Top Ten Tips For Incredibly Successful Public Speaking

by David Meerman Scott of WebInkNow
I've been to something like one hundred conferences and corporate events in the past several years as I travel the world delivering keynotes and running seminars. I've seen a few great speeches. Sadly, most speeches I see are not very good. Some are downright terrible.

I've been collecting some observations on what makes a good presentation and also drawing from my own experience.

Most of us have an opportunity to speak, perhaps at your industry event, or your company's sales conference, or to a local club.

Make the most of your opportunity.

1. Take it seriously. If 200 people are in a room and you speak for a half hour, you are taking up 100 hours of people’s time. I see many speakers "wing it" and it makes me feel sorry for the audience. Don't look bad.

2. Know the conference organizer's goals. When I speak, I work with organizers to deliver three goals in equal proportion: Education, entertainment, and motivation. Since I am a paid speaker, I must deliver on all three so the conference organizer is happy they invited me. You need to know the goals for being on the podium too. Why were you invited? How would the organizer define success?

3. Tell stories. When someone says: "Let me tell you a story...," you're interested, right? When someone says: "Let me tell you about my company...," is your reaction the same? It doesn't sound like a way you want to spend your valuable time, does it? Stories are exciting. Most presentations are dry. Open with a story. Tell stories to illustrate your point. It's fascinating to see an audience sit up and pay attention when you start to tell a story on the stage.

4. Nobody cares about your products (except you). Yes, it's just like what I say about Web marketing. What people do care about are themselves and ways to solve their problems. A speech is not about you; it is about your audience. You must resist the urge to hype your products and services. Even if you’re asked to speak about your company or your products, make it about your customers or the problem you solve instead.

5. Prepare and practice. Run through your presentation as many times as required so that you are completely comfortable with the material. You should know the presentation so well that you could do it without PowerPoint and without notes.

6. Don't use PowerPoint as a TelePrompTer. Slides are great for showing images, charts, and the like. Consider showing a short video. But definitely don't use slides to show bulleted lists of text. Yawn! Way too many people just read off their slides. Don't! PowerPoint is not a speaker's crutch; it is a way to illustrate your spoken point. By the way, some of the best speakers don't use slides at all.

7. Arrive early. There is nothing worse than a presenter fumbling with technology on a stage. Everyone becomes uncomfortable and it is nearly impossible to make up that bad first impression. You should plan to arrive at the venue with plenty of time to spare and go to the room at least one hour prior to when you go on. You may need to arrive much earlier if there are sessions before yours because you will want to set up and test your equipment and stand on the stage to get a feel of the room. Use the microphone to hear your voice. Get as comfortable as possible with the venue before people arrive (or when they are on a break). The conference organizer and the A/V people will love you for arriving early! And when you are comfortable with logistics, you will deliver a better speech.

8. Bring an electronic copy of your presentation. I always carry my presentation on a memory stick and wear it around my neck from the moment I step out of my house until after I have presented. I wear it on the plane and in the hotel. I wear it out to dinner. You never know what may happen to your computer (I spilled water on my computer in Brussels once and fried it), so having that backup is comforting.

9. Don't go long. When you build a speech and deliver it for the first time, it almost always runs long. Don't go over time! It's okay to end short because you can take a few questions, but running long makes the entire event schedule get out of whack. Worse, they may pull you off the stage, which looks awful.

10. Be aware of body language. My friend Nick Morgan, author of Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma says: "When words and body language are in conflict, body language wins every time." If you are nervous, it shows. If you don't believe what you're saying, it shows. If you aren't having fun, it shows. And your audience will always react to your body language instead of your words.


Hope you enjoyed this

Fran
www.franwatson.ca

P.S. Check out David's article Why Public Speaking is Like Billiards

You Too Can Be A Public Speaker

I have recently revamped my webpage and will shortly have a lot more information. I am really excited about this. I was on a teleconference call with Kevin Wilke of Nitro Blueprint last night and he critiqued my site......wow, was I excited about that. I made some adjustments based on his comments and much more are to come.

Here are the links, please keep checking as it will be changing with many offers of interest to anyone who wants to know more about public speaking.
http://www.franwatson.ca/public_speaker.html
http://www.franwatson.ca/publicspeaking.html

If you haven't already done so, you can sign up for my public speaking ezine and get a free copy of 800 Speech Topics.

To your speaking success

Fran
www.franwatson.ca

P.S. Those urls again: http://www.franwatson.ca/public_speaker.html
http://www.franwatson.ca/publicspeaking.html

Success

If you wait for everything to be perfect according to your preconceived plans, then you may well wait forever. If you go out and work with the current of life, you may find that success comes from building upon small things.

