Public Speaking & Audience Participation

To become a successful public speaker, you need to get your audience feel connected to your speech. However, unless you know a few tips, you may feel lost about how to do it. The first thing to do is maintaining proper eye contact with members of the audience. Since you can’t do eye contact with everyone present in the seminar hall, it’s better if you locate your cheerleaders and maintain eye contact with them. You can find your cheerleaders by reading their body language. These are people who are nodding to your speech, have a smile on their face or are leaning forward and showing interest in your presentation. Once you have found your cheerleaders, look into their eyes as you speak. You can take rounds looking into the eyes of every cheerleader, or stay with a particular one while telling a story and move onto the next one after you begin talking about a new point. Once you connect with your cheerleaders, you will soon find that the audience is taking interest in your speech, as if you are talking with each of them on a personal level.

After the first connection is made, try to encourage audience participation by asking them questions or getting them to answer the queries that someone in the audience has asked. Doing this will not only encourage the people to have fun and listen to you with more interest, but will also give you the time to plan your next move. However, don’t let these Q&A sessions stretch for too long. Tell the audience that you will resume your presentation and that they may ask questions at the end of the session or send you emails. Asking your audience to send emails is a great way to get them on your mailing list.

So, do all your homework that’s necessary to get your audience involved in your public speaking speech.