The Top 5 Elements For An Engaging TEDx Talk
By Bilyana Georgieva, TEDx Coach, Digital Nerd and Multi-Award Winning Professional Speaker, founder of The ‘Red Dot Speaker Star’ (formerly ‘Soon-To-Be a TEDx Speaker’) Program.
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Are you writing your TEDx script at the moment or applying for TEDx and wonder how to create a very powerful and engaging TEDx talk?
If so, today’s article will give you a the top 5 elements you must have in your script if you want your talk to be a potent one.
We all know that telling a story is the best way to explain an idea or pass your wisdom onto your audience.
An usual speech concentrates on the knowledge, experience and learning, where a TEDx talk concentrates on the idea and the wisdom.
What makes TEDx different from a standard speech are:
- the number of stories you tell — the more the better
- the length of each story — the shorter the better, and
- the insight — one or maximum three insights, as more is overwhelming for those watching you
In essence, whatever you want to say on a TEDx stage you need to say it through a story — either your own one or someone else.
Here are the 5 elements you must embed in your stories which will turn your talk into a very engaging one:
- Take time to describe the pain and the problem.
Majority of the speakers forget that most people run away from problems, rather than running towards solutions. By explaining the difficulties and issues your audience will connect with you because they will see themselves in your story. They are not ‘there’ yet with the solution. You need to transform their way of thinking, which starts with where they are at the moment — struggling with something and trying different ways to get out of it.
Three to four sentences are more than enough to describe the pain and the problems you are about to tackle in your story.
2. Describe the scene.
Put us, the audience, next to you — what do we see around, what we smell, what we taste, who is next to us and how s/he looks like. One way is to show pictures but more powerful is to use your words and burst our senses and imagination into a colourful scene and situation.
I often ask my mentees to put one or 2 sentences to describe the scene and we lower it down to half a sentence. Leave what’s important and relevant to your story.
3. Use loads of humour.
People love a good laugh! Even in the most tragic stories a good sense of humour is appreciated. Regardless if you start with a cataclysmic, fatal narrative or build up such throughout your script, always finish with an uplifting beat and a good humour. Usually the most heartbreaking stories mixed with humour create a super contrast and stay in people’s mind forever. Creating emotions are much better way to pass a knowledge and wisdom rather than the old school narrative way of telling a story.
4. Ask rhetorical questions or ask questions and then answer them.
Your audience’s mind time to time will start thinking about something off your subject and get their attention away from you. By asking them a question you will ‘return them back’ in the room with you, keep their attention and engage again.
5. Turn your wisdom into a powerful Key Phrase and repeat it throughout the speech.
Saying
“Remember this today …”
at the end of your TEDx talk, followed by your wisdom, is an old style speech that doesn’t work anymore.
There are two reasons why you should not do it:
a) because majority of the people waited for 5 min to hear your wisdom and, as they didn’t hear it, they switched off (if present in the room) or clicked away (if watching on YouTube and TED).
Truth is that most of the people don’t even wait for 5 min to hear the essence of a talk. Since covid started people got savvy and very selective on what they listen and how they spend their time.
Of course, If your story and performance are super engaging you don’t need to worry about keeping the attention on you.
and
b) saying your wisdom only once won’t ‘get’ into the long term memory of your audience’s brain. People need to hear the same Key phrase at least 7–8 times before they remember it.
Why audience remembering your key phrase is so important for you as a TEDx speaker? Because people don’t remember names or titles. If you want them to remember something from you and later on find you on Google, YouTube or TED they will need to remember something short, powerful and emotional, i.e. your wisdom key phrase.
The only way for the audience to remember your wisdom is if you repeat it 7–8 times throughout your speech.
Put in the comment below if you already embedded any of those 5 elements in your TEDx script?
What you struggle most with when you write your speech?
Thanks for reading this week’s ‘Red Dot Speaker Star’ newsletter. Make sure you follow me on LinkedIn and click the 🔔 button on my profile so you will get notified when I publish my next article.
Shout out to Michael Thomas who inspired this week’s article. He asked me
“What are the Top 5 Elements For An Engaging TEDx Talk?”
If you want me to cover a specific topic please send me a DM or put in the comments below what TED and TEDx related topic you want to learn?
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Sending you love and energy!
Yours,
Bilyana
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