Ten simple tips to improve your public speaking

Ten simple tips to improve your public speaking

Oct 12

If public speaking frightens you here are some simple tips to ensure your delivery will be smooth and self-assured.

In the business world, speaking effectively is a must. In many business situations you need to be the best you can be at speaking in public. Perversely the majority of schools don’t really give you much in the way of training for public speaking.

Here are ten easy ways to improve your public speaking.

1: Preparation

Be familiar with your material. It Is not just memorizing words and facts it is also having a feel for your material and know, if something sidetracks you, you know where you are in your speech.

The best way to memorize a large speech is to split it into smaller sections. Make each section a meaningful part to the overall speech so that should you get lost, you at least know which section you are on and can then back track if necessary.

If you do not break it down, you can become lost in a sea of information. If you get lost within a section the sea turns into a lake and you can find your way back to shore with ease.

2: Practice makes perfect so rehearse your speech.

The majority of people do not understand this, but nerves have a serious effect on how you speak to an audience. Just about everyone who gets nervous when speaking in front of an audience will speak faster than normal. It may mean you are. To avoid this problem, practice your speech at a slower pace than normal. By doing that, when you get nervous, are likely be speaking at a normal pace

3: Relax before you go on

So how do you relax? Simply do not obsesses over what you are about to do. If you go over and over your speech before you go on, you will be in a constant state of reminding yourself that you are about to make yourself nervous. Instead, do something to get your mind off what you are about to do. Your heart rate will thank you for it.

4: Hydrate yourself

Drink plenty of water before and during your speech because being nervous will dry up your mouth. When your mouth dries up, you will have a harder time articulating your thoughts. Regularly sip water throughout your speech and your dry mouth will disappear.

5: Rest well

The night before the biggest speech of you will ever make, do not go out and paint the town red. The night before do something which relaxes you like going for a nice meal, reading a good book, watching your favorite film, or anything that is going to help you get a good night’s sleep. That does not mean medicate yourself to get that good night’s sleep. Should you do that you will wake up feeling worse than if you had not slept.

6: Dress to impress

First impressions count with your audience. Look good and you will feel good and your audience will feel good about you and listen to you more intensely. Your confidence will rise. The confidence you gain by this will greatly improve your speaking.

7: Articulate

Have you ever heard somebody do a speech who was hard to understand? What happens after a while? You tune them out. You find them uninteresting and assume they are not really knowledgeable about their subject. You may be the most brilliant person alive, but if you cannot be understood then you will lose your audience. Speakers who articulate are thought of much more highly than those who don’t.

8: Be heard

This goes hand in hand with number 7. If you cannot be heard, then you won’t be heard. If your voice is too soft then you are going to have problems projecting to your audience. The majority of people tend to speak more softly when they are speaking in front of an audience. The way to tackle that is that when you rehearse your speech, do it in front of someone but have them stand at the back of the room. Make them tell you if you can’t be heard.

9: Warm up

Your voice is the same as any other muscle in your body it will not work well if you use it cold.  So ensure that your vocal muscles are ready to work. When you give speeches, you are speaking for much longer periods of time than you normally would. If you do not prepare yourself you may end up with a sore throat. Two of the best ways to warm your voice up are by humming and by doing tongue twisters

10: Don’t fill the gaps

How many times have you heard a speaker fill the space between thoughts with sounds or words? You know what I’m… um… talking… er… about. Right? This sounds terribly unprofessional. Instead of filling the gaps with grunts, groans, fill them with thought-filled, connected silence. You may not believe it but those pauses are not as long as you think and when your audience sees that you are still connected to them, even between thoughts, you will keep their attention. Hold your listeners’ attention with silence as you continue to press forward.

These ten easy tips will improve your public speaking leaps and bounds beyond where it is now.