Business demands brevity and quite often clients retain me for presentation training when what they really want is help organizing their thoughts.

They share:

“My boss says that I take too long to get the point.”

“I have trouble articulating what I really mean.”

“I don’t seem to hold my audience’s attention.”

Forbes Magazine estimates most speeches last 40 minutes. Ron Huff in his book Say It in Six says six minutes or shorter is the ideal length for any communication. While it may be impossible to restrict every communication to six minutes, I would agree. Brevity is best.

Brevity often accompanies greatness. Consider:

When Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa, he delivered a stunning speech that marked the end of apartheid. He spoke for five minutes.

It’s been said Winston Churchill’s oratory saved Britain from defeat in World War II. His “Never Give In” speech lasted six minutes and “Blood Sweet and Tears” was even shorter, two and half minutes.

Over one hundred years ago, Susan B. Anthony made one of the strongest speeches ever for woman’s rights, and she did it in less than five minutes.

Huff offers a five-step worksheet to “say it in six.”

1. “Let’s get right to the point. There’s a burning issue here that we need to discuss….”

2. “Here’s a quick overview – just a bit of background….”

3. “This led to an idea….”

4. “This idea will more than pay for itself. Here’s the payoff….”

5. “Here’s what we need from you to get going….”

Dale Carnegie in his book, Effective Speaking, suggests a similar format:

Example: Offer an incident that illustrates the main idea you wish to convey.

Point: In clear-cut terms, make your point.

Action: Tell the audience what you want them to do.

Benefit: Give them the benefit for doing what you ask.

I recommend clients structure their thoughts by answering these questions:

1. What is the one message, mission or theme you want to communicate?

2. What are the sub-themes that fall under the central theme (can you limit to three)?

3. What examples and/or personal stories bring life to these sub-themes?

4. What action do you want your audience to take?

5. What is the benefit to them for taking this action?

Brevity is short, but it is not shallow. By structuring your presentations around these five questions, you’ll streamline your communications, stay on point, maintain the audiences’ attention and stimulate them to action.

“The Career Engineer,” Randy Siegel, helps clients electrify their careers and transform their lives by becoming high voltage communicators™. Subscribe to “Stand in Your Power!” his eNewsletter at www.powerhousecommunications.com

If you have a business, podcasting has many applications that allow you to get in front of your customers, get your name out there, and ultimately make you more money. It’s a great way to boost your business with a very small investment of money and time.

If you are not ready to make the leap to full time podcaster, there are other ideas. For example, you can podcast on an area of the industry you currently work in as an employee.

Show yourself to be interested in learning more about the business and you could find yourself considered as an up-and-comer when the next round of promotions happens at your office.

Alternatively, you can moonlight outside of your job as a podcaster. You can do this on a free basis as a hobby or in the capacity of an entrepreneur looking to eventually build your part-time business into a full-time career.

Palmcasting is a similar concept to podcasting, except it applies to PDA devices which can receive and play podcasts. Punchcasting is a way of receiving podcasts in your smartphone without having to sync it onto your computer first. It requires that you have a smartphone with RSS.

The future of podcasting is wide open right now because it is still a fledgling industry without a regulatory body. While podcasting is just catching on and only a couple years old, people are already talking about zencasting or vidcasting which is similar to podcasting but contains video as well.

But it doesn’t stop there. Visionaries will see beyond podcasting and even though it is exciting and new, technology advances so rapidly that it will get old very quickly. What is around the corner and how will podcasting influence it?

Soon, we may find highly interactive vidcasts that are automatically made available to us without us having to subscribe to them.

Based simply on our browsing or online buying habits and the technology will be streamlined enough that computers will automatically come with the programs that go out and catch the podcasts without having to download additional programs.

If you are really excited about the opportunity to podcast, then take a moment to select two or three topics and start brainstorming some subtopics that might be interesting to podcast on.

You can probably already see some opportunities for you to start a business or increase your current business through podcasting. You may want to create some subtopics under each heading to start thinking about specific podcasts that you can do.

