Technical expertise earns respect and is necessary to influence your audience, but to convince. Memorable communication earns influence.

Make your ideas memorable to inspire action, win support, and advance your career

Below are three ways to become a memorable speaker:

Tell Stories That Give Your Technical Content Meaning

Facts are needed, but stories give context and show your audience why the information matters.

A brief example of a customer challenge, a project success, or a lesson learned can make even the most technical concept more relatable.

When you prove through a story how the technical information you are delivering has an impact on your audience, you will “make the sale.”

Stories create emotional connection, driving engagement and retention. People, including your audience, enjoy stories that show how to apply your guidance to reach their goals.

When listeners visualize real situations, they remember the story and its principles.

Technical stories do not need to be dramatic to be effective. As long as your story illustrates its impact on audience members’ lives, it will sell.

A concise narrative of problem, solution and benefit leaves a stronger impression than charts and specifications.

One way to become a memorable speaker is to tell stories that give your technical content meaning.

Another is to emphasize your key message instead of every detail.

Emphasize Your Key Message Instead of Every Detail

Memorable speakers focus on a central idea rather than attempting to cover everything they know. Harsh as it is, your audience does not care about everything they know.

Audiences want key points, how they help, and ways to act on them.

Audiences rarely remember dozens of statistics, but they often remember one clear message repeated throughout a presentation.

Keep reminding them of your key message throughout your presentation. Repetition sticks with people.

Strategic repetition helps listeners recognize what is most important without feeling overwhelmed.

Organize your presentation so every example and graphic reinforces your main takeaway.

Before creating slides, decide what you want your audience to remember. Design your slides to support that message.

If information does not support your message, leave it out or place it in an appendix.

Two ways to become a memorable speaker are to tell stories that give your technical content meaning and emphasize your key message rather than every detail.

A third way to become a memorable speaker is to make complex ideas easy to visualize.

Make Complex Ideas Easy to Visualize

The best technical communicators translate abstract concepts into familiar language, comparisons, and images.

Analogies, demonstrations, and simple diagrams help audiences quickly understand difficult technical concepts.

Visual thinking also improves long-term memory. When audiences can picture an idea, they are much more likely to recall it later and explain it accurately to others.

Simple visuals outperform complex graphics. Visuals must reinforce your spoken message.

Clean slides supporting your message help audiences focus on your explanation.

If your audience is focusing on a slide more than 10 seconds, simplify it.

By telling stories, emphasizing a clear message, and making ideas visual, experts become influential communicators whose ideas resonate after the presentation.

Technical speakers who become memorable are not necessarily those with the greatest technical knowledge—they are those who communicate their knowledge in ways others can understand, remember, and apply.

Don’t you want to become more memorable?

Call to Action

• Craft a story demonstrating exactly how your technical insights impact your audience

• Intentionally repeat your key message throughout your next presentation to keep it at the forefront of your audience’s minds

• Translate an abstract concept from your content into a concrete comparison, relatable analogy, or simple image for audiences to understand and retain

  “We are taught technical concepts. However, if we cannot communicate those technical concepts, we cannot be successful.”

  — Anthony Fasano, P.E., founder of the Engineering Management Institute, and author on engineering leadership and communication

References

• Duarte, Nancy. Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010.Nancy Duarte is a leading presentation consultant and CEO of Duarte, Inc. Her work demonstrates how storytelling, audience-centered messaging, and visual communication make presentations memorable and persuasive.

• Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. New York: Random House, 2007.Chip Heath is a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and Dan Heath is a bestselling author and senior fellow at Duke University’s CASE center. Their research identifies the characteristics that make ideas memorable, including simplicity, storytelling, credibility, and emotion.

• Gallo, Carmine. Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2014. Carmine Gallo is a communication coach and bestselling author specializing in executive communication and leadership presentations. He synthesizes research from TED Talks to explain how stories, passion, and concise messaging create memorable presentations.

• Medina, John. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. 2nd ed. Seattle, WA: Pear Press, 2014. John Medina is a developmental molecular biologist and affiliate professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine. His work explains how attention, storytelling, emotion, and visuals significantly improve learning and memory.

• Reynolds, Garr. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. 3rd ed. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2020. Garr Reynolds is an internationally recognized presentation design expert and former Apple executive. His work emphasizes simplicity, clarity, visual communication, and audience engagement to create presentations that are memorable and effective.

Being a confident, engaging, and effective STEM speaker is a vital personal and professional asset. With more than 40 years of engineering experience and more than 30 years of award-winning public speaking experience, I can help you reduce your presentation preparatory time by 50%, overcome your fear of public speaking and be completely at ease, deliver your presentations effectively, develop your personal presence with your audience; and apply an innovative way to handle audience questions deftly.

Working closely with you, I provide a customized protocol employing the critical skills and tools you need to create, practice, and deliver excellent STEM speeches and presentations. Let’s connect and explore how I can help you become the exceptional speaker you were meant to be. Please reach out to me at [email protected] or 703-509-4424 for a complimentary consultation. Schedule a meeting with me at calendly.com/frankdibartolomeospeaks