Anthony Tham: Guest Post on Speaking in Public
The following is a guest post by Anthony Tham, the Public Relations Manager for Travel Salem. We met Anthony at our recent presentation on the Social Media Landscape to the Salem PRSA in early November. It wasn’t long after that Anthony found himself giving seminars on social media. Here are his thoughts on that series of presentations:
Public speaking, one of the most feared things people have to do, got added on to my list of things to do a couple of weeks ago. As the person responsible for the social media strategy at Travel Salem, I was called upon to present social media seminars/trainings to local small businesses and organizations aimed at helping them promote themselves. Naturally, I imagined myself in front of a group with a PowerPoint presentation using social media lingo such as “tweets” and “RSS feeds.” Isn’t that what public speaking is all about — standing up and broadcasting information to a group of people? I quickly realized I needed to take a break from the traditional “presentation” to create an atmosphere of collaboration and information sharing.
Unlike traditional presentations — usually a form of one-way communication — the seminars I created strived for interactive, two-way communication. Social media is all about sharing and generating dialogue. You share by interacting; you interact by speaking; and it is through speaking where information is learned. The same concept applies online via various communication tools such as Twitter or Facebook.
The seminars were split into two categories; novice and advanced. Attendees had the option of attending one or both seminars and there were two sessions daily for three days with a combined session on the fourth day. I intentionally kept group sizes small to foster more dynamic participation among attendees, with the average size being about 11 people.
Many social networking tools fall under the umbrella term called social media. The seminars focused on the major players; Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and blogs.
With such a wide range of skill levels, many different questions about social media were thrown at me:
- What’s all the hype about?
- How can I use social media to attract more business?
- How do I do all this without wasting a bunch of time?
- How to reach journalists, bloggers and influencers?
- What are effective strategies to reach my goals?
- Which tools should be used to network with potential customers and other networking opportunities?
- Where do I start?
What I learned:
1) Adjust teaching style to audience. People familiar with social media use words and phrases like “tweetdeck” or “search engine optimization” like its part of their everyday vocabulary. When you’re leading a conversation with individuals who are new to social media, it’s important to rephrase and explain not just key terms, but any language specific to the topic. For example, you have to explain that people “follow” you on Twitter whereas people would “fan” you on Facebook.
2) Facebook is pretty popular. Each session lasted an hour and a half. Unintentionally, the majority of the time was spent on Facebook. With 350 million users worldwide, I completely understand why we were “stuck” on this topic for so long.
3) More time please! It didn’t matter that I decided to split up the sessions based on skill level. Both novice and advanced sessions ran over time – there were just too many things to talk about. I realized I needed to either add more time or divide the sessions based on topic (e.g. just Facebook or just blogs).
4) “Build it and they shall come.” So how does a quote from the movie “Field of Dreams” tie into the social media seminars? No, I didn’t build a baseball field. However, what was built was a community of individuals who are all interested in learning about social media and how to use it to enhance their businesses, nonprofit organization, startup company, etc. That was the message we focused on as we promoted the seminars to local businesses and organizations. We wanted to encourage open dialogue among participants; where knowledge is shared among the group, not just by me the “presenter.” Each person brought different social media goals to the table. As we shared our goals, our ideas, and creative ways to use social media, the community that we built grew stronger and more equipped to tackle each individual goal after the seminars ended.
Public speaking isn’t so bad, at least when you’re speaking with, and not in front of, your audience. The seminars brought together a community of individuals representing businesses and organizations looking to learn about social media. As I led the groups in discussion, I quickly became aware that I wasn’t giving them a presentation; I was just a member of a community collaborating and sharing information. Just like social media.
Travel Salem’s mission is to attract meeting, convention and tourism business to the region, and to enhance and contribute to the overall identity and economic well being of the region. Travel Salem’s social media efforts on Twitter and Facebook , combined with other tools such as posting photos on Flickr and videos on Youtube, allow Travel Salem to extend its reach to regional, national and international travelers, as well as local consumers. Working with local and regional partners, and those involved in social media, Travel Salem is able to leverage each other to create a community that shares information globally about the Salem region; which will ultimately lead to economic impact for the region.
