Speaking with My Mouth Close...Blog Day

August 16, 2012

This is the BLOG DAY Blog that I plan to send out quarterly to pause and reflect about where I am with my Blogging! I will continue this blog where I left off soon so hang in there. I love to Blog because that is about all I have to keep my mind going. Here is a little story my Great grandma Austin told me that you may enjoy for this short Blog:

A Short Story Before I Continue

I want to tell you a story that my Great grandma Austin told me about people that called her "senile". Since we are all advancing in years I thought it very appropriate and fitting to tell what this 85 year old grand old lady told me when I was about 7 years old.
I remember I had asked her what the word "senile" meant, I had heard it used and remembered it.
She told me that the word "senile" was best discribed (her view) by comparing my brain of 7 to her brain of 85 years. She told me that we could compare my brain to books in a library like the Spencer library (the town where I lived of 7,000 population) She continued to say that her 85 year old brain had many more books in it. She compared her brain to the Library of Congress in Washingto D.C.(with almost every book written in the US).
She told me that when a young person 20 to 40 years old would ask her a question. she would go to her imaginary library of books in her brain and begin going through the rows and stacks of books to find the answer. Compared to me looking for an answer it took her much longer to sort through all the books in her brain and these younger people were not very patient and could not wait for her answer so they stopped and called her "senile" for the reason.
I think that is so good an explaination especially noe that I am going to be 71 in a few days and so far God has blessed me with a fairly good memory. Like another one of my classmates told me. She didn.t have altzhimers...she called her condition "Sometimers". that's what I have at times!!!! (Thanks Elaine)

Later and GB,

Dr Dave

Speaking Clearly

October 29, 2010

Remember when you were in high school, and the quickest route to an “A” paper involved enormous, unnecessary words?

“While not expediently told, Great Expectations is a masterful and very interesting tome of great literature.”

“Martin Luther King inspired many people including suffering individuals who had prejudice laid against them and together they undertook a euphoric march so that they could gain the rights they, so desperately, were wanting.”

I don’t know about you, but stuff like that was essay gold for me.

Thankfully, I’ve calmed down on the flowery adjectives in my own writing. But published authors? When it comes to interviews, both written and spoken, sometimes they need help too.

I’m lucky to be working with a couple of authors right now at PR By the Book who are both really excellent at giving concise, pat answers. It’s a tough skill to learn. There’s just so much to say about your book! However, giving a good interview usually isn’t about how much information you pack in. It’s about leaving the listener wanting more.

One author who does this extremely well is Seth Godin. I have a crush on that man’s BRAIN. How is he able to say so much, with so few words? It’s like a magic trick. Check out a snippet of an interview he gave Media Bistro recently:

Media Bistro: What are three of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to build their brand?
Seth Godin: Impatience. Selfishness. Spending money instead of conquering fear.

Eight words!

(By the way. In that interview, which ran last Friday, Seth says he’s done with traditional publishing. Did you hear that? Oh, he’ll still write and publish books … but his stance on traditional publishers is pretty clear. “In terms of responding to changes in the world, I’m at a loss to think of one thing the book industry does well in 2010 that it wasn’t already doing in 1990. Not one new thing done well.” Ouch.)

Here are two essential tips about speaking clearly, from one of my other favorite bloggers / modern-day philosophers, Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist:

1. Be interesting. The questions people ask you are not really what they want to know. It’s what they think will be interesting. They would ask you about the price of tea in China if they thought the answer would be interesting.

So your job in an interview is to give an answer that is entertaining and thought-provoking and all the other things that people like. You don’t need to answer the question as much as you need to answer the need for interestingness.

2. Be short. The world does not have an unlimited attention span to hear how your mind works. So you can’t think out loud in an interview and have everyone wait til you get to your point. Your point has to start right away.

Also, if you are short then you are more likely to be interesting the whole time. The longer you talk about a given topic the harder it is to keep someone’s interest. In the PR world this is called “soundbite”. But really, you can use the sound bite technique everywhere – on radio, in a blog post, on a date.

It is difficult to Hear things with your Mouth Open!