Here’s June Cohen, Executive Producer at TED Media, sharing her answers to

1. What makes a great TED Talk?
2. What are the elements of a great TED Talk? and
3. What makes a TED.com talk?

She passionately outlines her experience of what types of talks will “go viral”.

The Ingredients of a Great TED talk

In this 14 minute talk, she covers:

• the importance of story in a TED talk
• being personal without being confessional
• how to start a TED talk (the online editors deliberately remove “hello”, “good morning”, and any silly joke at the start, anything that doesn’t grab us at the start)
• how to focus (there is time for 1 single idea)
• how to be relevant to a wide audience (giving relevant context)
• Practice, practice, practice… and more practice (including the sad, sad story of “That was a really good talk, but it wasn’t the best talk that that speaker could give”)