13 Steps to Successful Public Speaking
These public speaking tips will help you prepare, create, and deliver more and better presentations.
This article will give you a complete set of speaking tips you can use to confidently plan, create, and deliver any presentation.
Public speaking has always been one of the most powerful forms of influence available among people. For thousands of years, we’ve been sitting around the fire, telling stories, and sharing valuable lessons with each other. Today, it’s even more influential. It can help advance your career, grow your audience, promote your business, and it will even help improve the quality of your personal and family relationships.
The great news is that the world’s best speakers are NOT born with their skill. Just like any other skill in life, effective communication is one to be taught and there is a framework for it.
Just like any other skill in life, effective communication is one to be taught and there is a framework for it.
So how do you start developing this skill and, most importantly, how can you make sure you succeed in every speech you’ll give in the future?
Let’s look at a step-by-step framework that has been developed by one of the best public speakers today, Eric Edmeades. This will help you through the process of becoming a master public speaker in record time (if you decide to implement it).
We will break it up into three sections:
The Preparation — Important life principles that will make sure you are always prepared to give a great speech (even at a moment’s notice).
The Creation — The most important steps to take and mistakes to avoid as you create your talks.
The Delivery — Proven speaking principles that will help you rock your delivery every single time you step on stage.
Let’s begin.
The Preparation
The greatest speakers are able to give speeches at a moment’s notice. They don’t need weeks to prepare because they live their message, know their stories intimately, and have mastered the art of sharing their message and stories with the world.
If you want to be an authentic and influential speaker, your preparation should start long before ever having to give a talk. Here are some habits you can incorporate into your life right now that will get you prepared to become a world-class public speaker.
1. Learn from other speakers — There are a number of mistakes beginner speakers make and if you take the time to learn from others you can avoid those same mistakes, and save yourself a huge amount of time and energy on your journey to mastery.
The easiest way to learn from other speakers is to make a habit of watching them. Attend speaking events, watch video recordings, and pay attention to what you like and dislike so that you can incorporate some of their techniques into your talks.
You can also join Speaker Masterminds, Speaking Clubs, Facebook groups for speakers, or a number of other organizations where you can spend time asking questions and learning from other speakers. These are great places to find speaking opportunities and expand your network as well.
Perhaps the most effective way to learn from other speakers is to get training from them.
Perhaps the most effective way to learn from other speakers is to get training from them. This will help you avoid all the painful mistakes they made and will help you improve ten times as fast. You can take online courses, attend speaking workshops, or get 1-on-1 coaching if you’re dedicated to growing fast.
2. Collect your stories — If you really want to be able to engage your audience and be memorable, one of the best things you can do is learn to make points by telling stories. To do that, it is important to know what stories you can tell.
Some of the best talks in the world are simply collections of stories and life experiences that make points. This is because stories are the programming language of the human brain. Since the beginning of spoken language, humans have used stories to pass information and ideas from person to person, generation to generation. Stories evoke emotion and create memories in a way pure facts simply cannot.
Stories evoke emotion and create memories in a way pure facts simply cannot.
As a speaker, one of the most valuable things you can do to prepare is to get in the habit of recognizing your most valuable stories and create a system for documenting them. This way, when it comes time to give a talk, you are prepared with an inventory of stories to tell and things to talk about.
3. Practice — Practice is one of the most important aspects of becoming a great public speaker, but you don’t necessarily need to practice your talks on stages. Instead, practice telling stories from your life as you collect them.
There are plenty of opportunities in our day-to-day lives to practice telling stories: around the dinner table, chatting with friends, at parties, with networking groups, at speaking clubs, at masterminds, the list is endless!
If you want to become a great, authentic speaker, get in the habit of telling great stories whenever you have an opportunity.
If you want to become a great, authentic speaker, get in the habit of telling great stories whenever you have an opportunity. Don’t just take these opportunities lightly. Tell your stories with color, emotion, and details. That way, you will develop a repertoire of well-rehearsed material you can use to create a polished talk without needing to spend hours memorizing scripts and rehearsing to prepare.
Just like any habit, this might take some effort at the beginning, but over time you will find it becomes effortless.
The Creation
Creating a new talk can be a daunting experience for some, but if you follow these few guidelines and avoid a few simple mistakes, you will find that creating a new talk can be quick and easy.
4. Strategic objectives — Before you set out to create a speech, you need to get clear about what you want to accomplish by giving the speech.
