Women Challenge Abortion Stigma on Social Media Using

A recent survey from the Public Library of Science found that 95 percent of women who have had an abortion don’t regret their choice. However, rarely is that choice ever advertised out of fear of public scrutiny and harassment. That may soon change. A new trending hashtag is combating the stigma of abortions by encouraging women to share their stories on social media using the #ShoutYourAbortion.

It all started when Seattle writer Amelia Bonow mustered the courage to share her experience having an abortion  on Facebook. She was inspired after hearing about Republicans in Congress attempting to defund Planned Parenthood, and felt a need to act.

She told Vice that after writing the post she texted her friend, writer Lindy West, about it, and West took a screen-shot of her post and tweeted it to her more than 60,000 followers with their agreed hashtag #shoutyourabortion.

Career Development Center among nation’s best for social media use

St. Thomas’ Career Development Center has kept up with social media-savvy students, a sign that it is ”trending” in the right direction.

A JobBrander list of the “Top 25 College Career Centers on Social Media” ranked the Career Development Center eighth nationally. Although the recognition was unexpected, career specialist Kristen Murphy said the ranking is meaningful.

“We are very proud about it, and it came as a little bit of a surprise,” Murphy said. “What it means, I think, and we’ve talked in the office, is we’re doing something right in reaching students.”

The center uses Facebook, Twitter and a blog on WordPress, in addition to Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube. it also recently launched an Instagram account.

Murphy said the use of social media is part of the center’s initiative to effectively interact with students in the digital age.

“We know that this is the way people are communicating now,” she said. “This is just the way media is going. It seems to be digital, and we want to be early adopters.”

Although the center does not have access to data which would allow it to see if student participation has increased because of social media, Murphy said the outreach will hopefully lead to greater student use of the center’s services.

“(Participation) has been pretty flat the past few years, but we’re thinking that the use of social media is one way to change that,” she said. “Social media is a really great way to reach people that are not coming in to see us.”

Junior D.J. Jones said social media has affected his engagement with the Career Development Center. After initially meeting with a career specialist last fall, Jones said the center’s social media presence has been very helpful.

“As I’ve gotten more serious about updating my resume and looking for internships, the center’s social media, in particular the blog, have kept me up to date on important services like on-campus interviews,” Jones said.

The center’s use of social media hasn’t only helped undergraduate students though. Jeremy Hepler, a 2015 graduate of St. Thomas, used the center’s social media content during his job search.

“I applied to numerous jobs over the course of the summer, and only one of them was not a job listed on the career website,” Hepler said. “The Twitter account helped me identify new job postings in my field that I may want to apply to.”

Murphy said one of the most well-rounded social media resources offered by the center is its WordPress blog. All of the career counselors contribute, and it features topical career information for students depending on the time of year. For example, in the fall, the blog typically includes information on major exploration and on-campus interviews.

As for the other heavily used platforms, Facebook typically is used for posting career-related articles and Twitter for use during live events, Murphy said. YouTube is also used to post videos of career panel discussions.

Francis Wade | How social media skills are changing business forever

Is social media just a passing fad that mature businesspeople can safely ignore? Is it all just a waste of time? Doesn't lasting, meaningful social activity take place only in person, not over the Internet?

Recently, a Kingston-based friend of mine was intent on taking a destination vacation in the United States with his extended family of nine. He booked 10 days in a motel, thinking that was his best option.

However, after he googled the destination, he discovered AirBnB, the short-term rental service. A search of the neighbourhood revealed that he could get a beautiful private house in the same location for half the price.

But there was a catch. He learned that AirBnB landlords are not obligated to rent their property to anyone who can afford it. Instead, they only approve people they trust.

How does someone who has never met you and lives thousands of miles away come to entrust you, a stranger, with one of their prized possessions? The answer might be obvious - social media.

If you are an AirBnB renter who has never used the service before - and, therefore, has never been rated on the website by a landlord - you are an unknown entity. In order to reduce the risk, the service encourages property owners to do something unusual.

They learn how to check you out online via sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and company websites.

Your public presence, on social media, in particular, helps determine whether or not you represent a high risk; the kind of tenant who will ruin their home.

