The good news is that we humans are hardwired to connect with each other so as long as your audience is captive, they are pretty much ready to connect with you from the start. Your job as presenter is to keep their attention.

You are always trying to create moments of connection. One way to do that is to get topical. Get in your audience’s “zeitgeist”. If you can, understand where their head is at, from what is going on for them culturally. When you reference it in your content, it will go a long way to keep them engaged.

Ever noticed how when someone starts talking about Christmas in May, it jars doesn’t it?

But when the first Christmas cups appear in Starbucks in November time, you know Christmas is on the way and you can get excited about it!

This is how being topical can help you be relevant.

Basic topicality is acknowledging the day, is it a Monday vibe or a Friday vibe? Then you can think about whether you are in the midst of their holidays like Easter, Valentines Day or Christmas. Then there are specifics in the news or entertainment world.

I recently did a workshop for some lawyers right at the deadline of the new GDPR proceedures. I used the opportunity to make jokes around the amount of emails we were all getting, and the amount of work they were having to do for their clients. It was an easy win, and the response from the participants was unprecedented.

If you are presenting regularly on air, on social media or on stage, then you start to get good at knowing what your audiences will like. You get good at finding your “go to” websites (BBC News / TMZ / BuzzFeed etc.) to inspire your content ideas.

As a content creator I often like to get ahead with my web content, so it’s good to be able to plan ahead the topicality.

To help you with this I have pulled together a Content Calendar for reference. I will share this information with you in my weekly newsletter (sign up here).

It includes:

Use the information as you wish, as long as your audience recognises it.