Most people are very good at considering their primary objectives when they give a speech. Things like: promoting a book, selling a product, gaining political support… Primary objectives are usually pretty easy to identify.
The real magic in considering your strategic objectives comes when you get clear on your secondary objectives. These are the kinds of things that you might like to happen after you give a talk, even if they are not the main reason you are there. For example, booking your next talk, getting more podcast interviews, social media followers, finding a booking agent, networking, etc.
Having total clarity around your strategic objectives, both primary and secondary, allows you to tailor your talk specifically for what you are trying to accomplish. It will help you get a much better return on your time investment to give the talk in the first place.
5. Get to know your audience — All audiences are different, and the very best speakers in the world are the ones who can connect their content with things that their audience can relate to. If you want to be able to do this, it is critical you spend some time getting to know your audience before you create a talk for them.
It is critical you spend some time getting to know your audience before you create a talk for them.
Do some research and find out what demographics generally attend the events you plan to speak at, find out what problems they have, what they want out of life, and what they are scared of. Find out as much as you can about the people you are speaking to so when you are creating your talks you can tailor them to the audience’s interests.
Having some background knowledge of your audience can be helpful in other ways too. It can help you avoid a cultural faux pas, you can make very topical jokes and references that they will understand, you can avoid references and examples that they may not connect with, and you can choose stories that may be more relevant to their experiences and thus more relatable. There are many great reasons to spend some time learning about your audience.
6. Write your talk — STOP! Don’t actually write your talk. This is the part so many speakers get wrong. Writing out a talk word for word is counterproductive, time-consuming, and often can lead to a suboptimal delivery.
Writing out a talk word for word is counterproductive, time-consuming, and often can lead to a suboptimal delivery.
Instead of thinking about writing a talk like writing out a script, think of it more like mapping out the talk. Use a diagram, point-form notes, a mindmap, or some kind of system to organize the points you want to make and what order you want to make them in. Then decide what stories you can tell that will anchor your points. Use simple phrases or pictures that will remind you of the stories and trust your memory to do the rest. When it comes time to deliver, all you have to do is think about the story and tell it. If you follow the steps in the preparation section of this article, it will be no problem.
The issue with a scripted talk is twofold. First off, people don’t speak the way they write. Scripted talks often come across feeling mechanical. Audiences have much more difficulty connecting with you when you are reciting a script. Secondly, they are hard to remember! Imagine having to memorize every single word you’re going to say and the way you plan to say it. It’s exhausting just thinking about it.
7. Plan your start and finish — The two most crucial parts of your talk are how you begin and how you end.
The beginning of your talk should be where you focus most of your effort. It should capture your audience’s attention, and prove to them why they should listen to the rest of your speech. Having a strong start makes the rest of the speech go smoother. Once you have established a connection with the audience, they will hang on closely to the rest of your talk.
Your ending should be carefully planned out also. Your audience will always remember how you left them feeling, and your finish will control the last feeling you leave them with. But, perhaps more importantly, having a well-planned ending makes it easier to end on time, which is one of the most important things you need to do if you want to get a standing ovation and get re-booked by the same organizer.
8. Prepare your slides — Slides can be an important part of a talk. They can add a lot of value, share a lot of information and greatly enhance a presentation. But they can also be problematic, so you should never rely on your slides completely.
You should never rely on your slides completely.
The mistake many speakers make is they structure their talk in such a way that it needs the slides in order to be successful. Some speakers use them to keep them on track, they rely on the slides to convey key facts or information, or they count on video clips and pictures within the slides to make up some portion of their content. But what happens if there are technical problems? (Which, by the way, always happens to the speaker who needs her slides the most.)
To use slides most effectively you should create a talk that will be effective WITHOUT the slides, and then create slides that will enhance your presentation, rather than carry your presentation. This will prevent the “death by PowerPoint” type talk, or the dreaded “my slides don’t work so my talk is over” embarrassment.
The Delivery
This is what it all comes down to. It’s time to take the stage and deliver your world-class talk. This is what public speaking is really all about, delivering the talk. There is a lot riding on a good delivery, but it’s easy if you just follow these few simple guidelines.
9. Before the talk — A great delivery starts long before you get on stage. Take time before you are giving your talk to get ready. That means making sure you are well hydrated, well-nourished, well-rested.
Make sure if you are at a live event that you visit the room beforehand, get to know the A/V staff, see where you will enter the stage, and make sure you know how the microphone works. You don’t want anything to derail you on the day of your speech, so checking out the venue ahead of time means fewer unwanted surprises.
