Sinan also shares with listeners how to market their brand through other brands without using pay-per-click. He discusses the basics of loosely defined partnerships, advises giving away for free some of what you do in your business, and using organic search engines for SEO. Sinan Kanatsiz is the Chairman and CEO of KComm, a marketing communications firm specializing in Public Relations, Public Affairs, Internet Marketing, Events and Strategic Relationships, founded in a sewing room in Sinan’s parents’ house in 1995.  It has grown to be a large business, with a client roster that encompasses large and small, local and global clients. Sinan is also the Chairman and Founder of The Internet Marketing Association (IMA), a professional organization that currently boasts over 515,000 members in various fields, including sales, marketing, business ownership, programming and creative development. Sinan started IMA with four key values as  a foundation for success in today’s highly competitive business environment:  integrity, communication, professionalism and education. IMA is one of the fastest growing Internet marketing groups in the world.  Its mission is to provide a knowledge-sharing platform for business professionals where proven Internet marketing strategies are demonstrated and shared in an effort to increase each member’s value to their organization.

Drag Some Poor Soul on Stage
Good public speaking should use attention gaining devices. Here is one that works every time: Find some excuse to get someone on stage. When an audience member is on stage, the rest of the audience is glued to the action for the following reasons:

1. They want to see what is going to happen to one of their own.
2. They are priming themselves to be up there.
3. They are worrying to death that they may be asked to be up there.

Reasons 1 and 2 are good and reason 3 is not so good. For 1 and 2 the mindset of the observing audience member is that, “I want to watch to see what my colleague or other audience member will do when they are on stage. No matter how exciting you are as a presenter, you cannot compete with the excitement generated by someone who is on stage who is not “supposed” to be on stage. For number 3, you want to keep shy or sensitive audience members from withdrawing from your program altogether because of the fear that they may be asked to stand up in front of everyone. This chance of withdrawal is easily eliminated by the following statement:
In a moment I’m going to ask for some / a volunteer to come on stage with me. Don’t worry. No one will have to come up if they don’t want to.

Audience Gender
There is nothing better than an all female public speaking audience. All female audiences tend to laugh more easily and louder than all male audiences. All-male audiences are the toughest because the male ego gets in the way of laughter. They look around to see if anyone else is laughing before they laugh, and they won’t laugh as loud because they think they will look less powerful. One of the hardest audiences to deal with consists of a group of executives from the same company when the CEO is present. If you say something funny, the executives will start to laugh, but they choke it off until they check to see if the CEO is laughing. If he or she is laughing, then they go ahead and laugh. This kind of audience will create timing nightmares for you. If you are the CEO and you are in the audience for a presentation, it is your obligation to laugh and at least act like you’re having a good time to “give permission” to everyone else to laugh. As a good public speaker, you can sometimes take it upon yourself to gently explain to the CEO how everyone will look to him or her for approval. Audiences that consist of more than 50 percent women are good too because . The presence of the females provides a good buffer and makes it OK for the men to laugh, since so many other people are laughing.

Don’t Say “Yes” to Every Gig
(Did we say “pick” my public speaking audiences?). Yes, we did say pick your audiences. Some of you may not have this luxury because you must do speaking as part of your job, but those of you that do, will move up faster in the speaking world. When you are a beginning public speaker it is important for you to experience different types of audiences just FOR the experience. As you climb the speaking ladder where the audiences are bigger, or more important to your career, and the stakes are higher, you must learn to just say no. Most top speakers don’t accept every request to speak even if they are available, and the money is right. They pick their engagements to put themselves in front of audiences whose profiles indicate the greatest chance of success. If you are a highly technical speaker, you would not want to be speaking to a widget sales group at their annual retreat. Conversely, as a really fun retreat facilitator, you would not want to be speaking to a group of radar technicians who are only interested in performance data of the latest missile protection system. Avoid accepting engagements where the audiences needs are clearly out of sync with your abilities, likes and dislikes. Don’t get us wrong. You need to keep pushing your limits, but if your audience needs more than you can give –that’s right — you bombed. Although it will be a lesson learned, do yourself and everyone else a favor. Learn to just say no.

