Landed early this morning in Tel Aviv, had a 2 hour cab ride to the Rosh Pina Festival, have met the local team and now am putting the finishing touches to my presentation!
5.30am Over Tel Aviv
Local office from the road
Big Microsoft presence at the festival
Incredible views from the hotel!
Flying to Israel tonight to speak at the Rosh Pina Festival:
“Held in the picturesque Galilee in the northern part of Israel, Rosh Pina Festival, convening this year for the 9th consecutive year, is the most important annual media conference in Israel. In addition to the traditional renowned TV festival, this year the festival is going global and digital by launching an independent digital track.”
I’ll be speaking about digital marketing trends in Europe and showing a few fabulous demos.
Never been to Israel so am really looking forward to it, especially as I’m staying here: http://www.mizpe-hayamim.com – just in case you want to get hold of me! 🙂
Back on Saturday and then off to PubCon on Sunday!
See you there?
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubNF9QNEQLA]
Ciaran Norris just demoed the above video at SMX London – it’s the follow up to the Transport For London basketball vid which I got first time!
This one is a LOT harder believe me!
Shame he’s not put it up on MSN Video!
In these lean economic times, even Microsoft isn’t mad enough to keep flying me back and forth across the pond at every drop of a Tweet, so I won’t be going to SES Chicago in December this year.
I will be there in spirit though, but will miss the insight, chat and revelry in the snow! There are some great speakers lined up and it’s not somewhere I’ve been before so maybe next year! 🙂
December will be a quiet month for me as we wrap up 2009 after what I’m sure will be some great times at SMX London and PubCon which I will be attending.
Check out the adCenter Blog in a couple of days for some insight into what we’ll be talking about in a couple of weeks in Covent Garden!
The Windows Live Search team in the UK have launched Big Snap II at www.BigSnapSearch.com
In partnership with leading UK retailer John Lewis they’re offering 24 prizes per day from £25 up with daily £500 prizes.
One lucky winner will walk away with a £1000 shopping spree every week!
The idea is to drive awareness of Live Search and to increase leads for advertisers who advertise on Microsoft adCenter.
The first campaign, earlier this year, saw searches grow by a 3rd during the 8 week period and this one will be running till 5th January to take advantage of the Christmas buying season!
The game is based on the card game Snap!
The way it works is that consumers search for product and services and Live Search generates random cards at the top of the page.
If the cards match that’s a SNAP!!
If they don’t you LOSE – simple huh?
As my colleague Marie Thirwall says: “BigSnapSearch.com was a hugely successful mechanic to increase consumer awareness and understanding of all the cool features we have built into Microsoft Live Search. By engaging consumers in a fun, rewarding way we managed to double our search volumes, reaping huge rewards for our advertisers.”
Check it out at www.BigSnapSearch.com
Let’s face it, presenting in public isn’t easy! Some say people’s fear of public speaking comes second only to their fear of death – so what’s the problem?
Well to some people it comes naturally. They seem to swan in, make people laugh, get their point across, inspire and get rave reviews.
People who are not so confident are immediately plunged in a quagmire of anxiety wondering how on earth they can compete. They fear the exposure and they are frightened of failure.
Well here’s the secret!
Every one of those great speakers rehearses! They think long and hard about what they are going to say and HOW they are going to say it.
They have TECHNIQUE!
I’ve now spoken at well over a hundred conferences, pitches, summits and events. I’ve always been determined to make it look easy and natural, because that way you put the audience at ease. If they are confident in your ability to guide them through your agenda, they can learn and absorb more deeply.
But making it look easy comes at a price. The cost is time, effort and practice!
How many times have you seen presenters who mumble, don’t seem to be aware of what the next slide is going to be, apologise all the time, riddle their PowerPoint with text, turn up late or simply look all at sea?
Here are some tips to help turn you into a wizard public speaker:
Try and influence whoever has asked you to speak to let you go on as early in the day as possible. We humans only have a certain attention span and it can wane by the afternoon. If it’s a conference or you’re on a panel with other speakers, going first gives you the opportunity to set the scene and get your thoughts and ideas out before anyone else does.
Very often content will duplicate, so you want to appear to have been the first to have thought about it. Also it helps your brand as subsequent speakers will almost always refer back to you when they speak if they make similar points.
Hearing someone from the competition saying “Just to back up what Mel was saying earlier……” is a beautiful noise! You can’t buy that kind of PR…..unless of course they disagree with you!
The caveat to going on early is if it’s a conference run over a couple of days, you might not want to kick off the second or third day as your audience may be listening to you through an alcoholic, bleary haze garnered from the previous nights partying. Most people will have recovered by 11am though in order to hang on your every word! 🙂
Never assume the technology will work! I once woke up at 5am before a live demo keynote, panicking that the venue wouldn’t be able to cope with my requirements, even though I’d emailed them in a fortnight before.
Sure enough internet access at the hotel was down, but luckily I’d started writing a back-up presentation at 5.05am that morning.
Get to the venue early, check out the space, meet the sound guy and tap through the presentation on the laptop to make sure there haven’t been any issues with compatibility.
