Social Media And Speeches

Speeches and social media may not seem to have much in common. Generally, speeches involve lots of one way communication from speaker to audience. Social media, on the other hand, is much more interactive. Utilizing social media when making a speech allows you to keep the audience more engaged simply because they feel more involved. Here are some ways to use social media to improve upon your speech making:

1. Research- Social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook have groups where people with common interests can join together on one page. Before giving a speech, you can access these groups and see what your future audience is talking about. You can poll members of these groups to get their opinions about topics and issues, and shape the dynamic of your speech from the results.

2. Interact- The best way to keep your audience engaged is to interact with them. Live polling websites such as Poll Everywhere offer free live polling. While you are asking your audience poll questions, they can take a more active roll in your presentation. Also, encourage members of your audience to discuss your presentation live on their various social media networks. Create a hashtag so that those who aren't present can still take part in discussion.

3. Evaluate- After your speech or presentation is over, you will want to evaluate how the audience perceived it.You can do this by searching the hashtag you created on Twitter, or by going back into LinkedIn and Facebook groups and polling members who took part in your presentation. By checking results over social media, you can collect responses much faster and track them with ease.

Have you ever used social media when giving a speech? If so, tell us how you went about it.