Keep ‘Em Laughing

Sigmund Freud wrote:

“The most favorable condition for comic pleasure is a generally happy disposition in which one is in the mood for laughter. In happy toxic states almost everything seems comic. We laugh at the expectation of laughing, at the appearance of one who is presenting the comic material (sometimes even before he [she] attempts to make us laugh), and finally, we laugh at the recollection of having laughed.”

This concept has been termed ‘in fun’ by people that study public speaking humor. If you want your audience to laugh, they must be in fun. You, the speaker, must be in fun. The emcee or program coordinator must be in fun. The whole program should be designed in fun. Don’t do anything to take them out of in fun. Don’t speak about controversial subjects like religion or politics and don’t make unfriendly comments to audience members. If a problem occurs which must be dealt with, find an in fun way of doing so. For instance, if you’re at a speaking engagement and someone asks who you voted for say, ‘I voted for the USA.’ That’s a cute way to say that I really don’t want to talk about it. How do you put in fun into practice? There are so many different ways you can just pick one. Have a ventriloquist introduce you at an early morning meeting to wake up everyone and get them in fun. You could pass out fun snacks to the audience or put balloons on their chairs. Public announcements and agendas can be decorated with cartoon characters. Funny props are great for putting people in fun. Do anything you can to be sure your audience knows that it’s OK to laugh.

See? It’s not really that tough. If you’ve been at the public speaking game for a while, sometimes it’s hard to put yourself back in the shoes of an audience member experiencing your presentation for the first time. Regardless, a good session of reflection on the speeches you’ve attended might be time well spent. Focus especially on what went right and, more importantly, what went wrong.

The Speaking of Wealth Team

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The industry has bifurcated, with the Big Six publishers in New York taking accepting only mega-sellers with last names like King, Clancy, and Rowling. Meanwhile, small, independent publishing houses are clinging to their desire to bring only “literary” works to market, which leaves the vast majority of writers on the outside looking in. The big names’ mentioned notwithstanding, advances have almost disappeared, except in cases where a new author has already proven there is a market for their books. This means you now have a better chance to sign with a major publisher if you go the self-publishing route, first proving you can build a network of interested readers through social media.

To those of us who have been around the industry for a while, this seems completely opposite to the way business once was done. You’re not imagining things. Self-publishing used to be the kiss of death for garnering any traditional publisher interest. If you had already paid to put your own book into the market, they wouldn’t touch the project. But these days, with hard copy sales of books plunging into the toilet, publishers are so paranoid about buying a book that doesn’t sell, they want the author to already prove they are a good financial risk before any advance or contract will be offered.

Holy mackerel! The question that pops into our head is why the heck would you want to accept the pitiably low royalty rates offered by major houses if you’re already selling books on your own? We’re not just talking a little difference either. Self-publish your own digital ebook for Kindle through Amazon and earn 70% based on cover price. Compare that to around 5% when you sign a publishing contract and let the one of the Big Boys distribute it. Of course, they do still offer a much larger stab at the marketplace but here’s the rub. Unless by some freak of circumstance your book sales take off quickly, they are not going to sink much marketing money into telling the world your book is ready for purchase. Why would they if they have Stephen King’s latest tome taking a position on the starting line?

So should a brand, spanking new author decide to self-publish rather than pursue big time distribution? Our solid answer to that is…maybe. The jury’s still out.

The Speaking of Wealth Team

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Like Facebook, LinkedIn allows you to build a profile and create a network. Unlike Facebook, this is all about making professional connections. If you’ve never taken the time to look into LinkedIn, here are four things it might do for you and your career.

Establish a Professional Profile
LinkedIn gives you the keys to controlling your online identity. Have you Googled yourself lately? You never know what may come up. LinkedIn profiles rise to the top of search results, letting you control the first impression people get when searching for you online.

Stay in Touch With Colleagues and Friends
In today’s professional world, people change jobs and locations constantly. By connecting on LinkedIn, your address book will never go out of date. Your contacts update their profiles, keeping you current with their latest jobs, projects and contact info. You’ll stay in closer contact with great tools to communicate and collaborate.

Find Experts and Ideas
Sometimes your immediate circle can’t resolve a unique business challenge. Tools like Answers and Groups let you locate and interact with experts through trusted introductions. LinkedIn Search lets you explore the broader network by name, title, company, location, and other keywords that will help you find the knowledge you’re looking for.

