18 | SPEAKER | June 2011

the new

Engage your audiences by tuning in to their real-time conversations on Twitter and Facebook.

June 2011 SPEAKER | 19

It’s not unusual to see IT audi-ences typing away on their laptops and smartphones while a speaker is making a presenta-tion. But lately, I have seen the logged-on proportion at non-

technical audiences start to swell.Welcome to the new “backchannel.”

No, these laptop-toting folks aren’t just bored and checking their emails. They are actively listening to the speaker and reacting and sharing their com-ments with their peers, including other

audience members and colleagues who aren’t attending the event. This pres-ents new challenges and opportunities for speakers to engage their audiences. If you have seen a rise in your com-puter-equipped audiences, this article will provide some solid tips on how to cope, exploit them and make you a better speaker.

“We used to ask our audience to put away their phones, but now I ask them to just silence them and feel free to use them to communicate with me during

my talks,” said Mark Sanborn, CSP, CPAE. Sanborn recognizes that speakers need to engage their audiences and fully participate in this backchannel.

This is called a “backchannel” because your audience is conversing on Twitter and Facebook and using other social media tools during your speech. There are even some conferences, such as South by Southwest, held each spring in Austin, Texas, where the Twitter feed is projected on screens at the front of the hall for everyone to view.

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“That is one downside,” says Steve Hughes, a humorous keynoter and trainer. “You can look like a real loser if you give out your Twitter handle and no one takes you up on it during your talk.”

Hughes also gives out his cell phone number and asks his audiences to either Tweet or text him during his speech with any questions. That way he can manage the questions when it is appropriate. “I will respond to them on the platform at specific points during my speech,” he says. “But I am the kind of speaker who likes taking lots of questions from the audience, and this is just one more mech-anism that I use.”

The size of the audience is also criti-cal in how a speaker incorporates the backchannel. “I did an event where I took questions via Twitter, but you can’t effectively do that for a larger crowd,” says Houchens. For speakers who have staff, he suggests they plant a wingman in the audience to monitor the Twitter feed and cue them when questions are particularly relevant. Or work with the meeting manager to recruit a volunteer for this purpose.

It isn’t just your time on the plat-form that requires social media skills. You need to be working the social media channels before and after your events, too. Remember the old days when doing research on your audience involved making a few phone calls (or even emails) to the meeting planner and conference advisory board members? They seem so quaint now. Now you have to engage your prospective

“During some events, the backchannel is happening, whether you as a speaker are participating in it or not,” says Chris Houchens, a marketing speaker based in Bowling Green, Ky., who has spoken on using social media to help authors promote themselves at the #140conf, among other venues.

“If you are blindly going forward and oblivious to this channel until the end of your session, you are missing out on getting yet another means of feedback about your craft. It is essential for speak-ers to get real-time reaction to engage certain audiences,” Houchens says.

“Many conference organizers are cre-ating a common hashtag to promote their events and you should also create a specific hashtag for your sessions too.” (Hashtags are ways that groups of Twitter users can search for each others’ postings on a particular event, using the ‘#’ char-acter and a short label in the Tweet.)

“I might Tweet something during the morning keynote and mention that I am doing a session that afternoon, but you have to add value and try not to be too swarmy,” says Houchens. He also handles Tweets from the podium, “but it depends on the types of audience. Some Gen Y audiences aren’t even looking at you; they are engaged with their phones and laptops. You have to work with them using the tools that they are using to com-municate with you.”

“If I’ve prepared well for the talk, most of the Twitter conversations will be posi-tive, and I can follow up with questions later,” says Scott Berkun, who wrote the book Confessions of a Public Speaker and speaks to technology-savvy audiences.

“Smart event organizers will offer to watch the Twitter stream and field ques-tions to the speaker, but most don’t offer. For less formal events, I might have a sep-arate laptop on the lectern where I can, once or twice, quickly skim the Twitter stream and see if there’s a good ques-tion,” Berkun says.

Not all audiences are Twitter-friendly. For less tech-savvy audiences or more conservative industries such as banking, Houchens finds you can’t really expect much in the way of social media conversations.

