Dan Janal, Author at Cathy Stucker

Writing Videos Your Audiences Want to Watch

March 3, 2014 by Dan Janal

Note from Cathy: Although I always enjoy reading Dan’s articles, this one is especially timely. I am in the midst of making a bunch of videos, some based on material I have created in the past, such as speeches and other presentations, and this is good advice.

Whether you are starting with existing material or writing everything from word one, brevity is important. Keep your videos short and sweet. Dan suggests a maximum of 240 words for a video of two minutes. That is a good general rule, but some of us talk faster. To calculate your speed, open a document in Word, set a timer to one minute and start reading out loud at a natural speed. When the timer goes off, select all of the words you read, then check the word count.

Include your introduction and call to action in your word count. Many people use a pre-recorded intro or outro with their videos, usually about 10 seconds long. If you do, you may want to reduce your word count a bit to stay under two minutes for the total video.

The script I wrote for the public speaking video by Professor Puppet is a bit over 300 words for a video that is 1:40. But he talks pretty fast! (The total time for the video is 2:24 because of a long call to action outro, something that will not be used on every video I do but I wanted on this one.)

If you are not sure how many words to put in your script, follow Dan’s guideline of about 240 words or less for two minutes or less.

When in doubt, cut it out!

Now on to Dan’s article: [Read more…]

New Year’s Resolutions and Goals

January 6, 2014 by Dan Janal

Note from Cathy: I found this post from Dan Janal interesting. It is a mixed bag of goals, action steps, aspirations and changes in attitude. Taken together, these things can certainly make a difference for Dan—or for you. Some of these are really vague (“Promote my services.”) and would be hard to measure, but others are very specific and actionable. If you want to make a list, I would suggest setting goals (such as adding 3000 people to your mailing list) and focusing on specific things you are going to do every day, week or month to make those things happen. Here is Dan’s list to give you some food for thought.

They say that to keep a goal, you have to go public. That creates accountability. Now it is your job to hold my feet to the fire. [Read more…]

Speaker Tips: Where Do You Stand?

August 5, 2013 by Dan Janal

speaker-standing Note From Cathy:
Dan makes some great points in this article. As someone who is vertically-challenged, I have long been aware that in addition to stepping off the stage or into the audience, standing behind a podium can also make me disappear.

To create intimacy with the audience, I like to move around the stage and make eye contact with audience members. When making eye contact, choose a few anchors—people who are responsive and involved audience members who will give you good reinforcement. (Tip: If you are afraid of speaking and intimidated when facing a crowd, instead of making direct eye contact you can look at a point a little over their heads. It will appear to the audience that you are looking at them, but you don’t actually have to look anyone in the face.)

Here are Dan Janal’s tips about putting yourself in the shoes (seats?) of audience members to be a more effective speaker:
[Read more…]