How to write and deliver a 5 minute speech
May 14th, 2008
I got back from Vegas at midnight last night after attending the SNA’s Interactive Media Conference. Indigio was a gold sponsor of the event and one of the benefits of attending was that I was able to talk about our business for 5 minutes to 125 newspaper editors, publishers and ad directors in the Suburban and Community Markets. The day would be videotaped so I really wanted to make sure I was prepared. I did a little research on how to write a 5 minute speech and thought I would share what I learned. And I’ve posted the transcript I delivered so you could critique it.
My goal in the short time I had was to introduce the attendees to what Indigio does, who we do it with and how we may be able to help the attendees evolve their interactive business. I also wanted to call attention to the case study on the DetNews.com that I was handing out and wrap it all up in the themes we were about to hear about that day. Here’s what I came up with:
“Hello. I’m Teresa Lawlor and I’m with the Indigio Group – a gold sponsor of this event today. Thank you SNA – Sharon and team for the opportunity to be here. I’d like to spend a few minutes introducing our company, the work we do and how we are helping other clients – not unlike yourselves – affect change in this industry.
Indigio is a full-service Interactive Agency based in Denver. We specialize in optimizing the online user experience, Web site traffic and driving customer conversions. The services we provide to do that:
· Web Strategy – very much focused on what success looks like to you and how to use our services to get you there.
· Online Search (including Pay-Per-Click, Search Engine Optimization)
· Web Analytics (Omniture, Google Analytics, Multivariate testing)
· Web site Design (Design, Usability testing, Information Architecture
· Web site Development (Application Development, Facebook applications, Blogs, etc)
· We have an extensive knowledge of the Publishing, Real Estate, Moving, Employment, Travel and Retail industries. We have a very loyal and diverse customer base including national businesses as well as smaller, local businesses. Budget Rental Car, PODs, eBags, and MediaNews Group, McClatchy, Philly.com, Detroit News and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The themes we will hear about today – creating marketplaces, developing social networks and driving customer acquisition through search marketing – are very much concepts that our clients deal with everyday.
Before joining Indigio in March, I had been a client of theirs for 7 years. I was formerly MediaNews Group Interactive’s VP of Marketing. I was responsible for audience development and measurement, including improving the user experience through site redesigns, and rebuilding the sites’ foundation to make way for targeted advertising, Web 2.0 initiatives and more. Indigio helped me develop usability standards and processes to revamp the many of the 62 news sites across the country. I spent 3 years at MNG evangelizing new strategies around targeted content and advertising, analyzing consumer behavior, search and online marketing opportunities. I’ve seen a huge shift in the interactive news space to being more user focused, being very measurable, and involving readers not only as content consumers but also as content creators. And we are seeing the same with many of our clients, news-related or not.
One of those clients was DetNews.com. We recently did a comprehensive redesign for DetNews.com – which I understand is up for an EPpy award this week. The Detroit News team and Indigio recognized the need for increasing user engagement through improved usability; implementing reader tools like commenting, forums, social bookmarking as well as photo galleries. They recognized the need to build a UI that was flexible and scalable enough to evolve as their readership and business needs evolved. Indigio focused on creating an extremely flexible site template structure to do so. Please take a case study if you haven’t already to learn more about their challenges and how we helped. Some quick success metrics – unique visitors have increased and time spent on site has increased 100% year over year.
There are so many examples that I could share but so little time. Thank you for your time and I’ll be here all day to share ideas and learn more about how we can help you evolve your businesses to succeed online.”
So how did I do? And when the video is available I will post that as well (gulp).
