As an entrepreneur, or perhaps as someone who is working in fields where you need to speak publicly regularly, you might find the going tough.
This is especially true if you are an introvert and find the glare of public speaking too much for you. Yet, public speaking is important if you are going to achieve success in whatever you do.
Public speaking is the act of speaking face to face with a large audience, either to persuade, inform or entertain. In business, you will often be doing the first two, but will also need to be entertaining to hold your audience’s attention.
Below are some tips on how to improve your public speaking.
Face your audience
If you are working with a PowerPoint presentation, with the projector behind you, you will lose your audience if you spend much of your time looking up at the projector rather than facing them.
So, to keep them engaged, ensure that you have your computer ahead of you as you face the audience. This allows you to face them even as you make your presentation.
Maintain eye contact as you speak. Rather than fix your eye on one person, move your eye across the room and make eye contact with some members of the audience. Don’t hold for long though, just a split second and then move your eyes away.
Open up your body
Most often, tension will show itself through closed-up body language, no matter how well you try to hide it. This means that your hands will stiffly be on your side, or in your pockets. This is a quick way to lose the audience.
Instead, let your body posture denote confidence. Stand upright and allow your hands to move freely. Make gestures with your hands to emphasize a point. Move around the podium, which can actually help release some of the tension you are feeling. And as you speak, project your voice with confidence.
Go straight to the point
Filler words such as um and ah are often natural in our day-to-day conversations. When it comes to public speaking, however, they can easily be a quick way to lose your audience.
Once again, preparation and self awareness is key. Go through your presentation, know what you need to say and when to say it. If it’s a speech, memorize much of it so that you don’t stutter on stage. Let your presentation be like an actor on screen – flawless and hard to imagine that the words are rehearsed and scripted. This preparation minimizes using of filler words.
Be enthusiastic
When making a presentation, you want your audience to be a part of it as you are. We all want to hear from people who are excited about what they are speaking about.
So, when public speaking, show some enthusiasm about the topic. If it’s a fun topic, smile and crack jokes here and there. If you can’t think of good jokes, then let your energy be your selling point.
However, all said and done, when public speaking, be well-versed in what you are talking about. At the end of the day, it is the knowledge that your audience seeks.
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