Becoming a Better Speaker

Now that you’ve decided to try speaking, there are things you can focus on to improve your speaking abilities.  The next few blogs will zoom in on some of those things.  I’m going to try and group them in a logical order, but some of them will bleed into more than on category.

Here’s a breakdown of what I’ll be going over; I’m not sure how many posts it will take to work through all of them, but I wanted to focus on the things that will help you become a better speaker.  My goal is to keep it short and informative, something you can read through and gather some good points quickly.

Using your voice – this will cover topics like delivery, pausing, stress and emphasis, enthusiasm, and so forth.  This will probably take up at least three, maybe more posts.

Using your posture – we’ll look at gestures, body language, facial expressions, eye contact with your audience, and poise.  Likely two or more blogs.

Using your tools – this will focus on effectively using your audio/visual equipment, props, references, and software tools such as PowerPoint or Keynote.  This topic will be at least two, with one strictly focusing on using software tools effectively.

Giving your audience something to use – it’s not enough that you speak well, if you’re presenting important information, or if people have come to see you speak to learn about your topic, then they need to be able to leave feeling like they have something to take away.  So, this final section will look at ways to bring your main points home by using things like effective questions, illustrations, visual aids, and motivation.  This final topic will most likely two posts.

I hope you’ve found what I’ve posted so far to be helpful, and I’m looking forward to the coming weeks as I lay out the above.  Please let me know your thoughts in the comments!