If you plan on being a successful and productive entrepreneur in this global economy, you are going to need to be highly effective in a plethora of skills. Things such as communication, time management, delegating, and growth hacking are essential if you are operating your business on a lean budget. This also means that you must be creative in how you market your business. One way that many entrepreneurs are promoting their business is by using public speaking opportunities. By doing so, it provides you an opportunity to quickly network and establish yourself as an authority. Sadly, many business owners struggle with this. If you are interested in developing your speaking abilities, here are some things you must consider:
Effective Public Speaking
What makes effective public speaking? There are many answers. Some of you may have answered, “confidence” while others of may have said “humor”. The truth is, effective public speaking comes from being prepared and keeping your message simple. Confidence, humor, and emotion helps but I feel that it’s most important to be prepared for what you’ll be talking about and keeping the points of your message simple and easy to understand.
“Nothing makes for a better presentation than a well prepared one” suggests Dan Smith from KeynoteSpeakers.info. “All of the people that say preparation is useless are lying. What I mean by preparation isn’t to rehearse exactly what you’re going to say so you can repeat it like a recording.” In order to develop effective public speaking, you need to prepare your thoughts and organize them. “Don’t go up there with a blank sheet in your head and expect to write as you go” says Mr. Smith. “At the same time, you don’t need to have a pre-prepared State of the Union address either. Have a rough outline and then fill in the blanks once you’re up there. Just by knowing what your main points will be, you’ll be more comfortable, effective, and confidence will come naturally.”
Humor Can Be Beneficial
After you have your main points down and are comfortable comes humor. Telling jokes and stories are a great way to mix in your points and have them last longer in the minds of your audience. People are more inclined to remember something if they hear a story to go along with it. Having anecdotes for your key points is a great way to leave a lasting impression and achieve effective public speaking.
Effective public speaking comes from preparation. As long as you are organized before you go up to speak, you’ll get your point across and getting your point across is what makes for effective public speaking.
Be Inspiring & Motivating
According to Sean Adams of MotivationPing.com, “It’s important to inspire and motivate your audience in some way. People are giving you their attention and they want to be informed and entertained. When people watch a presentation, they need to be compelled to take some form of action afterwards.”
One way to motivate your audience is by providing them with actionable steps they can apply in their own business. By doing so, they can immediately use what you gave them giving them instant value for watching your speech.
Dress For Success
Another critical factor in becoming a better public speaker is dressing well. This may seem insignificant, but the way you dress has direct impact on your performance as speaker. For example if you dress badly, have a scuffled shirt, and unsightly shoes, you will feel as though everyone is looking at that part of you, and judging you, thus inhibiting you on focusing on the main goal at hand which is speaking. Remember to always iron clothes neatly, brush your teeth, and comb your hair to look and feel as neat as possible.
Rehearse Your Speech
How well rehearsed you are in what you are speaking about is going to have a great impact on how well you are received. If you are on stage or in front of the podium and are speaking about something you have no idea about, chances are you are going to stutter and look bad. Try your best a couple of days before, to review your notes thoroughly, and make sure that they are implanted within memory before you go up to speak. This will help because if the notes are memorized you will have to look less at the notes or presentation screen for reference, and will be able to focus on relaying the message more clearly and making more eye contact with the audience.
Make Eye Contact
The next step to becoming a better public speaker has already been mentioned slightly before and that is making eye contact. If you are up on stage and are unable to look at the audience while talking, it will make them feel as though you are not really talking to them so they will focus their attention on something else.
To avoid this try your best to make eye contact in every direction of the audience. It will make them feel as though they are more involved and will allow them to provide you with their attention. This is probably the hardest step out of all of them because it calls for stepping out of your comfort zone, but as long as you practice this, after a while you should have no problem.
In conclusion, public speaking not easy, but as long as you practice the necessary steps you can improve the way you speak, and the amount of benefits that it will provide you will be invaluable.