If you turn up late you’ll look unprofessional, the audience will need a lot more convincing and the conference organiser will be looking for an alternative speaker for next year!
If you rehearse nothing else, make sure you know exactly how you’re going to start your presentation. Thank your introducer, thank the audience for being there and tell a story or a joke relevant to the subject you’re about to speak about. It might be about your journey to the conference centre, or an anecdote from the welcome cocktail party the night before.
You need a hook to draw people in and want to listen to you. Laughter is a great tension reliever and if you hit the spot your confidence will be at the right level to keep you going through your material.
On no account make any excuses! Delegates have not spent £1000s to hear you bang on about your cold or sore throat. They will be able to hear that you’re not well and will hold you in higher regard if you soldier on and get to the end with no fuss and bother.
If it’s the first time you’ve done the presentation don’t tell them that either. Let them hear it from someone else. They don’t need to feel they’re being practised on!
Make sure your speech means something to the audience. There’s nothing worse than hearing a speaker jabber on with little or no knowledge or understanding of who he’s talking to or where he is. Make it relevant. Call up the organiser and get filled in on the “local colour!” What are the issues the delegates want addressed? Are there any local considerations? What would they like to hear?
If you mumble – forget it! You might as well be at the back of the room. If your delivery is loud, confident and enunciated you’ll differentiate yourself from everyone else. Don’t shout and be obnoxious obviously, but be clear and audible so the listeners don’t have to strain to hear you.
The PowerPoint deck you use should be light on text and large on imagery. Your adoring public have come to see and hear you speak. They do NOT want to read paragraph after paragraph of text off a screen. If they have to read loads of words they’re not listening to you. They’ll get irritated and give up adoring you pretty sharpish. Your audience don’t want to work too hard either. If they like you, they’ll come up after and hand you their 
business card or sign up to your blog or newsletter. Promise to post a more detailed presentation somewhere or record and distribute a 10 minute podcast of the points you were trying to make.
Make sure people don’t walk away from your presentation saying “so what?”
You want them to have some “take away” points to think about on the way home. What have you told them that they didn’t already know? What have you told them that they now want to tell other people? What have they learned from you that they can begin to implement in their own lives or businesses?
Make sure your talk builds to a crescendo or a natural ending. Too many presentations end abruptly, very often surprising the presenter themselves! You want those listening to remember your talk like a story with an intriguing beginning, a meaty middle and an actionable end.
Don’t take the wind out of their mental sails by shutting down shop just when it was getting interesting. Warn them you’re starting to wrap up. If their attention has started to drift, you’ll reign them back in to listen to your most important, final points.
You’ve been asked to speak because someone thinks you’re good at something and have something interesting to say – that’s to be celebrated.
If you look like you’re enjoying yourself then the chances are the audience will enjoy your presentation with you! 🙂
Joost has written a good sum up of a4uexpo and Dave has written about last nights dinner so I’ll write up my thoughts on my Media Week blog tomorrow.
In the meantime thanks for all the great feedback about Dixon, mine and Tor Crockatt’s presentation.
I was asked about the the opening of my talk so do read the Cost Per Monk story and feel free to mention it whenever appropriate!
It was great to meet even more SEO’s and internet marketers including Al Carlton, Patrick Altoft, Marcus Tandler, Todd Crawford who shared some great stories and tips over some great Thai food.
Big hand to Matthew Wood for a great show. Gawd knows how he felt this morning!
If you ever wondered what it’s like up there on a panel – see below!
That’s Anthony Shapley in the front row holding the orange show program. He’s not just a talented SEO but an awesome photographer!
And it’s his 21st birthday tomorrow!
This is a picture of Gordon Ramsey’s place at Claridges in London 🙂
Now Dave has offered to buy some lucky winner AND a friend dinner next week while he’s down for A4U.
The newly married & exhausted Joost De Valk will also be there to add a bit of European sophistication to the evening’s proceedings because Dave and I are from England – not Europe!
All you have to do is leave a comment on Dave’s blog telling him why you want to have dinner with us!
Apparently Dave wants me to choose the venue – anyone got any ideas?
This morning I was asked for a quote about “The Power of Search.”
Someone wanted some grandiose verbatim to illustrate the huge impact search engine marketing has has on marketing and the advertising industry.
I couldn’t think of anyone in particular so I came up with this:
“No other marketing channel but Search has ever provided such accessibility to consumers during the consideration phase or at the point of purchase.
No other marketing channel but Search has ever provided the accountability that budget owners have been crying out for.
In short – Search is what Marketing has been looking for!”
Anyone got any better ideas?
Earlier this week I talked about lots of Microsoft Jobs being up for grabs!
I’m in Dublin right now and have just met with the adCenter Analytics folks in their office pictured above.
The offices are impressive and it’s not a bad part of town. Easy access from the centre of Dublin and there’s loads of new offices and facilities being built in the surrounding areas.
If you’re a software developer and want to work for the best I’d give it a whirl!
What have you got to lose?
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