As a Public Speaker, Can You Hold Your Audience’s Attention ?

Even if you consider yourself a confident public speaker, one that has no problem speaking in front of an audience or group the question is can you truly reach them? Many public speakers or presenters can get up in front of an audience and blaze right through their prepared speech or presentation, but how did they influence the audience or how effective was their presentation? Most every time someone gives a talk , presentation or speech they are trying to sell or convince or influence people towards a direction and most speakers think they have done their job by merely being the focus point of dispensing their pitch to their captive audience. Just because you as a public speaker just delivered what you thought was a “good presentation” in your mind, and it probably was problem free as far as your nerves and confidence and content were concerned does not mean it was effective and that you had actually reached or connected with your audience.

As a public speaker, the purpose of getting up in front of an audience in almost any situation is to be able to sell your point and most people want to deliver a successful presentation. Being able to reach your audience is an art or science depending on your interpretation and it is done first of all by hooking your audience with the proper title to address and issue with a solution that the audience came to hear. Secondly and equally as important you have to captivate your audience and connect with them. Stories are the best way to connect and build rapport with your audience as a public speaker. Stories have the ability to connect and build trust with the audience, they also build credibility. For example – You tell a story about a horrific automobile accident during a speech to young drivers in a driver’s education class. You start out citing the day and time it happened , who was involved , a little bit about the actual crash and the result of the crash in detail. Most people will be able relate to certain specifics of this accident , maybe they would be familiar the part of town that it happened in , had a brush with the same kind of instance or heard a similar story of an automobile accident. The point here is that you are simply building rapport and credibility with any story you use in your speech or presentation that is the magic formula that gets the audience ‘s attention . You have to be able to relate to your audience in order to influence.

All great leaders and public speakers have the ability to relate to the audience in one way or another. They utilize their ability to draw the audience in to listen to them because they used the psychology to reach their audience by presenting a solution that the audience wants to hear, relating to them with stories that further build rapport and trust. If you do this you will be able to hold your audience’s attention as a public speaker.