You are here because you want to be a good public speaker and don’t know where to begin. Everyone would like to better their skills in this area, but sadly they don’t even know where to begin. Public speaking is scary when you don’t have great tips to help you along, and thankfully the article below has many tips to help improve this skill, so keep reading!
Know your surroundings. Take a few moments when you arrive to acquaint yourself with your surroundings. If you can arrive early, go to the podium and do a soundcheck before your audience arrives. If you have visual aids, practice using them while you are orientating yourself with your surroundings.
Know what type of audience you will be talking to. If you can, try to learn who will be listening to you. Stand by the door as they come into the room, and try to get to quickly know them. Having a personal familiarity with a few people in the crowd can make it a lot more friendly feeling.
If you skip a sentence while making your speech, just forge ahead. Stopping during the speech to return to the point may cause you to go off the rails. Also, people probably won’t even notice that you omitted something.
Take the time to research other important speeches. The internet has a wealth of recorded speeches so that you can observe how they do it. Focus on the qualities that you liked in their speech and emulate them. Look for qualities such as their ease in speaking, their humor and how they capture the attention of the audience.
Do not be afraid to let your audience know that you have no idea of the answer to some of their questions. People will respect your honesty and understand that you are human. This is much better than rambling on trying to convince them you know what is going on when you don’t.
Prior to giving your actual speech, practice it in front of a loved one. When you are done, ask them which parts of the speech are fine and which parts need some improvement. You may even want to read it to a few people. This feedback can help improve your speech.
Try to find humor in the situation if things do not go as planned. There are many variables when you speak in public, which means that there are many opportunities for things to go wrong. The microphone or projector may not work, there may be an interruption in power or someone may enter the room in the midst of your speech. Try to take things in stride. Taking things too seriously can result in you having a meltdown, so try to laugh off any issues that may arise.
As you can see from the above article, public speaking should not terrify you any longer now that you have great tips to follow. The best piece of advice is to practice these skills, and make sure you use the tips from above. Study them again, and get out in public to hone your new speaking skills!