Most students develop stage fright in their early schooling years, they feel very scared to speak in front of an audience. This can highly affect public speaking skills and make you feel tensed and nervous while speaking while giving a presentation or speech. You would not be able to perform well in presentations and it can hamper your grades as well. And hence, developing your public speaking skills is very important from your ‘self-improvement’ and ‘career development’. Speaking at various events and seminars is a great way to enhance and improve your status and work as it is a good PR technique for the improvement of your business as well as personality.
However, speaking and facing an audience is an art and not a rocket-science or something that you can learn overnight. Acquiring public speaking skills requires a lot of hard work and dedication because you would always want to make a good first impression and expect everyone to remember the message you wanted to convey.
Several tips can help you become an effective public speaker. Read on to find those.
1. Try To Memorize The Concept Instead Of The Content
You might feel that the best way to give an effective presentation or speech is to learn the content word-to-word. But developing this mind-set can create a lot of problems for you. Memorizing your speech would sound like a rehearsed performance and won’t give a natural flow to your presentation or speech. And if your mind goes blank during the presentation or you forget any line, you lose the effect and would end creating an awkward silence. You will also feel more tensed and start to panic when you are not able to remember what comes next.
So, instead of memorizing the content, try to understand the concept which you want to convey to your audience. You can create bullet points, or make a list of important data and takeaways, or try to add some story that will help your audience to relate to you more. And then you should focus on speaking naturally about these points, your presentation shouldn’t sound overly-rehearsed. And even if you don’t remember any point, you can easily move to the next one. Additionally, having a loosely structured speech also gives you the flexibility to create and revise your points and stories based on your audience’s response.
2. Interact With Your Audience Before Your Speech
Meeting and interacting with people you’re about to speak in front of can be very beneficial for your presentation or speech. This allows your audience to warm up to you in advance and you can also access their sense of humor and what they’d like to listen to. You can take several insights through conversing with them which will improve your speech. This can also help you to create a rapport with your audience and ensure more engagement.
3. Work On Your Audio-Visuals
Most speakers use slides and pre-prepared presentations to put their points across to their audience since they’re easy to learn from. But you shouldn’t speak directly from your slides and include presentations in unexpected ways. Standard power-points can easily become boring and lowers effectiveness, you can try to add more fun videos or funny photos in between your slides.
You can even consider getting your slides made by a professional, who can create some great key artwork for your messages. Using these tactics can take up your presentation game to the next level. And make sure you pronounce every word correctly, so check the pronunciation of the words before the presentation or speech.
4. Change Your Mind-set And Calm Your Nerves
It’s natural for everyone to be nervous before any presentation or speech, even the greatest of speakers would back this up. So always try to flip your mindset and think about your audience instead of your speech or yourself. You need to understand that you’re here to provide some valuable information to your audience. And even if they take up one or two important messages from your presentation, it’s worth both of your time, at least they’re going to learn something new. You can also try the breathing exercises to calm your nerves, try to take a 5-minute break before you face your audience, and just breathe in. You’re there for the audience and you can make a difference by changing some of their mind-set, you need to have that faith in yourself.
5. Interact With Your Audience During The Presentation
One of the most important factors to ensure effectiveness in your speech or presentation is to maintain a rapport with your audience. Try to maintain eye contact and smile more. You can also ask the audience to repeat the key messages back to you or at least give some gestures if they’re getting takeaways from your speech. This will keep the audience to get involved and even give them something to remember after your speech since they’ll be able to associate these gestures with your points. You can also ask for their feedback or engage them more by asking them to give examples of similar things that might have happened with them.
While preparing your presentation or speech, you need to think about points where you can involve the audience and help you talk more efficiently with them.
We hope these tips help you in becoming a better public speaker.
