5 elements that make Ted Talks super-engaging !

Ever wondered why are Ted Talks so sticky?

Is it just because of the brand ‘TedTalk’ that we open up our eyes and ears more to them? Or is there some secret sauce that makes the talk a ‘Ted’ talk?

Recently I got to attend one of the Tedx events in Mumbai. After listening to over 25 talks, spanning from social issues to technology to design to psychology to what not, I could connect the dots and see a pattern. For anyone interested in the art of public speaking and communications, enlisting the 5 elements that were present in almost all of the speeches:

1)    Start off with an engaging example that involves the audience!

Option 1: “Hi, I am Tim and the topic of my discussion is micro-organisms.”

Option 2: “Hello everyone! I want all of you to take a deep breath with me on the count of 3.

1…..2…..3.

Did you know, all of you just inhaled millions of bacteria floating around in the air, on the floor and from your neighbor just now!”

Which option do you think makes for a more sticky beginning! Instead of making a conversation one-way, involving the audience into your interaction gets them hooked to you right from the start.

Other examples I witnessed were:

Make everyone raise their hands: “How many of you used car-pooling to come to the event today?” (to speak on pollution).

Put a piece of paper on everyone’s seat before the talk and make them do a simple trick. (For a talk on the human eye-brain coordination).

2)    Sell the problem first. Then the solution !!

Instead of straightaway jumping onto the innovative solutions you have come out with pertaining to an issue, don’t be afraid to first use at least 20-30% of the time to establish the importance/significance of the problem.

Once the audience has genuinely ‘bought’ your problem, they themselves would be interested for the solution you are there with. Now ‘they’ want ‘you’, not the other way round.

Example: One of the speakers first used simple charts to show how much polluted Delhi and Mumbai are as compared to world class cities. Then he used interesting numbers like ‘precious days of life lost by just breathing polluted city air on a daily basis’, and told us how one his family members fell prey to a pollution-caused disease. Which brings us to the next tip:

3)    Use Personal Experiences

Yes, people are here to listen to ‘you’, not just stare at statistics related to the subject and learn about an issue. When you tell them about your personal life experiences you had while losing a close family member to a disease or how your professional life slowly took you off the corporate path and into social entrepreneurship, the audience feels an air of credibility in your words and connects with you.

4)    This issue is impacting all of you right now! : Show numbers that highlight the impact of the subject on the audience’s lives.

Instead of pulling up the usual numbers at a global/country level and comparing them to the previous years, many speakers gave a much more relatable context to the audience by using numbers more important to them.

Example: “By the time this talk ends, the 5000 people in the audience would have already breathed 5.2 million microbes from the clothes of the person sitting next to them!”

 “As per stats, 35% Indians who have invested in insurance schemes do not know that the same insurance companies re-invest their money in tobacco companies. ‘You’ are investing in tobacco. STOP today!”

5)    Use your own acronyms/frameworks

Yes. The audience presumably has a beginner-level knowledge of most topics and knows what’s already going around in the world. If you have an original solution to a non-original problem, don’t hesitate to craft your own acronym or catchphrase.

Eg: A child psychologist used the acronym D.I.S.G.R.A.C.E.F.U.L to describe all factors used by adults to compare their children with other children. ‘G’ for gender, ‘R’ for Race and so on.

While a management professor from Harvard coined the term ‘Content Trap’ to highlight content marketing myths, a data scientist had come up with a ‘W.O.W’ framework.

Now that you have the secrets out of the kitty, what are you waiting for! Use them the next time you’re on stage and are ready to hold the audience captive with your speech.