1. Know your material – Master the facts and data you’re going to talk about and do it candidly. Show the passion you feel for it. Get motivated about the value of your message. The energy you pass will help to engage the audience.
2. Know your audience – Don’t approach it with an “one size fits all” speech. Gather as much information as possible about the audience in order to successfully get your idea through with charm. Age and audience knowledge about the topic you’re going to present are crucial information. When talking abroad, google about the foreign countries and cultures. This also includes corporate cultures. Don’t confuse your audience by using too much technical jargon or complex statistics. Ask yourself about what the audience needs to hear from you.
3. Engage the audience – Don’t speak at the audience, speak to the audience. Use inclusive language, such us collaborative words and personal pronouns to help the audience feel more involved in the message. Set inside jokes and a congeniality with the public to make them feel like they’re sitting with an old friend. Touch your audience: credibility is not synonym of unemotional. Condiment the speech with appropriate emotions according to the content of the speech. Adopt metaphors to link what someone already understands with a new idea or concept. Sharing small stories and descriptive narrations with adjectives will surely engage your audience emotionally. Rhetorical questions can bring a dramatic effect and allow the transmission of an idea, as it invites people to mentally participate.
4. Value verbal language – Avoid speaking in monotone, use vocal variation such as inflections to signal significant points in your speech. Use pauses. Any speech without pauses is boring and difficult to understand. Pauses also help to eliminate filler words such as “ahhns” and “umms”.
5. Value non-verbal language – Beyond the colors we wear, clothes and accessories, some techniques such as hand gestures and smiling are essential to captivate the public. If you need, hold something that makes you feel secure and avoid self-touch gestures. Keeping your hands higher than your waist will potentiate the use of meaningful hand gestures which, in turn, will help calm nervous hands. Move purposely: start in the middle and move softly to one side as you begin with the first point. When changing subject return to the middle and then to the other side while getting to another topic. Eye contact is vital. The ideal time is the amount it takes to know their eye color. If you keep it for longer and use hand gestures.
6. Visual aids – Make sure they reinforce your message. Don’t overload your slides with text or images, black spaces are important to keep people’s attention. Use illustrative schemes.
7. Use an app – There are a bunch of apps that will help you to engage with the audience. Here are some suggestions:
Sli.do – it’ll allow you ask questions and get an answer from every member of the public.
Metronome beats – overcome speaking to quickly, get to the 120 words per minute sweet spot.
Confident Public Speaking (Android) or Public Speaking with Andrew Johnson (iOS) – it’ll help you coping with pre-stage nerves.
8. Solve a problem – Frame your speech around solving a problem that the listeners can recognize. This taps into a common plain that we can relate to and want to solve, capturing people’s attention. As you promise a solution, this will alleviate worry and provide relieve to the audience. This tactic is great to justify the importance of your work and to secure future investments.
9. Manage your time – Training makes you use your time more efficiently. Try not to go into too much detailed information as sometimes less means more. Leave time for questions and if someone gets really interested in further details you can leave your contact in the end of your presentation.
10. Be flexible – If the way you initially planned to approach your presentation isn’t captivating the audience or not being appropriate you must reflect. Set a new course to get the message out. Relating to the audience interests will help you achieve it.
Carla Sofia da Silva Tavares
Fernanda Cristina Rodrigues Malhão Pereira
Pedro Henrique Gradeço Félix
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