Loading…
Speaker Hub uses necessary cookies for secure accounts. With your permission, first party analytics help us improve signup and onboarding. We do not use advertising or cross site tracking cookies. Read the Cookie Policy.
Blog
Search and answer engines are full of folklore. Everything here links to a primary source, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Two psychologists spent years studying um and uh and concluded they are words, not mistakes. Here is what to cut instead, and the one filler that actually costs you.
72 posts, each one written against a single question.
The Stage Finder search form is short: speakers, topic, fee, format. Each field goes straight into the research request, so a vague entry gets you a vague list. Here is how to fill it in.
The Transcript tab in Speech Analyzer gives you your words, a word count, and a pace label. Here is what the text export contains, what it leaves out, and how to pair it with the moments export.
The quick-pick chips in Keynote Tailoring are shortcuts, not a menu. Type a niche and the tool analyzes that niche. Here is how the field is cleaned up, what the prompt does with it, and what it will not change.
Under most one-sheet fields sits a collapsed weak-versus-strong pair. Here is which fields have one, what each pair is really teaching, and why you should not paste the strong line as your own.
A briefing is built in four steps, and the work is saved after each one. Here is what the Unfinished and Stopped labels on your saved list mean, what Retry this step actually re-runs, and why you should reopen the old briefing instead of starting a new one.
Open any event in Stage Finder and you get an outreach draft with the event's name on it. The text underneath is one email per search. Here is what that means and how to turn it into a pitch an organizer answers.
Fixing the master keynote does not touch the industry versions you already made. Here is what that means, and the order to work in so you stop shipping stale copy.
The one-sheet editor has no crop handles, rotate, or filters. You drag to set the focal point and slide to zoom. Here is what that means for the photo you pick, and what the upload accepts.
The Coach tab answers questions about one analyzed talk, using that talk's scores, flagged moments, words, and transcript. Here is what it can see, what it cannot, and how to ask questions that get useful answers.
The event brief starts with one box, a lookup, and a review screen. Here is what the lookup fills in, why the industry field matters most, and what to check before you press Generate and spend a briefing.
Stage Finder sends a short weekly email of open calls matched to your keynotes. Here is who gets it, what decides the five rows, why it sometimes stays silent, and what its unsubscribe link actually turns off.
Speech Analyzer works from a real recording, and the upload step has a few rules that are easy to trip over. Here is what to upload, what happens after you do, and why a rehearsal beats a polished take.
Every tailored keynote comes back with a list of what changed and the context behind it. Neither is saved with the version. Here is what the tool keeps, what it drops, and how to work around it.
Every section in the one-sheet editor has an eye icon, and most speakers never click it. Here is which sections to hide, which two you cannot, and how to decide what stays.
The Speaker Profile looks like homework, but it is what turns a generic audience briefing into one written for you. Here is how the Fill this in for me button works, what its source tags mean, and which boxes are worth your time.
Click View pitch on a Stage Finder event and the speaker names split into Confirmed on this stage and Similar speakers in this world. Here is what separates them, and how to use each one in a pitch without overclaiming.
The Moments tab in Speech Analyzer lists your peaks and dips in the order they happened, with the words you said at each one. Here is how to turn that list into a short, useful rehearsal plan instead of another full run-through.
Drop a PDF, a Word file, or plain text into Keynote Tailoring and it becomes your master description before you save anything. Here is what actually happens to the file, which formats it refuses, and where the length limits sit.
The proof section stores more than it displays, and the gap is not a bug. Here is what Speaker Hub actually caps in your one-sheet's proof row, and how to use the extra room on purpose.
Stage Finder's Speaker Map shows the real speaking footprint of the people you admire, not a highlight reel. Every appearance carries a source and a verified flag the server sets, and an empty card means the research found nothing to cite, not that it never looked.
Talk It Through defaults to a coach persona, not an audience member. Four more personas argue from your actual briefing, and you cannot switch between them mid-session. Here is which one to pick, and what actually gets saved.
Every Speech Analyzer report is built on a named research model trained on real fMRI data, plus two separate transcription engines. Here is what TRIBE v2, Parakeet, and Whisper actually do, and why knowing that changes how much weight to put on the number.
Keynote Tailoring reads your Brand Kit and the audience field before it ever gets to the industry you typed. Here is what actually shapes a tailored variant, and why an empty Brand Kit produces a generic one.
The template picker looks like a color choice. It is actually four different layouts, and only one of them leads with the section that gets you booked.
The format dropdown on Stage Finder is not a display filter. It ships with your speakers, topic, and fee as part of the actual search request, which means leaving it on the default changes what the tool looks for, not just what it shows you.
The briefing now has a narrated audio version alongside the written report, built as a separate script-and-narration step so a failed recording never costs you the words. Here is what it actually does, and why it is not a substitute for the tool's other voice feature.
Analyze produces one number for one talk. Compare and Talk Library are the other two-thirds of the tool, and they are what turn that number into evidence of whether you actually got better. Here is what each part does and how to use them.
The tailor preview screen runs the same generation as a saved variant, but it stores nothing, needs no keynote on file first, and does not spend a trial's tailored-outputs allowance. Here is what it actually checks, and what changes once you hit save.
Most speakers spend their editing time on the headline and headshot and never look at the form underneath. Here is what that form actually does, and the four choices on the page that decide whether it works.
