The Review - 02/09/2022

Thank you for joining this update. This is week three and it’s going ok to be honest. I’ve also started adding some blogs on subjects that you might find useful. The first one is on how to improve your hybrid meetings. Check it out from the link at the bottom.

Firstly though, a word on why I started this newsletter.

Why did I start this newsletter?

Having been inspired by Ali Abdal as I mentioned last week I started a newsletter in Substack. But that’s not the real reason why.

The real reason I actually started it and embarked on exploring Twitter in more detail is that I was looking for something I could divert my brain onto.

In all honestly, I was struggling with anxiety. Work stress and world news were the two main triggers. Both were consuming my thoughts for a massive proportion of the day. It really wasn’t healthy.

So I needed a project. And……it’s working.

My mind is buzzing with ideas on how to grow the newsletter and maybe convert it into a blog. I’ve worked in business for nearly 18 years where I’ve gained significant experience that I really want to pass on.

So I hope you enjoy. Any encouragement is very welcome in these early stages.

Preparing for a big presentation

If you’re going to progress in todays world at some point you are going to need to deliver a big presentation. When is say big I mean either to a large audience or it could be to a small but very important audience. With either one, the same principles apply.

1. Know your audience

You must tailor your content and delivery depending on your audience. They could be very technical who will want to know details of what you did and how you did it. Or they could be a board of directors who simply want you to cut to the chase. They trust you to have done the due diligence and want to know what the ask of them is.

What do you want you want from your audience?

Now that you think you’ve got a good feel for who your audience is you need to be clear on what you want your audience to come away from your presentation having decided or taken onboard.

So for a board of directors this might be a decision you want them to make. If this is the case, make the ask of them clear at the start of the presentation. This means that from the start they are listening with this decision in mind throughout.

If you are giving a presentation about a topic that is really just for information then the approach is a little different. An example might be that you are presenting a new way to use data to make your business more efficient.

In this case pick three big points you want the audience to take away with them. Unfortunately, the human brain isn’t capable of holding large amounts of information. So make sure what they do take away is the three most important pieces of information. You have the ability to control that.

Tell a story

As humans we engage in stories. A list of plain facts is not going to keep your audience engaged. The art of story telling has been around as long has humanity. Don’t neglect it now.

A trick here is to write down everything you want to get across on a piece of paper. Then start to link the points together. Ask yourself what the narrative is that holds it all together.

Then, if you are doing slides, you should be able to read the titles of each slide in order and get the main thrust of the presentation. All the content in the slides themselves is then supporting material. This will give you a really good structure.

On the day

If you are “normal” you will get nerves on the day and in the days leading up to the presentation. You aren’t nervous. You’re excited. You’ve done all the preparation, you’ve gone over the slides in your mind. You know your stuff.

You’re excited to be able to tell everyone about your subject. It’s excitement not nerves. This one takes a bit of time to master as you are effectively tricking your brain into thinking this way but it really works.

Give these tips a go and let me know how you get on.

Social media update

The experiment continues. I’ve tried to focus on impressions this week. The theory is to get my tweets in front of as many eyeballs as possible to try and tease out engagement. To do this, I’ve adopted a couple of strategies:

• Commenting on tweets from accounts with large followers. By picking tweets that have just landed I’ve been able to get my reply in front their audience and increase my impressions dramatically. However, it’s really important here that the reply offers something new. Maybe a new twist on the original post. A reply saying “great tweet” isn’t going to get you the engagement and it will annoy the origin poster.

• Re posting some of my content. Twitter posts have a brief life in users feeds. If your audience isn’t online at the time you post then you can miss them. Especially if you are getting limited engagement. A great tweet could go un noticed. So I’ve started re using some posts and sending them at different times of the day.

The stats have moved on quite a bit this week. You can see the increased impressions from the above strategy coming through and a portion of these are translating into profile visits. Something I am going to keep a close eye on over the next week is whether these profile visits translate into followers.

I’m seeing some churn in followers which is interesting so there may be a bit of a shake out there. As long as new ones start to come through then the total of 76 should start to increase slowly in the coming weeks. Fingers crossed.

Finally, an app that I would recommend - GB Grid Carbon

This is one I’ve been using for a while (because I love this sort of geeky app) but now it takes on a new meaning with gas prices increasing dramatically and their effect on electricity prices.

In this app you will get up to the data on how the UK is generating electricity. You will get a feel for how wind steps in on windy days but you will quickly realise just how dependent we are on gas for electricity generation.

Download here and let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading this week. I am also adding some blog posts on how to get ahead at work. You can check out my latest post on hybrid meetings here:

Please let me know what you thought of this weekly update. Drop something in the comments or give it a like.

Better still, I will releasing all posts 3 days early to subscribers. So now there is no reason not to hit subscribe here: