As a person in business I've found myself involved in many seminars where I have to speak in front of people. I'm always striving for unique ways to captivate my audience.
I've found the key to keeping my audience's attention is to be entertaining while delivering my message, and most of all I try not come off too pushy or self promoting. I focus on ways the information I'm giving my audience can help better themselves as individuals, whether in their carrier or topic being discussed.
The biggest problem I've had in the past has been dealing with a shy audience. Even with lots of reassurance that no question is a dumb question, I feel I've missed connections because people were too timid to ask questions in front of the rest of the attendees at my events. Now this problem has happened to me in the past whether I've been speaking to 20 people or 300.
I found a tool that's allowed me to increase entertainment at my seminars, captivate my audience and allow my audience to discretely ask questions using nothing else but their cell phones. FireText has developed a tweet to screen or Twitter to Screen software that don't know the lingo, Tweet to screen has changed the way I put on my seminars from upside down to right side up.
FireText allows my audience to send twitter messages to my video screens. It's a downloadable application that installs on a laptop, which then connects to a projector… just like Microsoft Powerpoint.
The beauty of FireText is people can discretely ask questions using their cell phones. Shy audience members are able to hide behind the comfort of their Twitter screenname and avatars. Their message along with their screen name and avatar shows on my screen so I can identify them and reply accordingly. Not only has this been instant, but it's allowed me to add some comedic value when I pick apart their twitter screen names show on my video screen.
Some of the coolest features of FireText Tweet to Screen, is that I can customize the incoming messages, fonts, colours and video screen background graphics to match the theme of the topic I'm speaking about. I've also used FireText's hash tag, or #(airport code) features to stream in all the tweets in the specific city I'm speaking in. I love putting in a keyword of my sponsor's name. This one speech I was giving was at a Cocacola suppliers conference and I placed the hashtag #Cocacola within the FireText software. While I was talking my audience was amazed at all the messages about Coca cola that were streaming from around the world behind me.
I've benefited other ways, like, every person that tweets in my twitter screen name @bhattmaan is automatically added to my follower list. The ability to add negative keywords prevents any messages I don't want showing up on my screens, which has been a life saver.
The guys (and girls) at www.FireText.com are always advancing their software, Twitter to TV Screen is just one of their message to screen softwares. Other great tools I've used in my public speeches are Text to Screen & Text Voting.
Follow me on Twitter @bhattmaan
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