Explore Opportunities
Whether you’re looking for a career opportunity, winning new clients or building your professional reputation, LinkedIn connects you to jobs, sales leads and ideal business partners. With our powerful search engine, company research tools and a jobs board that shows who you know at listed companies, LinkedIn is the place to turn for new opportunities.

The bottom line is this, if you’ve screwed up your past by revealing a little too much of yourself on Facebook, consider canceling that account and reinventing yourself on LinkedIn in a new, solidly professional light.

The Speaking of Wealth Team

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Stephanie Chandler is the author of Booked Up! How to Write, Publish, and Promote a Book to Grow Your Business, and has authored several other business and marketing books.  She is the founder and CEO of Authority Publishing.com, a company that specializes in custom book publishing for nonfiction books. Stephanie is also a frequent speaker at business events and on the radio, and has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, BusinessWeek, Wired Magazine, and many other media outlets, including blogging for Forbes.com. Stephanie started her career in Silicon Valley, reaping the rewards and surviving the burst of the Dot Com Boom. In 2003, she fled the corporate world and opened a bookstore in Sacramento, CA. She began studying online marketing strategies and put the techniques to use to quickly put her store website in the top of Google. From this experience, a passion for internet marketing was born. In 2004, Stephanie launched BusinessInfoGuide.com, a directory of resources for entrepreneurs, and began writing business and marketing books. She sold her bookstore and later launched Authority Publishing.

Brian Carter is a respected elite internet marketing expert around the world. He is known for his hands-on business experience, cutting edge insights, background in improve and stand-up comedy, which has made him a much sought after speaker and trainer.  Brian is the co-author of Facebook Marketing, and has authored an ebook called How to Get More Fans On Facebook.  He also offers a training program, called Facebook Marketing 101.  Brian develops strategies and builds search visibility and social marketing fanbases for companies of all sizes, including Universal Studios, The U.S. Army, Hardee’s, and Carls’ Jr. He has been quoted in Twitter Marketing for Dummies and has been quoted and profiled in such publications as Information Week, U.S. News and World Report, The Wall Street Journal, and Entrepreneur Magazine. Brian also writes for Search Engine Journal and AIIFacebook.  He is a speaker and trainer for top marketing conferences, such as SEOmoz, SMX, Pubcon, The AIIFacebook Expo, Socialize, The South Carolina Society of Association Executives, and The American Marketing Association, among others. He is the CEO of The Brian Carter Group.

For those of you waiting for the phenomenon to go away, better pull up a chair. It’s going to be a while. Remember when digital rights were a throwaway in the traditional publishing contract? Not any more. We’re well on our way down the road to a world where deciding to offer a hard copy of a book seems almost quaint. The truth of the matter is that, like JK Rowling, you can have your ebook on sale to the world in a matter of hours via the auspices of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.

Write a Darn Good Book
Before you devote an inkling of thought to things like marketing, cover design, fonts, file formats, and other digital publishing minutia, you better have a darn good book to sell. One of the tricks of the new era of publishing is that the tasks writers used to not have to worry about become a big deal when you’re publishing your own book. Everyone knows you need an outstanding cover to sell product, but where are you going to get it? Don’t let this sort of stuff distract you from the fact that your first and foremost job is to write. If you’re not writing regularly, there’s a good chance you won’t be publishing or selling many books regularly either. Before anything else, write!

Layout and Cover Design
As we already mentioned, the publishing company used to take care of design and layout details. With self publishing, these tasks fall to you, but don’t make the mistake of assuming you have to personally do it all. If you have the appropriate design skills and access to professional image editing software like Photoshop or the open source alternative GIMP, by all means get busy creating a work of art book cover. The problem is good design takes time and effort, two quantities that might be better spent elsewhere. The good news is that, along with the monumental increase in the number of writers who choose the digital self publishing route, there has been a similar swell in the ranks of talented and cost effective design and layout specialists. Don’t overlook them because it might be worth the dollars spent to not have the aggravation of creating a perfect cover to exacting specifications.