If you want to make the leap from hobbyist to professional, to either boost current business or start a new business, you can. You’ll need a couple extra programs to create a quality sound. Here are some recommendations to get you started.

While technically, you can get started with the microphone that probably came with your computer, you’ll want to likely invest in a slightly better microphone or if you have more than one person speaking in your podcast, you’ll need to get more than one microphone.

A good place to start without having to rob a bank is to buy a USB microphone at an office supply store. They are affordably priced and unless you are planning studio quality production, they will do an excellent job for you.

It is quite easy to podcast; I’m sure you’re surprised at how easy it is. It’s quite another thing though, to maintain a podcast on an ongoing basis. A lot has been discussed about the regularity of podcasts and exactly how frequent a podcast needs to be.

While it is true that the frequency of a podcast does depend largely on the material that is covered, it is also true that subscribers may not be able to listen as frequently as you want to podcast.

If you have a lot of material and are looking to make a daily podcast you might want to consider a very short podcast of two to five minutes.

Like e-mail that gets stacked up in your inbox, podcasts that don’t get listen to compile a very quickly if a subscriber doesn’t get a chance to heara few of them in a row. Often what happens after that is a delete the whole batch, figure they’ve missed too much vital information, and unsubscribe.

On the other hand, too infrequent of a podcast will mean that people do not feel the same ownership in listening as they would from something a little more regular.

When it’s all said and done, you need to know what material you need to cover and how much time you have to spend on podcasts in order to determine how frequently you are going to podcast. This is the length to width ratio: the length of your podcast in relation to the width of the material.

Look at other podcasts to see what kind of material may cover and the relationship that has to the frequency they produce these podcasts. CNN, for example, can produce a daily podcast that is very short because of the nature of its headline style material.

Their podcasts are very short. A podcast covering the world of baseball, might be better off podcasting every week since they will be able to talk about a couple of the games is well is some news

Richard Reichmann is internationally known as a millionaire maker. He’s a leading consultant in real estate and internet marketing strategies that are profit proven.

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Have a script but don’t read from it. Listeners can tell both ways: if you are just flying from the seat of your pants, or… all… you… do is speak like this all the way through your podcast. Both ways can be annoying.

Put a little bit of music or a related sound at the beginning and end of your podcast. Like parentheses, these just give the listener with audible cues that your podcast is starting and finishing.

Host a podcast, rather than simply letting it be a sounding board of one person renting on and on. The differences in voices will make for a more enjoyable experience for your listener.

Give headlines at the beginning of your podcast. Tell listeners to expect to hear these 3 things: Number one, number two, number three. That way, they can follow along more easily.

Add value! Podcasts can be a good way to make money, which we will talk about in detail later, but people will only be drawn to them if they actually add value to their lives. Don’t use your podcast as a vehicle to only move product or you will find you only need to make one podcast because no one will listen to any more.

Remember that podcasting is an audio format. There are many podcasts out there today that are simply recordings of seminars or trade shows or product unveilings that require in order to succeed.

Learn to speak clearly. Either hire a professional to help you or join a group like Toastmasters whose purpose is to help you speak more clearly. There are too many podcasts today whose speakers have not tried to improve their ability to be understood, and these podcast will not be around for very much longer.

Be excited about your topic!

Whether you are new to podcasting or a veteran this list will help improve your listener’s experience.

Niche markets

The secret to successful podcasting, and to the future success of the industry lies in podcasting’s ability to service a niche market. Most people can find general information readily available quickly.

What people want is in-depth information, instruction, and entertainment specific to their area of interest. It is easy for them to find a web site that will post all the baseball scores in their favorite division.

What they might be looking for however, is information, instruction, and entertainment related to their baseball team, which might not be readily available at the click of a mouse.

People who want to find out more about the industry, do not want to scour the Internet for a couple hours each day looking for analysis and information and top experts. Podcasting brings all of that to them.

Richard Reichmann is internationally known as a millionaire maker.

He’s a leading consultant in real estate and internet marketing strategies that are profit proven.

Subscribe to our FREE newsletter Value $147.00

http://www.PodcastWealthbuilder.com