If it is an online event, make sure you’re ready ahead of time, check your lighting, your camera position, and your microphone. Make sure you have all the links you need to log in for the event and make sure you are operating in the right time zone. There will be technical glitches regardless, so the more you can check for ahead of time, the smoother your talk will go.
10. Manage your state of mind — Your state of mind is perhaps one of the most critical factors in the quality of your delivery. Your state of mind will make or break the delivery of your speech, and there are a lot of things you can do to help put yourself in an optimal state before you take the stage.
Your state of mind is perhaps one of the most critical factors in the quality of your delivery.
Visualize your talk going well. It seems simple, but so many speakers stress over what happens if something goes wrong. They focus on the potential negative outcome, and it puts them in a fearful state of mind. Instead, imagine everything that could go well, the audience giving a standing ovation, you having fun and delivering at your absolute peak, and the talk going perfectly. Make sure the movies you are playing in your mind are fun ones, not scary ones.
Handle your nerves. If you want to stay in a peak state of mind, you must not be nervous. One of the simplest ways to do that is to remind yourself that nervousness is just the same feeling as excitement, but with a negative expectation. Reframe your nervousness as excitement and let that feeling pump you up instead of bringing you down.
Nervousness is just the same feeling as excitement, but with a negative expectation.
Maybe you’re worried you will forget what to say. This is a common cause of nervousness and stage fright. But the less you worry about it, the less likely it is to happen. Besides, what if you do forget? You can always take a moment and refer to your notes, or ask the audience what you were talking about, take a deep breath and it will come back to you, as long as you didn’t write the speech out word for word…
11. Bring your best — Now is not the time to let your audience know you are nervous!
The way you handle yourself on stage has a massive influence on how the audience feels about your talk. Now is not the time to hold back and get shy. Bring your passion, your energy and your enthusiasm. Be memorable while you are on stage.
Think of the pre-game rituals of professional athletes. Think of the energy elite actors bring to their performances. As a speaker, you should be bringing this level of energy to your delivery. You are responsible for bringing the energy for the whole audience, and you simply cannot do that if you hold back. Every audience appreciates a speaker who gives it everything they’ve got.
Deliver your talk as though you were reading a storybook to 8-year-olds. Get into characters, use funny voices, crazy actions, and wild gestures. Act larger than life as you deliver your talk and your audience will LOVE you for it. Temper your bold over-the-top energy and enthusiasm by using silence to your advantage as well. The contrast between high-energy and low-energy sections of the talk will add excitement and variety for the audience and will create more impact.
12. After the talk — If you want to be a truly world-class speaker, your job is not done when you walk off the stage or log off the online conference.
After the speech, it is important to connect with your audience. If possible, answer questions for people, sign autographs, and be accessible. Too many speakers leave events immediately after they give a talk. It makes them seem arrogant and inaccessible and robs them of the opportunity to build long-lasting relationships with their audience.
Once the event is over and the audience has gone home, ask the organizers to give you feedback.
Once the event is over and the audience has gone home, ask the organizers to give you feedback. Perhaps they surveyed the audience or had comments from attendees. Feedback is free consulting, and you can use the information you gather to improve your talk for the next audience. If you reject the feedback, you are rejecting the opportunity to grow and improve.
13. Review the video — High-performance athletes, pilots, performers, and pretty much anyone who is at the top of their field make a habit of reviewing their performance. You should too.
Videotape every single talk you do, and rewatch the videos to find opportunities to improve. Constant incremental improvements will help get you to greatness faster than just about anything else you can do.
In Conclusion
Whether you want to speak on stages, at online conferences, in meetings, on video recordings, or you just want to improve your communication skills, public speaking is one of the most powerful skills you can learn.
We hope that by giving you this framework you can see that public speaking is not the fear-inducing, complicated monster that 98% of the population is terrified of, but rather a fun and powerful way to share ideas and spread your message around the world.
The path to mastery is long and challenging, but we promise you it’s worth it. Being a great public speaker helps you improve your business, advance in your career, deepen your relationships and so much more, because of something we like to call “The Stage Effect.”
The Stage Effect is the attraction people feel for you when you deliver a great presentation in front of a big audience. Learning how to leverage it will benefit you beyond your wildest dreams.
If you want to learn more about how to leverage The Stage Effect, make sure to click here and download our free mini-guide.
