Tips on Public Speaking

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Here are some important public speaking tips to help you develop your skills and become far more effective as a public speaker.


Ensure your speech will be captivating to your audience as well as worth their time and attention. Videotape your presentation and analyze it. Emphasize your strong points during your presentation.


Present the desired image to your audience. Be solemn if your topic is serious. Appear relaxed, even if you feel nervous. Remember, you don’t look as nervous as you feel.


Establish rapport with your audience. If a microphone is available, adjust and adapt your voice accordingly.


Maintain sincere eye contact with your audience. If what you have prepared is obviously not getting across to your audience, change your strategy mid-stream if you are well prepared to do so.


Allow yourself and your audience a little time to reflect and think.


Check out the location ahead of time to ensure seating arrangements for audience, whiteboard, blackboard, lighting, location of projection screen, sound system, etc. are suitable for your presentation.

Tell audience ahead of time that you will be giving out an outline of your presentation so that they will not waste time taking unnecessary notes during your presentation.


Humour : Tell jokes if you’re good at telling jokes. If you aren’t good, it is best to leave the jokes behind. There’s nothing worse than a punch line that has no punch.

Tell stories : Stories make you a real person not just a deliverer of information. Use personal experiences to bring your material to life. No matter how dry your material is, you can always find a way to humanise it. Keep audience interested throughout your entire presentation. Remember that an interesting speech makes time fly, but a boring speech is always too long to endure even if the presentation time is the same.


Using Public Speaking Environment – Try not to get stuck in one place. Use all the space that’s available to you. If your space is confined (say a meeting room or even presenting at a table) use stronger body language to convey your message.


Mistakes – Mistakes are all right. Recovering from mistakes makes you appear more human. Good recovery puts your audience at ease – they identify with you more.