How to be a valuable oil and gas keynote speaker.
Okay. Oil and gas keynote speaker, how to do it right. If you’re giving an oil and gas keynote speaker, a couple of things that you need to do to make sure that you nail it. That you give good value for the people that are paying you speak.
First thing, understand the purpose of the event. Why are they putting the event on? Is it a conference? Is it an expo? Is it an educational seminar? Is it internal? Is it external? Why are they doing it? Is it team building? Are they trying to pass on some type of new messaging? Is the company going through a merger or acquisition? Do they have a new product or service? Whatever it is without understanding the purpose of that event, you actually can’t build a good keynote and deliver high value.
Once you understand the purpose of that event, do a very deep dive into the expected audience. Learn who’s going to be there, their titles, their roles, their positions. If it’s a big conference, what is the conference theme? What’s the conference about? Who typically attends the conference? If you are doing a conference or expo, talk to the promoters of the conference. They can help you understand exactly who that audience is. But you have to understand who that exact audience is, so that you can tell a good and valuable story to them.
Oil and Gas Keynote speaker – Stop the Slides
Then here’s a big one for me and everybody else out there that speaks professionally. Stop the slides! The PowerPoint decks with all the texts and the spreadsheets, and all that sort of stuff. You need to tell a story. If you have a deck, pictures are great way to accomplish that story. Think about the TED Talks you see. How often do you see them putting up Excel spreadsheets? You never see that. If you need to put up a graph, make it simple and easy to understand. The focus needs to be on you, the oil and gas keynote speaker. Not on what you have going on behind you on a screen.
Next be entertaining but be careful. If you have too much entertainment or too much humor in the wrong place, it can be deadly when you’re doing an oil and gas keynote speech. Humor is what lubricates the story, it doesn’t replace the story. The story is the most important thing.
And then pacing is more important than length. If you go too fast, people can’t keep up and pay attention. So they lose track. If you go too slow, you put people to sleep. A good keynote can be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, but the pace is way more important than the length.
You Must be a Good Storyteller
The next one is huge. You have to be a good storyteller AND you have to tell real stories. So you have to tell real stories that involved you or the people around you, that fit into what you’re trying to accomplish as an oil and gas keynote speaker. You have to be a good storyteller. There’s a lot of stuff out there to help, online courses, books, classes and some really good blog posts. There’s a lot of really good stuff to teach you how to be a storyteller, but you have to be a storyteller first and foremost. And you have to use real stories if you want to be an oil and gas keynote speaker.
Next you have to connect with your audience. I’m doing it right now. I’m talking to you about stuff that’s important, stuff that you have an interest in, I’m giving you some real value. I am connecting with my audience even though this is on video. It’s even more important when you do it in person. You have to connect with the audience. If you connect with your audience, you feel it the audience feels it. They go along with you for the ride that you’re bringing them on, as you tell the story.
Here’s another real big one for us. You have to be genuine. If somebody asked you to do a keynote that you can’t do effectively, you need to tell them “I can’t do that keynote”. If you came to me and said “Mark, I want you to do a keynote speech on electrical distribution”, I would tell you No. I can’t do a good keynote around that, because I don’t know that world at all. My world is oil and gas. So you have to be genuine.
You Must use Social to be an Oil and Gas Keynote Speaker
Then in today’s world if you’re going to be a good oil and gas keynote speaker, you have to use social. You have to use social to promote the event ahead of time, which is what you’re being paid to do. You have to use it during the event. There are all kinds of ways, think of all the different platforms Periscope, Facebook, Facebook Live, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. All that stuff helps build a buzz for both you and your speaking career. And for the event that you’re helping with your keynote, so you have to be involved with social media.
If you struggle with that find somebody who can help you with it. That will amplify your ability to tell a good story…immensely. You know if you have a Periscope or Facebook Live going in front of an audience of a thousand people in person, you may be actually doing a keynote in front of 6,000 or 8,000 people. Think how huge it is and how impactful it is.
Finally when you’re finished, you have to leave the audience feeling good. And that can be two or three different things. Did you tell a good heartfelt emotional story that made them feel good? The kind of Rocky thing where you pumped them up. Did you give them some valuable and useful information and they walked out and say “Wow I didn’t know that, and this is something I can actually use”. Regardless of how you do it, you have to end your keynote leaving the audience feeling good.
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So, folks I hope this helped. You may want to also check out Oil and Gas Speaker. How to Choose the Right One