Public speaking and keeping and audience interested
Hey there it’s Chloé here, for today’s topic I decided on public speaking and how to keep an audience interested.
Why am I discussing this topic? My presentations and public speaking skills always get praised and I get asked for tips by people all the time, so I feel qualified to give you guys some tips.
Let’s not waste anymore unnecessary time.
These tips will be perfect for presentations, especially if you are in school or your job requires presentations. (This is specifically about talking to an audience, a post about how to have conversations will come later)
1. Naturalness.
You need to be able to keep people interested and talk about a topic without having to look at a cheat sheet.
Try and remember as much as you can but talk about it in your own words. That’s how you make it interesting and natural.
However if “uhmms” are natural to you obviously try and avoid that.
2. Eye contact and using your hands.
This will be a hard for a lot of people but you need to look at the audience, look around while talking and use your hands to explain stuff, that way when you are slowing down or forgetting something you keep them distracted.
Eye contact is a must in a lot of situations, it shows that you are confident.
Keeping your hands visible also builds trust with the audience.
3. Pace.
Do not speak too fast or too slow keep a calm pace.
Make slight pauses when you ask a question so the audience will want to know what you are going to say. For example (staying on theme): “But how do you actually stay calm while giving a presentation?” short 1-2 second pause and make eye contact with the audience, then move on to the next sentence.
The audience will start to really question it and want to know the answer as well. This will become more natural the more you do it.
Practice it in the mirror if you want to.
4. Intonation, emotion and emphasis .
Going back to the sentence from the last tip: “But how do you actually stay calm while giving a presentation?”. If you say this in an even tone with no emotion, people will not care what you say.
Speak with better intonation, learn when to have a more serious tone or when to have a more happy tone.
Now onto emphasis: “But how do you actually stay calm while giving a presentation?”.
In this situation emphasizing ‘actually’ while speaking would be ideal. It shows that you know the answer to that question, that you thought about it.
5. Expression.
Facial expressions, the audience loves that.
When you’re speaking match your facial expression with what you’re talking about.
Don’t overdo it, it won’t look natural.
6. Posture and body language.
Have relaxed body language but keep a good and straight posture.
Good posture will show that you are confident and will make you feel more confident.
People will also take you more serious if you carry yourself in a serious way.
7. Interesting presentation.
If you are a creative person, make a creative presentation. This surely helps if you aren’t good at public speaking since it will be a distraction.
My latest presentation was for a fashion class I had, I made it in the form of an online magazine.
If you combine good public speaking with interesting presentations there is nothing to worry about.
Here we have our public speaking tips, the tips mentioned above are ones that I use and have helped me immensely. Every time i do a presentation on anything people always ask me how I do it, so I thought I’d share.
Thank you for reading.
Hope you have an awesome day if it’s still starting, if it already ended I hope you had a great day. Tomorrow is always a brand new day, making mistakes is fine.
Au revoir
-Xoxo Chloé C.