In this case, my friend had a problem. Porn hackers had just taken over his Facebook account, forcing him to start a new one.

social network

To a stranger, it would appear as if he had just joined the social network a week ago a big red flag.

The answer was simple. He needed to beef up his LinkedIn profile so that prospective landlords would come to see him as a competent, trusted person.

Unfortunately, up until then, his profile looked like an orphan - a place he had visited only once or twice. We added a headshot, biographical data and details of his work history. In a day or two, the landlord signalled her satisfaction and the subsequent vacation was a total success.

The fact is, a weak online presence may not elicit critiques from your close business associates here in Jamaica.

They, like you, may argue "they don't have the time" to "play around" with social media. Listening mostly to each other, you may all be convinced that it's unimportant.

It may be an echo chamber: a comfort zone in which your friends are just saying and doing the same things.

You may be mistaken in thinking that it doesn't matter. Obviously, your lack of a profile communicates something to the landlords on AirBnB. The broader question for business-people is "Who else might care?"

A while back, my wife received a message from a man who was coming to Jamaica from Europe to do some business. He wanted to meet her and possibly engage her services in the future.

A quick check on LinkedIn raised suspicions: his profile was also an orphan written in utterly vague language.

It took some time, but deeper Google searches showed that his company had a reputation for running a particular scam. Apparently, they knew how to enter a country and extract the information they needed for free before selling it to their clients.

My wife declined the meeting.You may be comfortable with the unclear image you are creating online, but there may be opportunities to receive discounts that are passing you by.

Also, others outside Jamaica may be ignoring your offers to engage, or are making sure they are too busy to take your call.

Social media use for business purposes requires a distinct skill, but don't wait for the classroom training to be offered. These platforms are evolving too rapidly.

Last year, I picked up an e-book that described in detail the skills required to make effective use of the latest version of LinkedIn.

I was shocked. Unknown to me, the social network had evolved. Within a few weeks, I picked up hundreds of new connections in one of my key markets overseas.

By contrast, Facebook business pages have recently been rendered impotent. Only paid advertisements are actually making their way to fans' news feeds, forcing many companies' strategies to change.

The landscape is changing so fast that the rules must be relearnt every few months. That's why you simply cannot set up a social media unit and relax. These are now executive skills that cannot be explained in the abstract they must be experienced first-hand.

In fact, they have become far from optional. They represent a must-have for the business-person who is serious and global-minded.

How to Use Social Media Insights to Improve Your Marketing

Do you know which type of posts your followers prefer?

Social media analytics let you see who your followers are and what they like.

In this article you’ll discover how to use your audience insights from Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest to improve your social media marketing.

Discover how to grow your Facebook fans without a budget.

#1: Track Follower Preferences on Twitter

Twitter provides a free analytics dashboard with key statistics about your account. You can measure your success in a variety of ways, ranging from the number of new followers to your most popular tweets.

You can access the Twitter analytics dashboard here. After you log into your account, you’ll see a 28-day summary of your profile.

See a summary of your Twitter activity for the last 28 days.

The summary shows the number of times you’ve tweeted, tweet impressions, followers and profile visits. Next to each number is an up or down arrow, representing the change over the previous period.

The right side of the screen shows a summary of your analytics for the current month.

You can view a summary of activity for the month.

If you scroll down, you can see summaries from previous months so you can compare and track your progress.

What do you do with this information? Start tracking it from month to month. Create a table and list the number of followers you have at the end of the month. Then measure the monthly and overall percentage increases or decreases from the first column or month you started.

If you want to see more detailed analytics for your profile, click on View All Tweet Activity. The page that appears shows a helpful and informative graph that lets you see the number of impressions that your tweets have earned over the last 28 days.

See the number of impressions for the last 28 days.

On the right side of the page is an overview of your engagement rate, link clicks, retweets, favorites and replies.

View detailed information about your account activity.

The 28-day range is the default setting, but you can change it to a more specific or broader range of dates. Make your selection from the drop-down menu on the right side of the page.

Select a date range for your summaries.

Below the main graph on this page is a breakdown of all of your tweets within the selected date range. From here, you can see the number of impressions and engagements and the engagement rate for each tweet.