Stage Finder returns four different kinds of answers from one search: events worth pitching, live open calls, where your admired speakers appear, and who to watch at your level. Here is which ones want a click and which are just reference.
Audience Research surfaces sourced facts and inferences, but the audience language output, the phrases and pressures a room already uses about itself, is the part most speakers skim past. Here is what it is actually for, and how your notes survive a research refresh.
The Speech Analyzer pairs your recording with a transcript and an estimated response timeline, and none of that is a measurement of how the room actually felt. Here is what the number is built from, what to check before you act on it, and why Compare matters more than any single score.
The keynote tailoring tool can note that one of its own generated sentences still needs a source before you publish. Here is what that flag means and what to check before an organizer sees the result.
The one-sheet score splits 100 points across five categories, and design is not the biggest one. Here is what a planner is actually deciding when they read your page, and which category to fix first.
Stage Finder's Open Calls list is ranked by topic overlap and deadline pressure, not by when a listing was added. Here is what actually moves a call to the top, and what to do with the ones sitting in the middle.
Sourced facts, labeled inferences, and open questions are not the same kind of evidence, and stage time is where the gap shows. Here is what to do with each one, and the rehearsal step most speakers skip.
Two psychologists spent years studying um and uh and concluded they are words, not mistakes. Here is what to cut instead, and the one filler that actually costs you.
The 150 words per minute figure comes from conversation, not from stages. Copying it is how competent talks end up sounding flat.
The claim that people fear public speaking more than death comes from one 1973 survey. A 2012 study checked it, and the correction changes what you should do about nerves.
The first thirty seconds are the most rehearsed part of a good talk and the least rehearsed part of an average one. Here is what to put in them.
The close is the second most remembered part of your talk and the first thing speakers run out of time for. Four common endings throw it away.
Two of these take thirty seconds and can be silently costing you everything. One is the 60 character rule that Google never actually published.
Google has indexed PDFs since 2001, so the problem is not that yours is invisible. The problem is what the format quietly takes away from you.
Google deleted FAQ rich results in 2026, and it never read llms.txt at all. Here is what survives once you strip out the advice that stopped being true.
Word for word memorisation gives a talk exactly one failure mode, and it is a bad one. Learn four things by heart and hold the rest as structure.
Most speaker stories fail in the same place, and it is not the beginning. Here is the structure, and the one question that tells you whether a story earns its slot.
The 93 percent statistic you have been quoted is a misreading of two 1967 studies, and the researcher who ran them has said so. Here is what to actually do with your hands.
Monotone is not a voice problem. It is usually a structure problem, and the fix is on the page before it is in your throat.
Person markup earns you no rich result, and it is still worth adding. The reason is what happens after a search engine reads it.
Most of Search Console is built for ecommerce. Four reports are built for you, and one of them tells you which talk topic to pitch next.
The bio that impresses a programme chair and the bio a search engine can use are not the same paragraph. You need both, and most speakers write neither.
A proposed standard for telling AI crawlers about your site. Before you spend an afternoon on one, here is the honest state of adoption.
When the answer appears above the results, being ranked fifth stops meaning what it used to. What that changes about a speaker site, and what it does not.
Not design mistakes. The ones that make an organizer close the tab, ranked by how often they happen.
The advice assumes you already have a reputation. Here is the order that works when you do not, and why the first booking is the only hard one.
Most calls are found after they shut. The fix is a list and a calendar, not better searching.
Reviewers read a hundred of these in an afternoon. Four things decide yours, and the title carries more weight than the abstract.
The proposal is the hard part. The rest of the form still loses people, usually in the same four boxes.
Cold pitches fail for one reason, and it is not the writing. Here is the email that works and the research that has to happen before it.
Bureaus do not find you work until you are already getting work. Here is what they actually do, what they take, and when the answer changes.
Twenty people in a room above a pub will not advance your reputation. It will give you the four things you need to get onto a stage that does.
Published fee ranges are mostly marketing. What matters more is the four questions that move a number, and what to say the first time somebody asks yours.
Most speaker agreements are fine. The four clauses that go wrong are the ones nobody reads, and one of them can quietly take your talk away from you.
A media kit is not a brochure about you. It is the seven assets an organizer needs to promote you without emailing you four times.
The gap between free and paid is not skill. It is four assets and one uncomfortable sentence, and most speakers have the assets before they say the sentence.
Great session, thanks so much is not a testimonial. The difference is when you ask and what you ask for, and both are fixable in one email.
Organizers watch about twenty seconds. That is good news if you have no footage, because twenty usable seconds is a much smaller problem than a reel.
Speaking on nine subjects makes you a candidate for nine slots and the obvious choice for none. Here is how to narrow without losing the work you already have.
Most speakers research the topic and guess at the room. Six questions, asked of the organizer, change what the talk should be.
The same talk, aimed properly, is a different talk. Four layers to change, in the order that gives you the most for the least work.
Most engagement tactics ask the room to perform for the speaker. These ask them to think, which is what engagement actually is.
Everyone agrees with it and almost nobody acts on it, because it never says what to find out. Four things, and what each one changes.
Keep up with it
Every post lands in your inbox the day it goes up. An account adds the brief, which only arrives when something in your own hub is worth telling you about.