File Formatting
At the very least, you want to make your new book available for the following ebook readers: Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Sony Reader. The bad news is that arch competitors like Amazon and Barnes & Noble do their dead level best to make it impossible to read ebooks purchased through their store on rival devices. As readers, of course we don’t like it, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. What this means is that you must understand how to convert your manuscript, which is likely in Word format, to the required format for each reader. At the very least, you need to get your book available for sale for Kindle and Nook, since these two comprise about 90% of the ebook buying market. If it feels like you’re brain is about to rupture, consider publishing through Smashwords, which is a third party company specializing in file conversion for ALL readers that are out there. For the most exposure, you need to have the most options for people to find your book.

Get the Word Out
Unfortunately, too many people get confused and try to do this part first. They spend hours each day on blogs and other social media outlets, trumpeting the imminent arrival of their masterpiece. The only problem – they forgot to ever actually finish and publish the thing. Pretty soon even family and close friends stop paying attention. Don’t interpret this to mean we think marketing is irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. Marketing is critical! Just make sure you have a thoroughly edited and widely published book actually for sale before you start bragging about it. The best way to lose a potential reader for good is to incite them to a fever pitch about buying your book, then tell them you plan to have it finished in six months. Put this your brain and ponder it every time you’re tempted to jump the gun. Your mom not withstanding, nobody is going to wait around half a year to read your masterpiece.

While this advice isn’t everything you need to know about the brave new world of digital self publishing, at least now you’re facing in the right direction.

The Speaking of Wealth Team

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Whether your last name is Carlin, Seinfeld, or Smith, you need to know how to deliver a punch line if you want to speak effectively in public. Here are three critical ideas to keep in mind.

Delivery
Punch lines get their name from the fact that they should be delivered harder and in a slightly different voice than that in which you were previously speaking. There’s no point in even having a set-up story and punch line if the audience doesn’t catch it easily. If this means leaning slightly forward and talking more loudly into the microphone, so be it. You might also shift the tone of your voice slightly to catch the attention of those fixated on the getting to the front of the upcoming buffett line.

Pause
The best way to ruin your punch line is to rush through it, then not allow enough time for it to sink into the collective brain of your listeners. Pause just prior to delivery. The momentary silence in the room is guaranteed to make most people pay attention. Let the line settle for a few seconds. Hopefully, that time will be filled with appreciative laughter and clapping, but even if it isn’t, don’t rush helter skelter into the next idea. A good public speaker knows that his words and sentences need time to breathe. It’s not a race to see how quickly you can finish.

Find One Person
No matter how large the audience is, focus on one person when you deliver the punch line. Look him right in the eye as you drop your verbal bomb. If if the joke isn’t that funny, your personal attention will likely inspire at least that focused target to smile, laugh, or clap. Hopefully, the rest of the room will take the cue and follow suit.

Keep in mind that the single biggest punch line failure comes from rushing through the moment. As you gain more experience, waiting for the laughter will come easier. Don’t crush the reaction before it has time to develop.

The Speaking of Wealth Team

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To Kyle, a ‘red paperclip’ is more of a symbolic thing, an idea that you’re ready to launch. A new project about to happen. That spark of insight or inspiration. The most important thing about an idea is to do something with it. Today, Kyle lives in Montreal with his wife and does speaking engagement, photography, art projects, and “Who are These Guys?” to name a few of the projects he has embarked on.

When Jean Hamilton founded Speaking Results in 1998, it was the natural next step in her career. Early on, she began to develop and perfect her skills as a performer and artist, working for 15 years in modern dance, mime, and theater with various professional companies that toured extensively in the U.S. and Pacific Rim. After this successful career, Jean pursued a new direction studying Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). She was soon hooked by what this discipline could accomplish and began using the tools of NLP to make profound, positive changes. She pursued her NLP studies and training with the same fervor and energy she brought to the stage. In 1993, certified as an NLP Master, Jean opened her private counseling practice. As satisfying as she found working one-on-one with clients, Jean realized that she liked being on stage and began to explore public speaking. She started this endeavor through a local chapter of the Toastmaster’s Club. She quickly began winning awards and trophies for both her humorous and poignant presentations, drawing on the rich material of her life. Jean soon graduated into the professional world of keynotes and National Speakers Association meetings, where she saw scores of the country’s best presenters. The more pros she watched, the more she realized how much her current work drew on the performance skills she had honed earlier in her dance and theater days. She saw how she could combine these skills with the personal development tools of NLP to create powerful and profound presentations. Jean recalls with real pleasure the “Aha!” moment when she realized that these skills could serve others as well, and Speaking Results was born.