View detailed information for each tweet.

Click on View Tweet Activity to see more information for a specific tweet. The report details how many people engaged with the tweet and the number of impressions. It also shows how many people clicked on your profile, favorited the tweet or retweeted it.

Click View Tweet Activity to see analytics for a specific tweet.

Why is this information beneficial? Because it lets you see what content is working (what your audience likes) and what isn’t. This helps you refine your content strategy to post about topics that your followers care about.

#2: Discover Fan Insights on Facebook

Facebook offers its own version of analytics called Facebook Insights (available after your page has received 30 likes). Use this information to make improvements to your content and determine the best times to post.

To access these metrics, click Insights at the top of the page. From here, you can click these tabs to view a variety of analytics.

Click a tab to view specific types of metrics.

Overview

The Overview section provides the most important analytics. It lists page likes, post reach (the number of people who have seen impressions of a post) and engagement (the percentage of people who saw a post and liked, clicked, commented on or shared it).

See metrics on page likes, post reach and engagement.

Scroll down the page to see your five most recent posts. For each post, view metrics on reach, engagement (broken down into post clicks, likes, comments and shares) and if applicable, how much money you spent promoting the post.

See metrics for your five most recent posts.

Likes

In the Likes section, you’ll see a graph showcasing your page’s growth in terms of audience. You can change the date range to see the total page likes for a certain range of dates or a particular date.

See the total number of page likes over time.

For the time period you selected, you can also see net likes, which is the number of new likes minus unlikes and paid likes.

View net likes for your page.

Facebook also lets you know you where your page likes came from: on your page, an ad or sponsored story, a page suggestion or a mobile device.

See a breakdown of page likes based on where they happened.

Reach

In the Reach section, you can see information on whether your Facebook posts are getting attention organically (people are finding your page on their own) or via paid ads.

Take a look at the organic and paid reach for individual posts.

This section also will also show a breakdown of likes, comments and shares of your Facebook posts. This data is important because it highlights how people are interacting with your page.

See how many likes, comments and shares you’re getting.

You can also view a graph of negative actions on your profile. This includes any unlikes your page has received, any posts people have chosen to hide and the number of times someone has reported your page or posts as spam. Why is this important? Because it can help you discover whether people like the majority of your posts.

Take a look at the negative activity on your page.

Finally, you can see the overall reach of your profile, including your posts, ads, mentions, posts to your page by others and check-ins. Total reach is different from post reach because it’s about your page as a whole. (Post reach is focused on individual posts to your page.)

Visits

The Visits section provides detailed analytics for page visits including the areas of your page that people visited most often (timeline, info or photos).

Discover how often people visit different areas of your page.

Scroll down to see a breakdown of the top sites that refer traffic to your Facebook page. This information tells you how people are finding you and getting to your Facebook page. For example, if you’re advertising on another website, this will tell you how effective that referral traffic is for your page.

Find out which sites are referring traffic to your page.

Posts

Want to find out when your audience is online? In the Posts section, you’ll see a graph showing what days of the week and times of the day your fans are online. The takeaway? If you post at times when your fans are online, you have a better chance of reaching them.

Find out when your fans are online.

Click Post Types to see which types of posts people engage with most often (links and photos), and the average engagement from each post (including clicks, likes, comments and shares).

Determine what types of posts get the most engagement on your page.

This information tells you what types of posts do best on your page. Maybe you have great photos that get a ton of likes, or interesting blog posts that get lots of shares. Focus on the type of content people like and are interacting with most often.

Scroll down to see a more detailed look at your posts. For each post, you can see its type (link or photo), targeting, reach, engagement and money spent on promotion. Find out which posts are most and least popular. What do you do with this information? Post more content similar to your popular posts and eliminate the types of posts people aren’t responding to.

Find out detailed information about each post.

People

The People section lets you review detailed information on your audience demographics: the percentage of women and men, ages, languages and even cities your fans live in.

Discover demographics of your target audience.

Use this information to focus your content on what your fans care about. For example, if your audience is mostly twenty-somethings just out of college, you don’t want to talk a lot about retirement. Instead, share content that’s helpful to them, like tips for finding a first job.

