Public speaking 101

Within a few seconds of standing in front of an audience, they will size you up and can detect if you are confident, prepared, and comfortable with public speaking. Your body language is a big indicator as to weather or not you are comfortable giving a speech. Another indicator is the tone of your voice. When we are nervous, we tend to stumble over words and our voices go higher. If you learn how to control your nervousness, you will be able to deliver an effective speech.

Preparation is the key to a good speech. If you don't do your research and you don't have a layout for your presentation, your audience will feel it. They will know almost instantly that you are not prepared. Always spend some time writing down what you plan to say and make sure you practice it several times. This is the best way to give a good speech. Get in front of the mirror to practice or you can use a video camera to record yourself and take a look at your body language and nervous language. While the mirror and video camera are great, it helps to do a couple "test runs" in front of a small audience. Gather your family and practice the speech on them. They can give you positive feedback as to what you can improve upon to make the speech better. Here are a few things you need to ask your loved ones to critique:

• Energy level
  
• Interest in your speech, was it engaging and interesting to listen to?
  
• Confidence in what you are saying
  
• Do you have nervous twitches? Shifting your weight from foot to foot, moving your arms a lot, and twirling your hair are just a few common nervous twitches
  

If possible, try to memorize your speech. Looking down and reading your entire speech from paper will disengage your audience and several of them will tune you out almost immediately. You need to be passionate about what you are saying. When you spend some time actually memorizing your speech, people will feel like you are having a conversation with them, this helps them connect with you easier. Use note cards with a few key points written down. This will help you stay on track with your speech. Always practice the speech with the note cards several times so your speech will go smoothly. The last thing you want to do is get off track and start adding in the word "um" while you try to figure out where you are at.

Get comfortable with your surroundings. If you have access to the ballroom or place where you are giving the speech, try to get some time to do a couple dry runs. This allows you to get comfortable on stage. You can also picture all the seats empty like they were in your rehearsal if the audience gives you stage fright.

A good public speaker is prepared and they never apologize or admit their weaknesses. You do not want to give your audience any more fuel to add to their fire. By getting up and starting out with an apology for your impending speech, you have doomed yourself to failure. The audience will automatically have a lower opinion of you and most of them will tune you out.

Finally, make eye contact with your audience. People can tell when you are looking at the clock on the wall or the doors at the back of the room. Look at your audience; show them that you are speaking to them. Depending upon the size of your audience, try to make eye contact with each person for about 3 seconds. Of course this is much harder with a larger audience so you should focus on scanning the audience when you are talking versus singling out people.