We can learn from celebrated television personalities how to improve our performance in front of an audience, whether it is for your next meeting, classroom, blog, podcast, YouTube channel, or even television show. Storytelling requires passion, smiling, and friendliness.
Videos are becoming a chief means to convey content on the web. If you have a blog with a lot of written posts, you will draw traffic. But, when you have a blog with lots of videos too, you multiple your traffic by 10X. Visitors will stay longer on your site, which decreases the percentage of your bounce rate, or how fast people leave your site. Your SEO ratings and Google rankings are higher, because Google recognizes your content as providing answers to people’s searches.
So, how do you make your videos engaging and effective? Images and music make up only part of videos. The storyteller (YOU!) takes the lead role. The storyteller’s comfort on the screen are essential to making your audience more receptive to your message.
Storytelling takes practice. Hours of practice, in fact, as Carmine Gallo emphasizes in his studies on TED speakers. But, this is good news too, in that storytelling can be learned and mastered. Here are some key tools to help you improve your performance.
3 storytelling tools to cooking up your own recipes for success: passion, smiles, and friendliness.
Passion
Passion makes a storyteller successful. It’s nearly impossible to hold an audience’s attention without passion. With passion, you exude energy and enthusiasm naturally on camera. Share your passion for something, whether its food, flying planes, or foraging mushrooms, even if you don’t know what a career in it will look like.
If you love hanging out in the kitchen, laughing with family, and cooking, for example, you will know your calling. You know you have to do it.
Authentic passion is a trait that most successful tv hosts share.
Don’t record yourself without it.
Smiles
Smiles are contagious. We are drawn to people who smile. Their radiance rubs off on us. In turn, we feel more dynamic and lively. We love people who make us feel better about ourselves. Why, then, do we look miserable when taking a picture or recording a video?
Smiling isn’t always easy. While smiling is rare in interviews and professional business videos, smiling is a common feature in popular television personalities. For instance, celebrated cooking show host Ina Garten of Barefoot Contessa smiles and laughs frequently throughout her show. She exudes enthusiasm, making her America’s darling of cooking show hosts.
A real smile, not a fake smile, is a people-magnet. Research shows that people can easily detect the difference between a real smile and a fake smile. If you’re sincerely passionate about a topic, it will come across on video. Your excitement will be contagious and captivate your listener.
Friendliness
We’ve all identified scripted talk on tv. People sound unnatural. Their talk slows down and their tone becomes monotone when reading directly from their notes. Instead, videos and tv shows are most successful with informal, conversation-like speech. Even posts that are written as if they’re talking to friends over dinner make your messages engaging.
Show respect for viewers. Respecting a viewer’s cooking ability is an essential part of earning his or her trust. Trust makes it easy to enjoy one another’s company, which in turn builds your credibility. You will be seen as an expert and gain a tribe.
Use short, simple words. People maintain their attention when they understand the point right away. Research indicates that the average adult attention span has declined to that of a goldfish! After 8 seconds, we’re off clicking away to another site. We can at least feed the goldfish before other streams of multimedia compete for attention.
Video has become a powerful and essential way to share your message. Videos let your audience connect with you and see you as personable and friendly. Practice these three tools: Passion, Smile, and Friendliness, the next time you record your story.