“It is probably more distracting than useful, especially for people who are used to being more passive listeners. If you don’t see any laptops or people looking at phones, you don’t go to social media.” One way to predict an audience is to monitor their Foursquare check-ins—another social media location-based service—or to see if anyone has used the conference-provided hashtag prior to the event.

And not all speakers are Twitter-friendly either. If your presentations aren’t designed to be interactive and high concept, then having Twitter background chatter can be more of a distraction. Carol Weisman, CSP, is based in St. Louis and speaks mostly to non-profit boards of directors who aren’t usually social media mavens. “I hate Twitter while I am speak-ing because I usually do keynotes where I don’t take any questions. Plus, at one keynote, there was a Twitter feed on a screen in front of the room and there were only a few postings.”

w h yis the backchannel important?

a r eyour audiences Twitter-friendly?

p r eand post-event social media promotions

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June 2011 SPEAKER | 21

• Stay aware of your Twitterstream reputation.

Second, start thinking about how you can include social media as part of your natural business operations to market yourself, extend your brand, and initiate conversations with potential audiences and clients. “I got work as a result of a Facebook post on a client’s page and they ended up giving me a referral to a new client. I have also sold product as a result of staying in touch with my audience members,” said DiGirolamo.

“It isn’t technology versus the Amish,” Hughes says. “It is about interacting with my audience and taking questions in whatever format someone feels the most comfortable with.”

Berkun says: “If you prepare well and speak well, Twitter amplifies your impact. If you don’t prepare well and speak poorly, Twitter amplifies the negative feed-back too.”

“I think we have a lot more to learn from people in the non-speaking world than from what other speak-ers are doing with social media,” says DiGirolamo. “Watch what your audi-ences are doing with Twitter and Facebook to educate yourself and understand the interests of others.”

David Strom is a St. Louis-based

speaker and writer who talks to

IT audiences about new ways to

use technology productively.

His blog is at strominator.com

and he can be found on Twitter@dstrom.

listeners by following their Tweets and friending them on Facebook.

“I have connected on Twitter with a lot of people before a speech,” says Rich DiGirolamo, Chief Cook & Bottle Washer of One Less Meal, Inc. and the speaker with the beanie cap from Marion, Conn. “Usually, I am searching for par-ticular hashtags, conference names, or meeting planners and selection committee members to find people who are attend-ing. This can help craft and customize my speech, start engaging with attendees, and introduce and market myself with the sponsoring organization.”

Don’t forget about email, either. Berkun says: “I always follow up with questions wherever I find them. Many people still prefer asking questions over email—they’re not worried about embar-rassing themselves. It is the modern era, and your audience will interact with you in a variety of methods. In my own case, I have had comments on my blog, Facebook messages, direct Twitter mes-sages, emails and even Instant Messages from my attendees post-event.

Many speakers have created extensive social media plans that involve reaching out to prospects prior to an event, publiciz-ing an event and post-event follow-up, all using various social media. For example, I list my trip on Tripit.com before the event, which will let others in my network know my travel dates. At the end of my speeches, I put up the link to Slideshare.net, which has a copy of my PowerPoint® slides that anyone can download.

The free Slideshare.net service can be a very handy reference, and some con-ference planners are setting up special accounts where all the PowerPoint decks can be collected in one place for easy ref-erence, which, in some cases, precludes meeting organizers from publishing out-dated printed copies of the proceedings. (It also means that some speakers can wait until the last possible moment to make changes to their presentations, too!)

So how should speakers start learning how to use the social media backchan-nel? First, you need to set up Twitter and Facebook accounts at a minimum, and start engaging and understanding how your audiences use these tools. A great book to get started is Cliff Atkinson’s The Backchannel (New Riders, 2010), which has lots of examples, recom-mended tools, audience and speaker guidelines, and more. There are sample chapters and resources at http://www.backchannelbook.com/

For example, Atkinson talks about having the following simple code of conduct for audiences to use when they Tweet during your presentations:

• Tweet unto others as you would have them Tweet unto you.

• Be accurate.• Say something good before you say

something bad

f i rsteps

s T

“Many conference organizers are creating a common hashtag to promote their events and you should also create a specific hashtag for your sessions, too.” Hashtags are ways that groups of Twitter users can search for each others’ postings on a particular event, using the ‘#’ character and a short label in the Tweet.