When I attended Patricia Fripp’s speaking school several years ago, I left with a tool kit of ideas, tips, and techniques that I could use for any speaking occasion.

One idea she suggested was to get transcripts of our speeches and cut the wasted words.

That tip was incredibly useful when I wrote video scripts.

If videos are longer than two minutes, people will lose interest.

We aren’t wired to pay attention for longer periods.

However, two minutes translates into a mere 240 words in a script.

To put it in perspective, my wonderful articles – which take about three minutes to read – are each around 500-700 words!

That’s an eternity on video.

I had to cut.

And cut I did!

Here are tips for creating your videos.

1. Open a Word file and import your best blog posts, articles and transcripts from speeches and teleseminars.
2. Put page breaks between each new script. This will make counting words much easier.
3. Read each article, blog post, and transcript. Count words using Word’s “word count” feature. On the Mac, it is located under the Tools tab. Once you see the number of words in the script, you’ll know how much to cut.

Here are three ways to cut:

• Power Saw: Cut big portions that you don’t have room for. In print, you can list five ways to cure a cold. But on video, you have room for one good story that makes your point. Find the best point and run with it.
• Hack Saw: Cut trite phrases and redundancies. You’d be surprised how many times we say the same things over and over and over and over and over without realizing it. When you see in print what you said out loud, you’d be embarrassed. I certainly was! Ironically, it sounds fine when you say it.
• Petite Point Scissors: Cut words that add nothing. For example: the, that, which, and also.

I was surprised to find that one of my best stories was 380 words – after I cut out the garbage!

In other words, I still had to cut 1/3 of it.

Oddly enough, I did  – and true to Patricia Fripp’s advice – the story was better.

Best yet: It was ridiculously easy to cut out words that didn’t add anything to the story.

I was so fond of hearing my own voice, but that hurt my storytelling.

Shorter is better.

You can take advantage of Patricia Fripp’s great advice for speakers.

What does this have to do with getting more publicity?

There’s an answer for that, too.

Do you want reporters to quote you and interview you for their stories?

Get to the point.

Make your point.

Stay on point.

Follow this model to clean up your social media posts and your responses to reporters I’ll introduce you to.

You’ll stand a MUCH better chance against your competition who keep droning on and on and on and on…