-- Deng Ming-Dao, Writer

There are powers inside of you which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everythng you ever dreamed or imagined you could become.

-- Orison Sweet Marden (1850 - 1924), Founder of Success magazine

Talent is never enough. With a few exceptions, the best players are the hardest workers.

-- Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Professional basketball player

Words to live by, and perhaps words that may inspire you for a speech in the future.

Live well, live wisely, listen carefully, speak positively and have a wonderful day.

Fran Watson
www.franwatson.ca
www.franwatson.ca/ToastmastersRenfrew.html
www.franwatson.ca/ToastmastersPembroke.html

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Me and My Big Mouth

When you belong to a public speaking organization like Toastmasters, all of your friends and family think that you should be the guest speaker at all their events, and so it happened that I got nominated to give a talk at our local computer club meeting.

Panic sets in, what will I talk about, it has to be computer related, and I have very little time to prepare. What will I do?

Hmmmm....Toastmasters is about communication skills and we have learned that you communicate in various ways, with pictures, body language and words. They say a picture is worth a thousand words..... That's it, I will work with pictures and tell them what I know about fixing photos in Paint Shop Pro. I can tell them about how I touched up a picture of a person who had a bruise on her head so that I could send the picture to the paper.

Well, once again, thanks to the skills I have been developing at Toastmsters, the thinking on my feet I do with Table Topics, I have pulled myself out of the depths of despair (well, ok I wasn't that desparate...yet) and have chosen a topic to work on. Now I will get to work.

Happy speaking

Fran Watson
www.franwatson.ca

Does Fear Control You?

Why didn’t I send a resume to that job. I had most of the qualifications and the person they hired doesn’t have anywhere near the skills that I have….

Why didn’t I enter that contest last year. I thought about it lots, I could have entered, but I didn’t. Why didn’t I?

Why didn’t I go and talk to that new person at the office. She seemed nice enough, but I just let everyone else say hi. What’s wrong with me?

Is your life full of “Why didn’t Is?” If it is, then you too are a victim of………….FEAR!

Fear causes us to do strange things. It may cause us to hide in our houses and not come out for days or weeks. It can cause us to give up on friendships because we think that the person might not like us. It can cause us to see rejection when someone doesn’t say good morning to us when they come into the office.

That demon FEAR can really wreck our lives!

So what can we do about it?

There are many things we can do. Those of us who entered the door of Toastmasters, quivering and quaking in our boots learned that taking that first step was the absolute hardest, but once that step was taken the rest became easier. And that is the secret to beating that FEAR demon.

The first thing we have to do is to look carefully at what our fear really is. Is it a fear of rejection? A fear of looking foolish? A fear of being judged? A fear of failing? Whatever it is, the next step is to ask yourself, what’s the worst thing that could happen? If I’m rejected, will my world stop, will I cease to exist? No, my life will go on and I will find someone who won’t reject me.

What about looking foolish? Well, let yourself do something really foolish, put on a clown suit, encourage people to laugh at you. And as far as being judged, what does it really matter what the neighbours think? You need to be happy about what you are doing for you, not for the neighbours.

Fear of failure prevents many of us from pursuing our dreams. We ask ourselves… “what if….” Well, what if you do fail? What then? You just try another way. When you were a toddler and you fell down, you didn’t think it was the end of the world, you simply got up and took another step, reaching for your goal.

Fear of rejection has controlled my life in many ways, and I have limited myself, not tried when I expected negative results. The words I heard as a young child come back to haunt me time after time and I have to overcome the feeling and go forward.

I wrote a poem for a friend back in 1987, but it is a poem that I wrote for myself as well and I return to it time after time for the inspiration to carry on when I feel like giving up, when FEAR has me in its grasp and I would like to share it with you in closing. It is entitled RISK.

RISK

Do not be afraid to shine.
This world needs what you have to give.
Open up the areas of your being;
expose them to yourself - to others.
You are valuable.
You are unique.
You have much to give.
Do not be afraid to give it.

As we risk ourselves, we grow.
Each new experience is a risk:
we can try, and maybe fail,
and as a result, grow -
or hold back and stagnate.

You have the potential
to be anything you want to be!
You are free to choose.
You are limited only by your fears.
Let your dreams take over,
fly with the eagles,
soar into life,
the world is waiting for you!

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Fly high, don't let fear drag you down!!

Fran
www.franwatson.ca