FYI: Why Is Bill Clinton So Good at Speaking to a Crowd? The best speeches, political or otherwise, follow a set of five basic guidelines, says Greta Stahl, content developer (read: speechwriter) at Duarte, a communications firm that advises TED talkers, CEOs and companies from Cisco to Twitter.
"Most great speeches really start with a message, and choose strategically which evidence to cite. It's sort of the opposite of how you form an opinion," she said. Understand your audience and target your words appropriately. This is actually pretty hard in a political convention, because you're playing to two separate audiences: The cheering one on the convention floor who will already vote for you, and the one at home, watching on TV, minds maybe or maybe not made up.
"If you think about Mitt Romney, people didn't really see him as very personable or relatable, so you could see a pattern in all the speeches at the convention that would go out of their way to address that," Stahl said. What is Prezi?
Every Presentation Ever: Communication FAIL. Good Examples.