8 Tips to Improve Your Public Speech Immediately
Giving speeches and presentations is an inevitable part of life. Whether it be at school or at a conference, speeches and orals dominate most fields of study. What is worse is that over three quarters of the population fear presentations in front of people even though, eight times out of ten there is nothing to fear or be anxious about.
For the remaining 20 percent, the following tips will help you better prepare for a public speech and to better deliver, starting today.
photy by D’Arcy Norman
1. Be prepared and practice.
Part of being nervous during an oral or presentation is due to the fact that you feel like you will forget critical pieces of information or that you will get up front of everyone and forget everything. Practice, over and over, until you are able to do your presentation with the minimal amount of cue cards. Practice in different settings, in front of different people.
2. Pick a topic that interests you.
It is hard to speak passionately and with conviction when you are talking about something that you couldn’t care about to save your life. Pick a topic that you know about so that you will be able to inject a little charisma into your speech. When questions come around at the end, you will be more equipped to answer them if you love what you talked about.
Also, picking a topic that interests you, but that you don’t necessarily know a lot about, makes information found regarding that topic easier to encode into long term memory and then to retrieve it! Easier to remember makes for an easier performance.
3. Don’t leave the audience out.
When the audience is pulled into your speech, or is forced to interact with you while you are giving your speech, their curiosity and attention will be on you. When you do not interact with the audience, you are giving them a huge opportunity to daydream, doze off and not listen. Why spend all that time on a speech to have your audience fall asleep?
4. Know your audience.
Know who you will be speaking to and tailor your speech accordingly. If you are talking to medical students you can use medical terms more liberally than if you were talking to sociology majors.
5. Make it simple to understand.
Not everyone will understand what you are saying and not everyone is interested in what you are saying. Especially when the topic is difficult to start with. Even when you define difficult terms they may not keep up. No one cares about how smart you sound. Losing your audience is not ideal either, which is inevitable if they don’t understand. If you have to use complicated terms, complement them with an easy to understand example of what you mean.
6. Complement your speech with visual aids.
Use power point slides or projectors. Illustrate your examples and put definitions of difficult concepts on simple slides. Some people learn better visually.
7. Dress properly.
Do not dress like you are staying in for the day, i.e. sweat pants…Dress like you mean it and are interested in what you are doing. Dress like you are taking this seriously. What you wear says something about you and people take those who dress seriously, more seriously and think they are more competent.
8. Keep your audience hanging and thinking.
Close your speech by leaving your audience thinking. This will perpetuate your speech and cultivate curiosity in others. It will also leave you and your speech more memorable.
Everything from dressing to the way you deliver your speech is important. It is through practice that you will be able to relieve a bit of the anxiety and fear that accompanies public speaking. Speaking slow and with conviction will captivate the audience and leave them wanting more. Remember, anxiety is normal, but if you work through it you will find that it is not as bad as you make it out to be.
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December 12th, 2007
I am always scared of presenting in front of more than 8-10 people, but I agree a few of the above work.
I do dress properly and it’s a sign you’re going to do a good thing.
Great tips.
December 12th, 2007
Being able to present a topic in front of public is a very important skills today… The point that really helping me to be comfortable is practice as many time as I can before the big day… which is your points… good advice…
December 12th, 2007
All good points.
One correction…in item 6, it’s complement, not compliment.
December 12th, 2007
Roy, thank you for pointing it out for me.I just modified.
@PostOnFire: yes, being well prepared is the main thing for a presentation
@Marsha: hope you can do it from now on, get back with an update.
Thank you for your feedback.
December 13th, 2007
Wow, are these useless. Can you be any more trite and uninformative?
December 13th, 2007
@db: no need to be rude. They may not apply for you because you’re not afraid to keep a presentation in front of people, but this doesn’t mean they will not for for others. In fact I know people that used the 2 or 3 they lacked of, and the answer was great.
December 13th, 2007
I found your advice very usefull and important, I believe each advice will advance our speech, I love and tried to practice, the last one that speaking slow will people to understand the subject and it is also kind to speak slow. Thank you so much for your useful advice, peace and security
December 13th, 2007
All the points are good… but this one is the most important “Dress like you mean it and are interested in what you are doing”… as it goes first impression (when you stand in front of everybody) is the last impression…
December 18th, 2007
[...] Being able to present to a group of people in an articulate and entertaining fashion is one of the most important tasks whether you are a manager or an employee in a large corporation or an entrepreneur. Alex Ion of Socialpacks.com offers 8 tips on improving your public speaking. [...]
December 20th, 2007
[...] 10 Steps to Improve Your Public Speaking. Simple but many of us forget them. [...]
February 18th, 2008
All of your points are important. Like the basics, it is whether people apply them to leads to success. I recommend the following article, “Outstanding Articles Start in the Mind,” to help others overcome the fear of public speaking:
http://www.thesykesgrp.com/PresentationSkillsPublicSpeakingArticle02.htm
Enjoy!
Ed
May 5th, 2008
I agree with you Alex, it is very important in public speaking that you must have an audience interaction. This helps them understand better and is one of the important factor in the outcome of your presentation. Anyway, thanks for posting this. This post is very helpful to those who want to become a successful public speaker. Hope that you would feature more helpful and informative postings. Thanks again..
–Stephen
October 28th, 2008
I did a class presentation just yesterday in my Bus.100 class and I can say that I wasn’t prepared for my part; I stumble through the reading, because I had found out the day before what my part was, but the instructor commented that my fellow presentor and I did a good job, we spoke nice, and it was well organized. But I do agree with these pointers, anyone that has to do a speaking engagement should always keep them in mind. I love them they are very helpful, THANK YOU!
December 21st, 2008
Being able to present to a group of people in an articulate and entertaining fashion is one of the most important tasks whether you are a manager or an employee in a large corporation or an entrepreneur.