7 words that can break your TEDx talk
Did this image get you to click? Good. Because that's exactly what we're going to talk about.
When my speaker Robin Buckley took the TEDx stage in Portsmouth, she gave a brilliant talk. Smart content. Top-notch delivery. The whole room leaned in. But here's what pushed her past nearly a million views and onto TED's main stage: a title that nobody scrolling YouTube could resist clicking.
Her title? "Why I gave my teenage daughter a vibrator."
If we'd called it "Raising Confident, Empowered Girls" — same talk, same delivery, same speaker — I promise you we'd be looking at a fraction of those views. The content didn't change Robin's reach. The words around the content did.
That's the lesson I now drill into every speaker I work with. So let's talk about the three little pieces of writing that decide whether anyone actually watches the talk you're about to spend a year of your life preparing.
The three pieces you need to get right
Your TEDx talk doesn't just need a title. By the time it's out in the world, it needs three short pieces of writing that have to work together:
The title — aim for 50 to 70 characters. YouTube technically allows 100, but anything past 70 gets cut off in search results and on mobile. Front-load the words that punch.
The subhead — one tight sentence, around 100 to 150 characters. This is what shows up in event programs, on your website, in social posts. It's the promise behind the title.
The description — aim for 150 to 200 words total. Open with two or three sentences that hook (not summarize) the talk — about 40 to 70 words. Then a four-to-seven sentence speaker bio, around 80 to 130 words, that answers "why should I trust this person?" Much past 200 and you're padding.
Here's the catch with descriptions: YouTube only shows about 150 characters — roughly 25 words — before "Show more." So whether your description runs 150 words or 250, only the first sentence or two does any real work in convincing someone to watch. The rest is for the people who already clicked and want to know more before committing 15 minutes. Write that first sentence as if it's the only sentence anyone will read. Because for most viewers, it is.
Quick honest note: TEDx doesn't publish official character limits anywhere. The actual caps live inside the TED Media Uploader, which you'll only see if you're an organizer. The numbers above are what I've found works in practice.
The rules I now give every speaker
These apply to your TEDx title, but honestly — they apply to anything you'll ever publish online. Book titles, article headlines, blog posts, LinkedIn updates. Same rules.
Be specific. "The Power of Music"? No. "A Song That Flies You to Machu Picchu"? Yes. A specific promise of a story beats an abstract concept every single time.
Use the words people actually search for. Remember, your talk lives on YouTube — the second-biggest search engine on the planet after Google. People don't browse the TEDx channel hoping to be surprised; they type in what they're already curious about. If someone's searching "how to deal with anxiety," your brilliant talk about anxiety needs the word "anxiety" in the title or they'll never find it. The algorithm reads those words too, and uses them to decide whose "up next" sidebar your talk shows up in. Specificity wins here as well: not "happiness" but "The Science of Happiness."
Shorter is better. Five to seven words is the sweet spot. If your title needs a comma, it probably needs a cut.
Use strong verbs and adjectives. "Is" is boring. "Great" is meaningless. "Unlock," "life-changing," "scary," "slimy" — those land.
Wit is welcome. When it fits the tone of the talk. Don't force it.
Ask yourself: would I click on this? Write ten options. Show them to five friends. The one they all want to click on is usually the one.
Write the description first. Yes, really.
Here's the move that took me embarrassingly long to figure out: write the description before you write the title.
When you start with the title, you reach for something clever and abstract. When you start with two or three concrete sentences about what your talk actually does, the title almost falls out of the description. The juicy specific moment. The surprising question. The thing that made you write the talk in the first place.
That's how we got to "Why I gave my teenage daughter a vibrator." Not by brainstorming clever titles around a conference room. By naming the actual story Robin was already telling.
One last thing
You're going to spend months preparing your TEDx talk. You're going to obsess over your opening line, your slides, your shoes. Spend a little time on the title too.
It's the difference between a brilliant talk that nobody finds and a brilliant talk that changes someone's life at 11pm on a Tuesday, when they couldn't sleep and stumbled across it on YouTube.
That's what these tiny words are for. Get them right.
