Contents
Public Speaking Basics
How to Prepare Your Presentation
How to Select and Present Content
Overall Organizational Structure
Body Structures
Presentational Aids
Delivery
How to Practice Your Speech
How to Take Questions from the Audience
Common Public Speaking Problems and Solutions
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How to Select and Present Content
No speech or presentation can succeed without well-selected, well-organized content.
How to Select Content
To get your audience’s attention and ensure that they follow your train of thought throughout your presentation, you need to select content carefully. Selecting content is particularly challenging if you have only a few minutes to present. Here are some tips that will help:
- Let one major theme dominate your presentation: The theme of your presentation is not your thesis but, rather, an overarching emotional idea associated with the subject that keeps both you and your audience connected to the speech. Everything that you present—even your visuals and jokes—should revolve around this theme. For example, if you’re giving a presentation on solar power, you might want to make your presentation in a room that has a lot of natural light.
- Make no more than five main points: Assume that your audience won’t be able to remember more than five points. Use short, powerful, memorable statements to introduce these main points.
- Present only a fraction of what you know: You should know more than your audience does. Include only those details that people absolutely need to know.
How to Present Content
The way you present your content is just as crucial to the success of your speech as the content itself. Try the following techniques:
Episodes
Present your content in five- to six-minute chunks, like news stories or music videos. Use each chunk to highlight a specific point and then move on.
Transitions
Make powerful and seamless transitions with strong leading words. Try to reengage your audience for each new point.
Evidence to Support Your Content
Well-selected evidence can help you establish credibility with your audience, especially if they are skeptical.
- Facts, figures, and statistics: Include useful facts and figures, but not too many, or your audience will start tuning them out.
- Authoritative sources: Use their credibility to bolster yours.
- Quotations: Use famous or lesser-known quotations to support your theme.
- Narratives: An audience usually will listen to a story.
- Definitions: If you want to highlight certain words, draw from the dictionary or from etymologies.
Humor
Humor can be a powerful presentation tool: it can build affinity with your audience, wake them up, and grab attention. Be very careful with humor, though—no technique can backfire more severely than humor. Always avoid:
- Jokes that make fun of your audience
- Off-color jokes
- Too much self-deprecation
If you want to include humor in your presentation, keep it simple, straightforward, and based on your particular skills. If you can’t tell a good story or an appropriate joke, don’t.
Other Presentation Techniques
Depending on your subject matter, one or more of the following additional techniques might help you engage your audience.
- Draw on current events: If possible, explore your topic through the lens of current events. This technique can make your topic seem more relevant, which will help your audience identify with the material.
- Humanize the information: Personal stories and opinions are usually more memorable than straight recitation of facts.
- Engage in a short brainstorm with your listeners: Posing nonthreatening, yes-or-no questions to your audience will help connect them to your content.
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