How to improve your public speaking skills

If you look at most people’s list of fears, public speaking is often up there. However, improving your public speaking is still a vital skill in almost every career.

Sooner or later, you’ll find yourself in front of a room of people getting ready to deliver a presentation. It doesn’t have to be scary or intimidating, and there are way better tricks than imagining everyone in their underwear. Here are a few that might help.

Know your audience

When you’re up and in front of an audience, you’re there for a reason. Every audience is there for a different reason though, so you have to be ready for whichever one you’re speaking to. You have to be ready to entertain your friends or inspire your coworkers.

Practice with distractions

There’s so much more to nailing your speech than standing in front of a mirror in your bedroom. Once you have your content down, you have to make practicing more challenging with distractions. Turn on the TV to a show you’re actually interested in or cook food and practice at the same time.

Master your body language

Your body language during a speech is nearly as important as the words you say. You have to be comfortable moving and gesturing naturally. C-3PO is cool and all, but you don’t want to look like a robot on stage as your audience might lose interest.

Don’t be so serious

Now, this tip can be a little tricky. If you’re delivering a serious speech to a business audience, you may not want to walk in cracking jokes. However, you also don’t want to give a monotone speech that leaves your coworkers sleeping. Injecting humor can help to keep your audience engaged.

Slow down, but not too slow

Everyone has a tendency to speed up while delivering a speech. Maybe it’s nerves or maybe you just want to get it over with. Either way, it’s important to take a deep breath and slow down. You may not think that you’re hurrying, but your audience may be having trouble keeping up. Think about presentations you’ve been to and how the speaker paced themselves to let the information sink in.

Still want to improve your public speaking?

If you’ve already given these tips to improve your public speaking a try, there are plenty more you can test out too. Public speaking expert TJ Walker has created the Complete Public Speaker Master Class for Every Occasion, and you can learn his methods at a bargain rate via Tech Deals.

The in-depth kit has almost 550 lessons and 29 hours of content to help you improve your public speaking with ease. Over 200 people have already signed up to improve their own abilities. Walker’s learning kit has a retail value of $200, but you can pick it up for just $12.99.

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