Handling Questions with Authority

Handling Questions with Authority

by: George Torok

At some point in your presentation you will be expected to answer questions from your audience. They might have some burning questions that need to be answered before they buy into your message. Handling their questions with authority can make the difference for you between a successful presentation and a waste of time. This is the opportunity for the audience to test your knowledge on the topic and commitment to your message.
1. Explain at which points during the presentation you will take questions and how individuals will be recognized to speak. Point out the microphones they should use. State the rules that must be followed to ask questions.
2. Prepare how you will answer questions especially the worst questions. Imagine how confident you will look when they hit you with the killer question the question that is intended to skewer you to the wall. Instead you smile and calmly respond with a positive answer. Craft and rehearse the answers to these difficult questions before the presentation.
3. Maintain control of the questioning. Formally recognize the questioner before they speak and limit the number of questions. Allow only one person to speak at a time.
4. When listening to the question look at the questioner while moving away to include the whole group. Paraphrase the question for the group. State your answer to the group. Beware of answering only to the questioner.
5. Kick start the question period with, กA question I am often asked is, …ก.Then answer your กquestionก. This helps to prime the pump and encourages others to ask questions.
6. If you don’t know the answer offer, กI don’t know the answer to that question but give me your card and I will get back to you.ก Beware! You can only do this once or twice. Anymore and you will look dumb.
7. If you can’t answer a question but know that someone in the audience may know ask, กI know there are experts in the audience, how would they answer this question?ก Only do this if you know there are experts in your audience.
8. When you get the person who strongly disagrees with you and refuses to shut up, respond, ‘thank you for your opinion, I know there are different schools of thought on this issue I am telling you what has worked for me.ก
9. Avoid repeating, ‘thank you thatกs a good question.ก after every question the questions might not be good, and the audience will see through your insincerity.
10. Never end your presentation with a question period and closing with กno more questions? Well thatกs allก. That is a weak close. Instead always finish with a closing statement that will resonate with the audience and reinforce your message.
Bonus tip: Plant the question you most want to hear. Before the program begins, ask someone sitting near the back to กposeก the question on your signal.
Any questions? Contact George Torok, ‘the Speech Coach for Executivesก, to deliver powerful presentations and handle questions with authority.

About The Author

© George Torok delivers inspirational keynotes and practical seminars. He specializes in presentation skills, creative problem solving and personal marketing. You can arrange for George to work with your people by calling 8003041861. For more information and to receive free tips on presentation skills and personal marketing visit www.Torok.com and www.SpeechCoachforExecutvies.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on June 18, 2004

by George Torok

Become a Recognized Authority in Your Field in 6

Become a Recognized Authority in Your Field in 60 Days or Less!

by: Matt Bacak

You don’t have to be rockstar famous before you are recognized as an authority in your field. You just have to begin to get the word out. Your goal is to be the person that people think of when your field is mentioned. At first, that may happen only locally, but take heart. Start where you are, with what you have, and youกll light a spark that could eventually become a firestorm of publicity.

Maybe you offer a workshop at your office, church, or community center. Get it in the community calendars, from newspapers to cable television. Call up your local news stations, and offer yourself as the subject of an interview. One listing or call at a time, youกll begin to make a name for yourself.

When you have an event coming up, call your local news stations and offer to interview on their early morning or noontime talk shows. Prepare for your interview by identifying two or three main points you want to make about your subject. Take a blank videocassette to record the show. Then, you can send the recording as an audition tape to a station with a wider audience.

Contribute to public discussions. Write letters to the editors of newspapers and magazines whenever they cover stories in your field. You may offer an alternate viewpoint or simply compliment them on a wellwritten article. The more people see your name in connection with your subject, the more theyกll recognize you as an authority in your field.

You can take this strategy to the Web, too. Do you have a blog that allows you to share your thoughts and expertise on a daily basis? If not, thatกs one place to begin. Itกs quick, fun, and makes you available on the Web. If you already have a Web page, make it a habit to visit message boards in your field and post your link, along with your opinions.

Begin today to put these strategies into practice, and before the next 60 days are through, youกll have a steadily growing number of people who recognize you as the authority in your field.

About The Author

Matt Bacak became ก#1 Best Selling Authorก in just a few short hours. Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s eBiz radio show host is turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories. Discover The Secrets http://promotingtips.com.

This article was posted on August 08

by Matt Bacak

Become a Recognized Authority in Your Field in 6

Become a Recognized Authority in Your Field in 60 Days or Less!

by: Matt Bacak

You don’t have to be rockstar famous before you are recognized as an authority in your field. You just have to begin to get the word out. Your goal is to be the person that people think of when your field is mentioned. At first, that may happen only locally, but take heart. Start where you are, with what you have, and youกll light a spark that could eventually become a firestorm of publicity.

Maybe you offer a workshop at your office, church, or community center. Get it in the community calendars, from newspapers to cable television. Call up your local news stations, and offer yourself as the subject of an interview. One listing or call at a time, youกll begin to make a name for yourself.

When you have an event coming up, call your local news stations and offer to interview on their early morning or noontime talk shows. Prepare for your interview by identifying two or three main points you want to make about your subject. Take a blank videocassette to record the show. Then, you can send the recording as an audition tape to a station with a wider audience.

