Know that public speaking is the number one human fear. So if you have ever been or are a bit nervous about giving presentations in public, realize you are not alone. Most people have the same problem. Continued below is our Top 10 tips to making presenting easy and comfortable for both you and the audience.

Tip No. 6: Delivering visuals

So now you have a nice, clearly designed visual. How do you mechanically deal with that visual? What do you do physically to present it to the audience? Should you look at the visual? Should you talk to the screen? Should you not talk to the screen?

We suggest that you keep the following things in mind when it comes to delivery with visuals: As soon as your visual is presented on the screen, whether it be from a laptop, or from a slide projector, or even from an overhead projector, your audience will immediately focus one hundred per cent of their attention on the screen.

So you effectively disappear from the room. You vaporize. You could drop your pants, you can blow your nose – it doesn’t matter, because until everyone in the audience has figured out for themselves exactly what all that information means, you’re effectively not there.

Tip No. 7: Effects

Keep in mind: if there are too many bells and whistles, if there is too much movement, if there are too many sounds, if there are too many things going on, people will be more interested in figuring out how to do that with their own presentations then they will be in the actual knowledge you are presenting.

And that’s if your dramatic appliqués are good. Most of the time, effects just add confusion, or worse yet, disconnection. Make sure that your message is more important and of value to the audience than the design features of your presentation.

Tip No. 8: Pointers

We still see some people using the old wooden pointer. We have seen people actually snap that wooden pointer in half. We have also seen people play collapsible pointers like an accordion. The point is, you don’t need a pointer.

An effectively designed and delivered presentation eliminates the need for pointers of any kind. Your data should call attention to themselves. Laser pointers seem to be very popular these days, but very rarely does anybody in the audience like them. In fact, they are pretty annoying to most people and even a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon can’t hold those things still.

Tip No. 9: Hardware

One of the things that you definitely want to make sure is that you show up early to your presentation. Make sure all of the equipment is in working order, the overhead projector, the laptop whatever it is you are using. Check everything out yourself. Just because the banquet manager came in ten minutes ago and told you everything was working last night doesn’t mean it is actually going to work.

We can’t tell you how many times, and we’ve traveled everywhere from India to Indiana teaching seminars, somebody told us something was working, and it did not.

So for that reason you have to show up early and make sure everything is working. Make sure that you can actually work it. Make sure that you actually see it working. It is up to you and it is your responsibility because when you start your presentation you can’t say say, “Well you know, somebody in the banquet department told me just a few minutes ago that this was working.” Don’t be embarrassed. Don’t be caught off guard.

Tip No. 10: The Q&A process

This process can be very, very difficult because when you are making a presentation, you are in essence in control. You have designed that presentation. You have created some excellent visuals. You know your presentation well enough to know what’s coming next.

The problem with Q&A is that it is the unknown. You don’t know what is going to happen. Somebody can throw you a question out of left field. Perhaps someone can make you look bad. There is so many unknowns that we need a system to be able to deal with that unknown, and be sure that you look good in the process.

One of the first things you need to know is what to do when somebody asks you a negative question. Many of us were taught to repeat the question back to the questioner. Do you suppose there might be something else we could do other then repeat a negative question? If you repeat that negative question, what are you doing? You are in essence confirming that it might be true.

Now actually repeating a question is not always a bad idea. It gives you time to think. It gives the rest of the audience a chance to hear what the question is. But if the question imparts a negative, there is another way.

Instead of repeating the question verbatim, try this: Listen closely to the question so that you are hearing not just the words, but the essence of the question. Ask yourself what is at the kernel of the question when all the negative, inaccurate, untrue or personal agenda items are stripped away. Then rephrase the question around that kernel, signaling to the audience that you are actually searching deeper into the topic that the questioner did!

Because Q&A typically is the last thing that happens in a presentation, it is so important and vital you end on a positive note. We can’t tell you how many times a presentation which started off well didn’t end that way, because it all fell apart in Q&A.

About the Author

J. Douglas Jefferys is a principal at PublicSpeakingSkills.com, an international consulting firm specializing in training businesses of all sizes to communicate for maximum efficiency. The firm spreads its unique knowledge through on-site classes, public seminars, and high-impact videos, and can be reached through the Internet or at 888-663-7711.

