Turn Your Keynotes into Content Gold: Writing Tips for Speakers

I recently collaborated on an article with a colleague whose ability to speak extemporaneously impressed me. Not a skill I have ever had. Her delivery was confident, and her knowledge of the subject matter was deep.

But she was intimidated by a blank page.

Even when I drew up an outline for our collaborative article, she seemed to stumble through sentences and lose her way. Who knew?

Professional speakers know how to engage a live audience—but translating that spark into writing? That’s a different craft. The good news? By implementing a few golden strategies, your writing can carry the same power and authority as your voice on stage.

The key is to know what to keep from your speaking style and what to change.

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The 5 Benefits of a Content Audit

If we’re honest with ourselves, we should be auditing our organization’s content more often than we do. A content audit, which is a survey and analysis of existing content, should encompass content that is online and printed, long and short, text, audio, video, and graphics. Or encompass at least the part of that whole that aligns with your organization’s current challenge.

If you’re having difficulty selling the need to conduct a content audit, this blog post is for you. If your organization has never conducted a content audit but you suspect it should let me help you understand what a content audit might reveal.

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6 Strategies for Writing Compelling Headings

I hate to admit that I still have stumbling blocks after decades of writing experience, but, ummm, I do. It’s writing headings. There! I wrote it down—in a public blog post.

If you have the same struggle, I can share some advice and tips with you. No need to go heading-less!

Headings are important because they serve as guideposts to our written content. When effective, they help our readers locate and conceptualize the information they seek from our organizations. (Remember when I wrote about scannability?) Effective headings are especially important in online content, where they continue to feed web search engines, even Google’s.  

Note that Google Search’s March 2024 core update attempts to assess a piece of content’s quality so that our search results contain fewer meaningless clickbait. This puts more pressure on content creators to develop original, helpful online content – including meaningful first- and second-level headings.

Those are strong motivators, right? So why is writing a good heading sooo hard?

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