#3: Identify Follower Tastes on Pinterest

Just like Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest makes it easy to track your data through their analytics. The analytics dashboard helps you identify which images and topics work and which don’t so you can better tailor your content to your audience.

To access your Pinterest analytics, go here and log into your account.

On your analytics page, you’ll see two graphs: Your Pinterest Profile and Your Audience.

View analytics on your profile and audience.

In these graphs, you’ll see the average number of daily impressions (number of times one of your pins has appeared on a home or category feed or through a search), daily viewers (number of people looking at your profile), monthly viewers and monthly engagements.

Review this page to reveal your top pin impressions and the number of repins, clicks and likes in the last 30 days.

View your top pin impressions for the last 30 days.

Go back to your Pinterest profile and click on More > to get a detailed look at how your profile is measuring up this month.

Look at your monthly analytics.

Scroll down to see the boards with the top pin impressions or most popular boards. This tells you what content people like. For example, if your top board is interesting quotes, you know to keep adding quotes to the board and put more effort into it.

Find out which boards have the top pin impressions.

If you want, you can change the date range for the data you’re reviewing.

Select a date range.

To see all of your data since you started, click All-Time in the top right. You can view Most Repinned (your most shared pins), Best in Search (pins that rank higher in search) and Power Pins (pins with a high number of repins and clicks).

See a list of your most shared pins.

The Audience tab shows the demographics of your audience. You can see the average number of viewers over a monthly period (with a date range that you can choose).

View audience demographics on the Audience tab.

You can also find out where your audience is located (countries and specific metro areas), what languages they speak and their gender.

Find out where your followers live.

Take a look at the Interests tab to see what your audience is interested in.

Discover your audience’s interests.

Conclusion

Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest offer analytics tools and dashboards that provide key metrics on your accounts. By following these instructions and collecting analytics, you’ll be able to find out more about your audience and discover what content resonates with them.

Instagram Images: How to Stand Out on Instagram

More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode I interview Peg Fitzpatrick, the co-author of The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users, which she wrote with Guy Kawasaki. She is also a social media strategist and an expert in visual marketing. Her clients include Motorola, Audi, Google, Virgin and others.

Peg will explore Instagram marketing ideas that are easy to put to use right away.

You’ll discover tools to use for your Instagram images.

Listen as Peg Fitzpatrick shares what marketers need to know about standing out on Instagram.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below.

Instagram Images

How Peg got started on Instagram

Peg first discovered Instagram when looking for apps for her iPad. This was shortly after the iPad first came out. She loaded Instagram and loved it, but no one she knew was on it.

Then, when Pinterest came out, Peg, like a lot of people, thought Pinterest and Instagram were the same, because they were both about images. Although she initially chose to focus on Pinterest, after she learned more about both platforms, Peg discovered how different the two were.

When Peg went back to Instagram, she saw it was a great place for people to have conversations.

Peg was an early adopter of Instagram.

Even if you know lots of people on Facebook, Peg believes Instagram is where you can build a community. As a blogger or entrepreneur, it’s the kind of place you want to go to meet new people.

Listen to the show to learn about why more people didn’t get on Instagram immediately.

Instagram challenges for marketers

Peg believes social media is challenging for marketers because they want to look at things in a more traditional way: how to get people to do x, y and z. The newer platforms, like Snapchat and Instagram, are even more challenging. It’s not easy to write a viral blog post or post a YouTube video that goes viral.

Instagram is limited, Peg says, because you just get that one link in your bio and there are no links in the comments.

While a blogger might not see the value in Instagram (“Why should my blog be on Instagram if there’s no link for people to click every day?”), brands are getting more engagement on Instagram than any other social platform. It creates brand awareness that leads more people to your business, events and products.

Instagram creates brand awareness. Image: Shutterstock.

The biggest mistake marketers make, Peg says, is they aren’t posting enough. On a recent panel, Peg heard Instagram people who have 500,000+ followers say they post multiple times per day. One of them posts 8 or 10 times per day. And they post excellent content.

It takes more time to create an Instagram post. Although you can share a blog post immediately, with Instagram you have to create the image, write the text and figure out all of the things that go with it.

