Tips for good public speaking

Many of us want to be good public speakers. This requires a lot of effort and experience. But public speaking is not so much different from ordinary conversations. Hence, if we pay attention to how we handle one-to-one conversations and apply these techniques to our public speaking contexts, then we might excel in the business of speaking. Here are some tips for doing well in public speaking:

1- Be yourself. Never try to be someone else. Our society needs more originals than copies.

2- Don't try to empress the audience. Do your best and if they don't like your talk, it's not your fault.

3- Choose a topic that you know well and that of interest to the audience.

4- Prepare well. It's said that for every minute, you need two hours of preparation.

5- Always feel positive even if things don't seem to work well.

6- Don't look for praise from the audience - look for critical feedback.

7- Reflect on your talk taking into account the critical feedback you got from the audience (if there is any).

8- Reserve to do your best every time out and always strive to do it better.

One goal of public speaking is to change others. However, people might not be encouraged to change if they suspect that the speaker has little knowledge in the area he or she speaks about or that he or she does not show interest and enthusiasm in what they talk about. Hence, honesty is important. Never pick up a topic to talk about in public that you have no background knowledge about. In this case you might be deceiving yourself and others.

See you tomorrow with another thought. Please feel free to post your comments!