Mastering The Art Of Public Speaking

For some people, mastering the art of public speaking is a lifetime of learning. It is something that they can never get enough nerve for even though they can write eloquent speeches and have important ideas to pass on at public meetings. It requires a certain finesse to be able to speak in public and the only way to do it is to jump right in with both feet. Even though your insides are shaking standing in front of a group of strangers, once the speech is over, you can sit down feeling immensely satisfied.



Being able to give an effective speech is not just a matter of reading words off a page. There are certain techniques that each speaker must master and each speech requires different strategies. Of course the speech itself has to be good, but you cannot expect to receive accolades if you keep your head down and do not look at the audience. This is where practice comes into play. You do have to memorize a speech and use only cue cards to help you find your place if you should get rattled and forget what comes next. This allows you to maintain eye contact with the audience and gives each listener the feeling that you are talking to him or her.



Gestures are an important part of public speaking. Your hands are just as effective as relaying your message as your mouth, so why not use them. Using your hands to point or accentuate aspects of your speech keeps the audience attentive to what you are saying. Your voice should be clear and all the words spoken slowly - not too slowly as to drag out the speech to make it boring, but so that everyone can hear and understand you. Having a good lead is the best way to grab the audience's attention and once you get that, your job is to keep it by what you say and how you say it.



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Do You Have Passion?

"Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe." -- Winston Churchill

Six Steps to Becoming a Persuasive Speaker

Most books on public speaking or presentation skills suggest there are four types of presentation, aimed at either

• Informing
• Entertaining
• Motivating and inspiring
• Persuading

I disagree.

I believe the purpose of all presentations, especially in the business world, is persuading. Even if you are not looking to make a sale, gain a contract or change audience members' minds, you are still attempting to persuade them to listen to you, and to accept your information.

These are the six steps to persuasion that I discuss in my training workshops:

1. Develop a concrete objective
2. Gain Audience Intelligence
3. Demonstrate passion about your subject
4. Structure backwards
5. Conduct a Murder Board
6. Conduct a Post-Presentation Analysis

Let’s look at each of these steps:

1. Develop a concrete objective

Your objective is not merely to deliver a good presentation. An oral presentation is the means to a specific end, and that end is what you want the audience to do with your information. If you are vague in your own mind about what action you want the audience to take, you will
not have the focus and thematic unity required in an oral presentation.

A written document such as a memo can be poorly written and appear incoherent on first reading, but its obtuseness can finally be pierced on a second or third reading. The oral
presentation must be understood immediately. There are no instant replays.

The goal of your presentation is to persuade audience members to buy your product, service, or project, or the information you are providing, because they see it as solving their problem.

Once you have decided on your objective, type it, print it, and paste it on your monitor. Refer to this objective as you progress in your draft. It becomes a compass heading to keep you on course. When you find you are going off on a tangent, redirect towards this objective.

Because you must solve the problems of your audience, you must know precisely what these problems are. That leads to the second step which is vital because it gets to the heart of persuasion - knowing your audience's position on the subject, knowing what problems confront audience members, and their attitudes on the issue.

2. Gain Audience Intelligence

Members of your audience probably have a great deal on their mind, and you are competing with these preoccupations for attention. They have only limited time to listen to
you. You must know what are the hot buttons to push, and which hot buttons to avoid touching, lest you distract your audience from the focus of your presentation.

Conduct research on the internet, talk to people who have spoken to this group before, know the idiosyncrasies of key members of the audience.

The more information you have about the concerns, problems and needs of audience members, the better prepared you will be. Keep in mind that persuasive communication takes place at the intersection of your objective and the needs of the
audience. If you fail to reach this intersection, concentrating only on what you want, you will not persuade.


Finish reading this article

About the Author:

This article is excerpted from Larry Tracy’s book, The Shortcut to Persuasive Presentations, available for purchase at his website. A retired Army colonel, he was called “an extraordinarily effective speaker” by President Ronald Reagan. He has been cited in various publications as one of the top presentations trainers in the US. His website is #1 on Google for “persuasive presentations, and
he was on the cover of the July 2005 American Speaker magazine. http://www.tracy-presentation.com/

Motivational Speaking Tips - Taking Cues

by Linda Emerson -
Public speakers are always regarded as experts who are here to save us from our troubles and actually motivate us to become productive and positive thinking. There are actually all sorts of public speakers who try their hand (and luck) at becoming the next Dr. Phil. Of course, not all motivational and keynote speakers have Oprah to launch them to celebrity status. One must really work hard in order to achieve not only the popularity that public speakers like Dr. Phil are now enjoying but the authoritative claim on the topic that he or she wants to specialize in.

1. Being A Motivational Speaker

This means that you really have to take your job seriously as a lot of people are paying you to teach them a thing or two about the issues that concerns them. This is why aspiring keynote speakers should keep track of these helpful points to consider whenever delivering a public speech to be able to catch the attention of possible clients as well that may book them for seminars or get their professional help for their personal problems.

2. Duties And Responsibilities

- Supply your audience with the correct information- Take reference of whenever employees need- Make use of your gift with words- Have a quality, canned presentation

3. Skip The Basics

Nobody wants to listen to a speaker who gives a blow-by-blow account of the stuff that he just read from a book. You will actually lose your audience’s interest if you commit this error and you’ll forever be stuck with being labeled by people as boring. Surely, this is the worst thing that could ever happen to a speaker because they are actually there as an authority figure, someone that the audience will likely listen to and not just be reminded of their old college professors whose fly is always open.

