose the illustrations and information that make your presentation and you come to life. So again, being specific here about what are the things that they're going to walk away with and be able to do. So choo— be able to choose the illustrations and information that make your presentation and you come to life. So when you have all those pieces, which again, you don't have to write the talk first. All you need is the pieces of your red thread first. You've got everything you need to put together a super powerful description. Now, if you want to see this written up, I wrote something on LinkedIn called "How to Write a Conference Session Proposal That Gets a Yes Every Time" or gets accepted every time. You can search for that and find it. But you can also pay attention to how other people do this well. Now, I've got more examples in my own speaking topics at TamsenWebster.com/speech. Speaking. But when you follow this format, I think you'll find that it makes the writing the descriptions easier, but it also makes it much, much easier for the organizers to say yes. So just remember this: you open with the goal, you allude to the problem and/or the idea, you match outcomes with your authority, and you give them actionable takeaways based on what they'll be able to do after your talk. That's this week's episode on how to write the descriptions for your talks so you can get that green light for them. Want more information on how to build that? You can find much of that same content in my Building Blocks for Better Talks presentation workshop that I did, and you can find that at tamsenwebster.com/blocksfortalks. So B-L-O-C-K-S F-O-R-T-A-L-K-S. So I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. If you did, please do me one more favor and like, subscribe, or share it. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.