On Facebook, people don’t post enough either. On Martha Stewart’s Facebook page they post every hour. Of course she probably has the biggest backlog of content of any person ever, Peg adds.

Listen to the show to discover why Social Media Examiner doesn’t do much on Instagram.

Ideas for what to post

Peg says there are basic things to post on Instagram, such as pictures of what you’re doing or where you are. If you’re at an event, it’s fun to post pictures of people you meet or do selfies. You can post a day in the life at your blog or business, pictures of your team or behind the scenes at your company.

Show pictures of wherever you happen to be to give more of a human connection with your company.

Post Instagram images at events.

For example, Peg explains how she uses Instagram to promote a webinar before it starts to give people one more chance to click and join. She’ll share a photo of her computer monitor with something related to the webinar on it.

Before a Google+ hangout, she’ll take pictures in the green room to share. She’ll either take a photo with her phone or do a picture of the screen. For example, if she’s about to do a Google hangout with Guy Kawasaki and Gary Vaynerchuk, she’ll take a behind-the-scenes photo that’s interesting and funny, and also chronicles what they’re doing.

It’s part of creating and sharing your journey, as well as celebrating the things that go on.

Listen to the show to hear what picture Peg posted when she was a guest at the first Social Media Marketing World.

What to put in an Instagram post

Peg explains her method for creating Instagram posts for her blog content.

She creates a square image and then treats the description as a mini blog post, rather than a quick update. It’s important to give enough information in the post that people will get a sense of it and start a conversation.

Start with a good image. While 640 x 640 pixels is the official Instagram biggest size, they will scale it down. You never want to have them scale images up, because that’s when they get blurry. Peg does a 735 x 735 image.

Next, write an intro in the text. Peg will ask a question, add a couple of sentences and then ask a closing question. She also writes “click the link in my bio” in the description, as well as in the “location” for the photo.

When sharing a blog post image on Instagram, Peg includes tips from the article in the description.

Instagram allows you to add a location. If you’re somewhere else, that’s one thing. However, if you’re at home or in your office, you can put a call to action in the location section manually. It will save to your phone too, so you can pull it up again.

Another option is to put the link as text in the comments. This is especially easy, given the way Instagram looks on desktop. Rather than say “cut and paste this,” write it as a call to action that reads, “If you’re on desktop or mobile, just cut and paste this.”

When you add that in your comments, it stays on your Instagram post. So next week when you switch your main link to a different blog post, someone who’s looking back through your old content will be able to cut and paste the exact link.

Listen to the show to discover what kinds of behind-the-scenes photos we took while getting ready for Social Media Marketing World.

Instagram marketing strategy

Peg says you don’t want to build your entire Instagram marketing plan on quotes, but they really are popular. She tries to put her own spin on everything, so if she does a quote, she asks a question with it. Just make sure the content you’re sharing relates to your business goals somehow. There needs to be a reason to share it, other than to post a quote.

Infographics and anything with bullet points or lists are also good. For example, on list posts, share a few tips and tell your audience to click through to read the rest.

Another idea is to put multiple pictures together using a tool like Canva. If you take a bunch of photos at an event, just make a collage to share, rather than overwhelm your audience (and yourself) with tons of photos.

Peg suggests branding your Instagram images. Unless you do this, when people repost your images, their audience won’t know they came from you. Include a watermark with your URL or a line at the bottom with your logo or website.

Listen to the show to learn about Iconosquare and the Facebook Mentions app.

Instagram tools

Peg doesn’t take photos in the Instagram app, because they don’t save on your phone. If you take a few pictures and only share one, the others could get lost.

Instead, she takes pictures in SmugMug’s Camera Awesome app for iOS and Android. It has a grid, plus you can crop and edit photos in the app. Peg doesn’t spend a lot of time editing. She’ll just take the photo and use one filter in Instagram.

Peg also likes the Over app, also for iOS and Android. It takes photos and adds different fonts and overlays. For example, if you’re a coffee fan, they have coffee art. They also do seasonal updates for things like back to school or holidays.

Word Swag, a popular iOS app, allows you to add your logo to photos. Word Swag looks templated because there are tons of things you can do with it, and Over looks more personalized and customized.

