3 Easy Ways to Make Your Next Speech Work

Have you ever given a speech and felt as though no one was listening? Well the problem may not just be the content, but it may be your delivery. Here are 3 easy ways to add an extra kick to your next public talk, to make sure the audience will react:

Listeners today need more than just content to focus on. Millions of messages are being sent to them each day through many different mediums. Which means you need to find a way to make your information become important and relevant, and not just part of the noise.

1.)  Appeal to the senses. This simply means changing tone and inflexion as you talk to your audience. Too much change can be a deterrent; however, not enough become monotonous. Changing the tone to place emphasis on important phrases or parts invokes feelings. It engages the listener, and forces the audience to about what you’re talking about. By changing your tone, and even speed of talking, you can take the followers on a journey of emotions and have the content feel more important to them.

2.)  Only give one main point in your speech. Have one idea that you are discussing. You may have hundreds of supporting articles and journals, or plenty of statistics thrown in there; however, too many ideas or concepts loses the listener. Find the one thought or idea that you want to get across to your audience, and build on that topic using any statistics and research you have as support.

3.)  Take your listener on a journey. After you’ve discovered your main point, figure out the journey they will go through to understanding what you have to say. What emotions are you going to invoke, and where in your speech will you do this? By playing off of the listener’s emotions, you can get the brain rolling and have the viewers start to think about what you’re saying. By using research or statistics, facts, and personal stories to evoke an emotion and make the audience have an uncomfortable (making them see a new side or deviate from their normal thought processes) feeling, can help formulate their own thesis. Ultimately you want the audience to feel as though it was they that discovered the meaning. This will help any speaker stay memorable.

It takes some time and editing to reach an appealing speech, and you should test your speech out alone and to others before the main event. But adding these three effects to your speech will help the response and engage of your readers.