Contribute to public discussions. Write letters to the editors of newspapers and magazines whenever they cover stories in your field. You may offer an alternate viewpoint or simply compliment them on a wellwritten article. The more people see your name in connection with your subject, the more theyกll recognize you as an authority in your field.

You can take this strategy to the Web, too. Do you have a blog that allows you to share your thoughts and expertise on a daily basis? If not, thatกs one place to begin. Itกs quick, fun, and makes you available on the Web. If you already have a Web page, make it a habit to visit message boards in your field and post your link, along with your opinions.

Begin today to put these strategies into practice, and before the next 60 days are through, youกll have a steadily growing number of people who recognize you as the authority in your field.

About The Author

Matt Bacak became ก#1 Best Selling Authorก in just a few short hours. Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s eBiz radio show host is turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories. Discover The Secrets. www.PromotingTips.com

This article was posted on August 26

by Matt Bacak

Link Building for Hilltop

Link Building for Hilltop

by: Andy Hagans

Hilltop is one of the major concepts underpinning Googleกs search algorithm, yet its workings and implications are often misunderstood. After the infamous Florida Update, many webmasters were aghast as their rankings plummeted; and again, when the mysterious กsandboxก was implemented, some webmasters could not get a Web site to rank well, period. Part of the reason that some Web sites get shuffled out of the SERPs when new algorithmic features are implemented is that those sites never gained authority in the eyes of the search enginesthat is, they were not sufficiently meshed into their local topical communities.

This concept of authority was one pioneered in a paper titled กHilltop: A Search Engine based on Expert Documents,ก written by Krishna Bharat and George A. Mihaila. The full text is available online at http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~georgem/hilltop/.

(Note: Google has obviously not implemented Hilltop in its pure form, but rather uses the principles of topical communities and authority in its algorithm. Likewise, other search engines such as MSN and Yahoo! are not using Hilltop per se, but rather similar algorithmic features. Thus when I mention กHilltopก I am referring to not just the specific paper published by Bharat and Mihaila, but also to the fundamental theory upon which any authoritybased link popularity algorithm is based. This theory applies to TopicSensitive PageRank, etc.)

The Basics of Hilltop

Googleกs PageRank formula revolutionized search, but it has a major flaw: it gives each page an absolute measure of importance. Recognizing that a pageกs importance should be interpreted in light of a given query topic, the Hilltop formula uses the link structure of the topical community related to the query topic when determining relevance.

For a given topic query, some pages are considered to be กexpert documents,ก and others are กauthorities.ก A page is an expert document if it กis about a certain topic and has links to many nonaffiliated pages on that topicก (this type of page is also sometimes called a hub). A page is an authority กif and only if some of the best experts on the query topic point to it.ก To summarize: hubs link to authorities; authorities are linked to by hubs.

The Challenge for New Web Sites

The nature of the World Wide Web dictates that it will take time for a new Web site to get links from within its topical community. Many hubs such as resource lists or niche directories are only updated periodically with new links. Still others are static pages that will never be changed.

Then there is the กhuman factor.ก It takes time for a Web site to be recognized as valuable, and for webmasters to trust it enough to link to it. Older authority sites and hubs also tend to link to other older authority sites, creating a sort of selfperpetuating authority set (Mike Grehan refers to this phenomenon in his article กFilthy Linking Rich,ก available online at http://www.emarketingnews.co.uk/Oct04/RichLinking.html). This all adds up to the fact that it is very hard to make a new Web site an authority in the eyes of the search engine, which begs the question: How can a new Web site become entrenched in its topical neighborhood more quickly?

Break Into Your Topical Neighborhood

To make your Web site an authority, you should first seek to obtain links from topical hubs. Obvious hubs might include any niche directories or resource pages about your Web siteกs topic.

One way to find less obvious hubs is to do a backlink search on authority sites in your topical community. Finding authority sites is easythey are the sites that rank highly for a search for that topic. Once you find an authority, search กlink:http://www.theirsite.com.ก Go through the backlinks, and find pages that link out to multiple sites within your topic; a page that links out to multiple authority sites is probably considered a hub by a search engine.

Aside from hubs, it can be quite helpful to get links from the authority sites themselves. I have seen many Web sites get a significant boost after obtaining just one link from a top authority. It is implied that an authority site will link out less than will a hub, and therefore it is possible that these links are even more valuable in terms of rankings.

Obtaining links from quality hubs and authorities is easier said than done. One can however use certain methods to get links quickly. These methods include but are not limited to: offering to swap links; submitting a relevant, wellwritten press release; submitting a relevant, wellwritten article with your Web siteกs URL hyperlinked and embedded in the copy; offering to buy or rent a links; and, of course, writing a lot of great content (it will get noticed, sooner or later!).

Conclusion

Obtaining links from reputable sources within your Web siteกs topical community is necessary in order for that site to be ranked highly in todayกs search engine algorithms. Getting your Web site entrenched within its topical community would be a good idea anyway, even if search engines did not existwhich is a pretty good litmus test for a strong, longterm SEO method.

About The Author

Andy Hagans is a search engine optimization consultant who specializes in link building and risk management. Visit http://www.andyhagans.com for more information. See http://www.andyhagans.com/articles.php for an archive of Mr. Hagansก articles.

This article was posted on March 06

by Andy Hagans