Add text to images using Over or Word Swag (pictured).

Peg also mentions a video tool called Phhhoto, which makes animated GIF videos that are perfect for Instagram.

As far as scheduling is concerned, Hootsuite came out with a brand-new Instagram integration. Now, you can load images for your Instagram account into Hootsuite ahead of time.

Although Hootsuite calls it “scheduling,” what it actually does is send a message to your phone telling you to post. Then you go into the app, and manually post the image to Instagram. This is great for brands that have several people posting for them.

Listen to the show to discover how to find people to follow on Instagram.

Discovery of the Week

Katch.me is for all the diehard Meerkat and Periscope users who want more functionality from those apps, and are frustrated with some of their limitations. For example, you can’t have replays after 24 hours on certain apps and there isn’t a quick way to easily share. Katch offers solutions.

Katch records your Meerkat and Periscope broadcasts and makes it easy to share them.

Sign in to Katch, connect it to your Meerkat or Periscope account or both, and it will collect your broadcasts in one place with cloud storage and instant replays.

It works automatically, as long as the account is hooked up. Shortly after you finish your broadcast, Katch sends out a tweet to watch the replay.

Katch is a free app.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how Katch works for you.

Other Show Mentions

Today’s show is sponsored by Social Media Success Summit 2015.

Want to improve your social media marketing? Need to prove your efforts are working? Join 4,000 fellow marketers at the online mega-conference, designed to inspire and empower you.

Discover the best and newest ways to market your business on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest. Find new ways to improve your content and measure your results all from the comfort of your home or office.

You’ll be led by dozens of top social media pros, including Mark Schaefer, Mari Smith, Christopher Penn, Amy Porterfield, Neal Schaffer, Ian Cleary, Viveka von Rosen, Jon Loomer, Andrea Vahl, Steve Dotto, Amy Schmittauer, Peg Fitzpatrick, Brian Fanzo, Sue Zimmerman, Kim Garst, Andy Crestodina, Pam Moore, Martin Shervington, Donna Moritz, Ron Nash, Michael Stelzner and more. We have selectively recruited the top experts on every major social network to share tactical, step-by-step, hands-on information.

Peg Fitzpatrick is the only person speaking twice at the Social Media Success Summit. She will be doing the Instagram productivity tips panel on how to create a workflow that flows. Since there isn’t a way to schedule, you need to find a great process to create content, manage it and get it all out on Instagram. The second session is how to create a visual style for social media images. It’s on how to create brand guidelines for your blog, so when people go to your blog and see your social media, you look as professional as possible.

Plus, Vincent Ng of MCNG Marketing will be presenting on how to use Pinterest analytics to grow your Pinterest reach.

One exciting area we will be covering is video. Tim Schmoyer is talking about how to optimize your YouTube videos for search
, Brian Fanzo is talking about how to create Periscope and Meerkat live mobile broadcasts
, Steve Dotto is talking about how to use YouTube to grow your email list and Amy Schmittauer is talking about how to create video content marketing plans with YouTube.

We’re not just covering video and visual marketing, we also get into every major social network.

Social Media Success Summit is an online conference. It’s 36 different sessions spread across 4 weeks. There are three sessions per day, three times per week, over four weeks. And it’s on every conceivable social media platform you can imagine. Check it out. Visit SMSS15.com for significant early bird discounts.

The Art of Story: How to Captivate an Audience

Do you give presentations or speak to clients?

Want to illustrate your knowledge with better stories?

To discover how to improve your stories, and your storytelling, I interview Michael Port.

More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode I interview Michael Port, the author of NYT best seller: Book Yourself Solid. He also teaches workshops called Heroic Public Speaking, where he applies the craft of acting to public speaking. His latest book is Steal the Show: From Speeches to Job Interviews to Deal-Closing Pitches.

Michael will explore how to find, use and create stories in your marketing.

You’ll discover tips to improve the delivery of your stories.

Listen as Michael Port shares what marketers need to know about the art of storytelling.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below.