When it comes to your marketing strategies, however, you should always make sure that they send the right message. Don’t put too much focus on the packaging because whether this may refer to you or to the promotional material that you are actually going to hand out, it is best that you keep your focus on what’s inside, what the people would actually want to read or hear about. Appearance is nothing when you have nothing but fluff to back-up those glitter laced packages.

4. Accompany Your Presentation With Useful Resources

When making a promotional material for your keynote speaker appearances always make sure that your promotional material absolutely screams of your would be topic and make sure that it is a highly interesting one at that! Your audience will also appreciate viewing various testimonials from fellow believers, lacing your promotional materials with legitimate and accurate testimonials from actual persons who been to your talks affirms your claims as being an incredibly good keynote speaker who’s really able to reach out to people and who’s ideas and advices are really worth following.

Also, don’t ever forget to list down you credentials, that is, if you have any but try to stick to the ones that are relevant to your career as a keynote speaker and also leave some space wherein you will be able to talk about your field of expertise. But you also keep in mind to keep all these facts concise and novel like as people’s attention may tend to drift from one thing to another and you wouldn’t want to saturate their minds and their interest in you with a novel long promotional material.

5. Appearance and Presentation

Before going to your speaking engagement, pick the clothes you are going to wear. Choose something that will help you to feel confidence and will make you look credible. A neatly and well dressed speaker is more believable than a speaker who is poorly dressed and looks like something the cat dragged in.

For more great public speaking related articles and resources check out http://www.1st-class-speakers.com
Article Source: http://articlesbeyondbetter.com

How to Develop a Dynamic Story

By: Barbara White,

Story telling is a very effective way to get your point across. Here are some tips to help you develop a dynamic powerful story.

• Decide on the purpose for the story. What is the main point you want to make? Slant the telling of the story so that that point is clear.

• Create the backdrop. Describe the scene so that the audience can picture it in their minds. What is the time, location, weather? What is going on emotionally, physically, or spiritually?

• Introduce the main characters. Help your audience to picture the important characters through detailed descriptions. Become them; describe their relationships, quirks and personality. Add character voices or mannerisms to make them different from your own.

• Begin the Journey. What is the task, the goal, and the journey to take? What are the challenges that need to be faced?

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Barbara White helps speakers develop dynamic speaking skills through workshops, training and coaching. For more articles on speaking skills visit http://www.livingbeyondbetter.com/ and http://www.articlesbeyondbetter.com/

Speak and Touch the Heart

By: Barbara White

Presentations and seminars become all too familiar in the business world. Jim Speaker is there with the overhead projector and PowerPoint slides-each with four of five points.
Hours later the seminar is over. Seminars are informative but can be deadly.
Just give me the handout and I’ll read it at home!

It takes a dynamic presenter to step out from behind the lectern and shake up and motivate their audience.

Facts touch or mind, but it is the power that comes from stories that touch hearts.

Everybody loves a story. Stories give us insight life and human nature. They can make us laugh and they can make us cry. Story telling will go beyond the bullet points and will make a memorable impression on the heart that can change a life.

As a speaker, how can you use stories to give your presentation the impact that you desire:
• Tell inspirational stories to persuade, motivate or entertain. Use stories to illustrate the point you want to make. Try to find stories that are relevant to the audience. For example, for software engineers, tell a story about the young engineer who started a company in his garage and how Microsoft changed the world.

• Tell a story from your own experience. Make a habit of keeping a story journal and record your day’s experiences. You will have a rich supply of unique experiences to draw from to illustrate your point.

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Profit From Effective Public Speaking

By: Stephen Pope

Developing and utilizing presentation skills can result in increased income for you. Here are a few ways that you can turn your public speaking experience into business profits.

1. Free Speeches to Promote Your Business

A lawyer might make a speech to a group of business persons, free of charge, about the advantages of incorporating their businesses. This could result in obtaining new clients. It could also cause existing clients to purchase additional services, such as incorporations, minute book work, income tax election filings, and so on.

2. Paid Seminars, Workshops and Teleclasses

You could charge admission fees to attend a seminar entitled "How To Incorporate Yourself Without a Lawyer". This seminar could detail the considerations and mechanics of incorporating your own private corporation.

3. Sell Information Products

The information presented during a speech or seminar could form the basis for information products such as books, courses, special reports or folios, audios, videos, DVDs, electronic books, and so forth. For example, you could write a book entitled "How To Incorporate Yourself Without a Lawyer".

Including such products as handouts at your seminar would increase the value for the attendees (which you could charge for). Even if you gave a free speech to a group, you could still receive back-end income from the sale of such information products.

Obviously, your public speaking skills will be especially important when producing an audio or video cassette. Your listeners and viewers will make certain judgments based on your personal appearance, poise, audience contact, use of gestures, enthusiasm, how informative the material is, and many other factors.

Your information products establish your credibility as an expert, resulting in even more business. As well, you can market those same information products through mail order, direct mail, Internet marketing, and other methods.

4. Consulting and Other Opportunities

As your reputation as an expert in your specialized field grows, you will become more in demand. Clients may seek you out for lucrative speaking engagements. You may be invited to write magazine articles, consult for large corporations, act as an expert trial witness, become a syndicated columnist, et cetera.

Therefore, whether you are a novice or an experienced public speaker, it pays to increase and utilize your public speaking skills.

Article Source: Articles Beyond Better


J. Stephen Pope, President of Pope Consulting Inc., has been helping clients to earn maximum business profits for over twenty-five years. To learn more about effective public speaking and other profitable Work at Home Small Business Ideas, visit www.yenommarketinginc.com/public-speaking.html