Captivate Your Audience's Attention While Public Speaking.

M.G. asks
How can I create a lasting impact?

D.S. ask about
Entertaining the audience and keeping some humor in a speech.

To me, creating a lasting impact involves captivating the audience. Grabbing their attention and getting them to the point where they can't take it away from you. This really is a form of entertainment. Humor is a great way to accomplish this but it isn't the only way. Basically you want to reach the audience through emotion. Getting them to laugh works, but so does anger, empathy, sadness, or a host of other emotions. There are two keys to reaching those emotions and you must have both of them in order for this to work. The two keys are being relevant and telling stories.

Telling stories: You need to tell stories that illustrate your point and reach the emotions that you are trying to get to. But you also need to tell them in a way that allows your audience to live them, feel them, and experience them. That is, you paint a verbal image in the story. You describe key points that will allow the audience to visualize or feel exactly what is happening.

Being Relevant: If your audience can't relate to your story they're not going to feel the emotion. You need to tell them something that fits within their understanding and background. That means you have to know your audience. Before you compose a speech ask yourself what you know about the audience. Think about what is common among them. Are they the general population, or do they work for a particular company, or in a particular industry? What about their nationality, their age range, and their interests. All of this information can help you become more relevant to your audience.

Let’s talk about my audience for a moment. When I write these newsletters I don’t know much about you. I know your name, or at least what you wrote in the name field, and your email address. That’s it.

But wait; there is one other key piece of information. It is the one thing that defines our relationship. You are interested in public speaking. Most likely you also fear it.

By focusing on that piece of information I am able to write articles that will be relevant to you. If I started writing about the social-economic challenges of Edzel Scotland I might or I might not be relevant to you and your interests. Most likely I would lose some of my readers (audience). By staying on track with the information that you have given me I can do my best job at captivating you; my audience.

If your audience doesn’t have the background to understand the story then it’s going to be irrelevant. At that point it is crucial for you to figure out a way to give them enough background so that they can relate.

Use stories that are relevant and pull out the emotions of your audience and you will captivate them.

Next week I will write about some ways to create humor in your speeches.

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Copyright © 2007 David Mudie All Rights Reserved

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