The Art of Story

Michael’s story

Michael shares how he started his career as an actor. He has a master from the graduate acting program at New York University. Michael worked professionally on the shows Sex and the City, Third Watch, All My Children, Law & Order and 100 Center Street, as well as in the films The Pelican Brief, Down to Earth and The Believer. He earned a living doing commercial voice overs for companies including AT&T, Pizza Hut, Braun, Coors Beer, MTV and others.

After he left acting, Michael says he decided to talk his way into a job for which he was completely unqualified. He pitched himself, got the job and worked his way up in the fitness industry on the business side. He credits his post-acting success to being an actor, as he was able to perform during life’s high-stakes situations.

When the spotlight and eyes are on you, the way you perform will determine the quality of your life, Michael says.

After Michael left the fitness industry, he went into consulting for businesses and started writing books, and he saw it more and more. Over the last 13 years, Michael realized he had to meld his experience and training as an actor, his experience as a professional keynoter and what he knows about the business world.

Learn more about Michael at MichaelPort.com.

That’s what Steal the Show is about, Michael says. Half the book is on the techniques associated with being a great public speaker and the other half is focused on performing during life’s everyday situations.

Listen to the show to learn more about how Michael coaches speakers, as well as why he originally resisted helping people with their public speaking.

Why people love stories

People love narrative, wonder and imagination, Michael says. Stories can get us out of our own head and into another world. We turn everything into a story, he continues. Politics, religion, love, our success or our failures become stories. Sometimes the stories we tell actually get in our way and sometimes they can change the world.

Michael talks about a researcher named Jonathan Gottschall, who studies the neuroscience behind stories. Jonathan says the constant firing of our neurons in response to fictional stimuli strengthens and refines the neural pathways that lead to skillful navigation of life’s problems.

Listen to the show to discover in what way projects are stories.

How to find your stories

People sometimes draw a blank when they start to work on a presentation or prepare for an upcoming meeting, because so many things have happened over the years. Those experiences and stories are not top of mind, since you are more likely thinking about today and tomorrow.

Michael shares one of his techniques for how to uncover your stories. Image: Shutterstock.

There are four different prompters for the discovery part of the process. Take a piece of paper and write out four columns, one for each of these categories. Then, when you go to craft a speech or presentation for a sales pitch, you’ll be able to go back to this sheet, search through the stories and see if any of them apply. Look to the message in those stories. See if there is a metaphor or analogy you can use.

The first category is people. Go through your mother, your father, your best friend, your high school girlfriend, the girl that got away, etc. Then come up with stories that relate to each of these people.

Now, go through places. Did you have a vacation home or a particular place your family went to in the summer on a regular basis? Has anything ever happened there that was unique? Once you think about one story, another starts to come.

Remember, your personal stories tie into the business side of things. There is no difference between our business and our personal stories, since we are the same person. All marketers know that marketing is storytelling, Michael adds. Seth Godin wrote a book about it. Stories give you a way to illustrate a technical concept in a way that reminds people of their experiences, so they can connect to it.

Next, think about things. For example, think about your first car and stories around it.

Finally, go through particular times in your life and events. Look at things like weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, confirmations, graduations, anything that was important to you will start to bring up stories. That’s how you source them.

Create a library of stories for yourself that you can then craft. Just because you you experienced it doesn’t mean it’s ready to share yet.

Stockpile story ideas you can work on. Image: Shutterstock.

Listen to the show to hear why the discovery process is more fun with other people.

Elements of a story

Whenever Michael is going to tell a story in a professional setting, he uses Aristotle’s three-act structure to sculpt it. Most plays, movies and TV episodes, as well as almost any story and many jokes, use the three-act structure.

It goes like this:

Act 1 is the given circumstances. It’s the time, setting and place. The things you need to know in order to understand what’s about to happen. If that exposition is lengthy, non-specific and goes on for a long time, the listener usually checks out. If there’s not enough exposition, the listener is confused by the second act, and then checks out. You need to have just enough information for the audience to understand what’s about to happen.

Act 2 is the conflict. This is where an inciting incident happens. This is something that occurs that creates conflict. Usually when a conflict occurs, some action follows. Then that action produces another conflict, which often produces more action, which produces another conflict and then more tension.

What makes a story rich is you have the protagonist, who is going after what they want but is thwarted by the hurdles, boundaries and roadblocks that get in their way. They keep trying to overcome them, Michael adds. The more tension, the better the story.

Act 3 is the resolution. The people in the story lived happily ever after, everyone died in the end or, if it’s a joke, it’s the big punchline. The resolution (or payoff) has to be worth the exposition and all of the conflict. Act 2 is usually the bulk of the time, as it’s 85% of the story.

Michael suggests trying to put the stories you’ve uncovered into that structure. Write them out. Eventually you’ll memorize them. You might tell them a little bit different each time, but you’ll have your go-to stories, your core stories, that you pull out when you are in a sales meeting or even when you are on a first date. These are the stories that make you look good, but not so good that it seems like you’re bragging.

The best stories are the ones people don’t even know they’re in until it gets to the conflict. The best theatrical experiences are the ones where the audience is excited to find out what’s next.

Listen to the show to discover why you need to be careful when you tell other people’s stories.

Tips for delivering a good story

Michael talks about the mediums and environments (on camera versus in person) that present benefits and challenges to speakers.

When you speak to a camera, there is no one else there. You can control the timing very well, because no one interrupts. However, you don’t get the human interaction, the dynamic of another person or other people to help you create the timing via the energy in the room.

With a speech you have a lot of energy present to use, if you can control it, to own the timing. However, there are a lot of people and things going on that you need to be aware of and manage, so that the timing is not taken away from you.

Humor especially is very difficult straight to camera, Michael explains, which is is why historically sitcoms have audiences. Without the audience it’s very hard to get the timing.

Timing is very important. The ability to sit in silence in different parts of your story is key. The most important part of the story, that often gets silence, is right before the resolution.

Learn how to deliver your story. Image: Shutterstock.

It’s called a pregnant pause, Michael continues. It’s a beat. And in that beat people fill it with their energy, their expectations. The audience is waiting for what’s to come and that’s exciting. So speakers need to feel comfortable drawing that out. You can use the rule of three. Count to three in your head. Wait wait wait. Now deliver.

Pacing, rhythm and volume are also important. If you tend to be very monotone, it’s often because you like to play things safe. It’s less likely that you are going to mistake in what you say, you are going to offend anybody, you will trip yourself up, because you are speaking slowly and measured.

On the other hand, variation in pitch, tone and pace show you are living a little bit more on the edge. And that’s what people like to hear. While a speaking coach might advise people to slow down, Michael suggests focusing on pausing instead. There is power in the pause

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Listen to the show to learn Michael’s thoughts on non-verbal communication while speaking.

About Steal the Show

Steal the Show by Michael Port.

Steal the Show, Michael explains, is for people who want to speak professionally, people who want to speak to get more clients or those who need to speak for their job. Plus, it will help those who you don’t necessarily speak publicly, but you want to do better in situations where people are watching.

Michael organized the book to focus on the mindset of the performer in the first part. It’s to help people find their own voice and feel comfortable with it.

In part two he goes into six performance principles. These principles not only help you perform when you’ve rehearsed, but you can perform in the moment, because your improvisational skills are top notch.

Finally, part three is a master class in public speaking. It’s everything from content creation, storytelling and a six-step rehearsal process to a section on writing and telling jokes and more.

Plus, if you go to Stealtheshow.com, there’s a whole bunch of bonuses for pre-orders.

Listen to the show to hear Michael’s guarantee to his readers.

Discovery of the Week

Want a cool way to save links for later with Pinterest? If you are already a heavy Pinterest user or looking for reason to start using Pinterest and experiment without having a full-blown commitment to it, you can use the Pinterest app on your iPhone or android, or even on the desktop, to save links to boards to read them later.

Create secret boards and use them to save links to article you want to read later.

Set up your sharing. Hit the share button, hit more and then flip the toggle for Pinterest. From that point forward, if you are on an article in your browser, you can send that link to Pinterest. Create a secret board and pin what you want to read later to it.

You can even create a secret board for links to share with someone, like your spouse. It doesn’t even have to be a secret board, it can be a “what I am currently reading” or a “articles I’ve found interesting” board.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how using Pinterest for saving links works for you.

Other Show Mentions

Today’s show is sponsored by Social Media Success Summit 2015.

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