Know that public speaking is the number one human fear. So if you have ever been or are a bit nervous about giving presentations in public, realize you are not alone. Most people have the same problem.

In a survey from the Book of Lists, people were asked, “What are you most afraid of?” Public speaking was the number one answer. In fact, fear of death was sixth on the list. In other words, you are not alone.

So we congratulate you on taking the first step to improving yourself in this area. Let’s talk about the Ten Tips and how they can begin to help you right away.

Tip No. 1: Eye contact.

When the majority of people are up in front of a group they start their physical activity by rapidly scanning the room with their eyes. They spray the audience with their vision. Look: adrenaline is already shooting through your body, you’re anxious and nervous. Spraying the room with your “aerosol eyes” simply compounds the problem. It makes it worse. Very quickly your brain becomes overwhelmed with all of this visual input: different faces, different colors, different clothes, different countenances.

What you need to do is find an anchor and to lock in on one individuals eyes. You need to slow down, get your bearings. You will then have a chance to channel your nervous energy.

In other words: look at just one person, look at their eyes, speak to one person at a time. Then pause, and find the next individual. Instead of speaking to a group… have a series of one-on-one conversations with the individual members of the audience. And if your eyes aren’t locked, your jaw must be!

Tip No. 2: Gesturing:

What do you do with your arms, your hands or your feet and the rest of you body? Typically men put their hands in their pockets. We often see the fig leaf position, or the ‘phone booth’, in which presenters hug themselves with both arms.

You will also see people do all kinds of nervous fidgeting with their hands, with their arms. They really don’t know what to do. What we suggest is that you do use your arms and hands, but that you use gestures to specifically emphasize the things that you are talking about.

If you are speaking about a big opportunity, let’s see how big that opportunity is. If you are speaking about an increase, let’s make sure that your gesture reflects that specific increase by its altitude from the floor.

Use emphatic gestures and use gestures to describe things. Then when you are not using your arms or there is no need to, simply allow them to drop naturally to the side into what we term the neutral position.

Tip No. 3: Inflection and volume

Have you ever been to presentation where the presenter spoke in a monotone, “It’s- great-to-see-everybody-Thank-you-very-much-for-coming-today-I-have-some-exciting-news-for-you.” BOOOORING!

You want to increase your volume, and increase your voice inflection, which means the variance in the pitch or the tone of your voice. It is more interesting, more exciting to listen to a presenter that has passion and feeling in their voice. Speak to your audience with belief and you will soon see they will share that belief.

Tip No. 4: Humor and jokes

We receive a lot of questions about this. “Should I start with a joke?” Should I loosen things up with some humor in the beginning?”

Let me ask you…How many people do you know who can actually come into a room full of strangers and pull off a joke? It is what we call a Break Even / Lose proposition. If it works you haven’t gained much: if it doesn’t work you can lose your audience for the entire presentation. It’s risky business.

It’s a high stakes gamble. We suggest if you like using humor, feel out your audience first. If you feel humor might be appropriate, use humor. But using humor up front can be very, very difficult. You are at your highest state of nervousness, your audience is sizing you up and remember first impressions last forever. Many audiences feel that using humor or jokes in business signals you are not taking them seriously.

The type of humor that is most effective is self deprecation. Make fun of yourself. We are not suggesting you call yourself an idiot or the audience may say to themselves “He sure is” and you’ve lost them. Just don’t take yourself so seriously. A lot of times we will joke about the fact that our writing isn’t that good or my ability to draw is awful. Typically if people have been with us in a two day seminar, they already know that. So go ahead and make fun of yourself. It is a safe form of humor to use.

Tip No. 5: Designing visuals

How many times have you been to a presentation where the presenter is literally confused by her own visual? They look up at the screen and they say, “Well what you have here is, well, gee, I’m not sure, well what I meant is…” – what is that presenter doing? They are essentially saying that they haven’t taken the time to simplify and become familiar with their own visuals and now they expect you to look at it and understand it.

The point is to keep your visuals simple in design. You don’t want an unsolved mystery up on the screen. Make sure that it is very clear and keep in mind that people read from top to bottom and left to right. Design your visuals to be read that way.

Make those visuals easy to understand. Your talk doesn’t need to be simple, but the visuals you use to cue your audience to hear what you’re saying do.

About the Author

J. Douglas Jefferys is a principal at PublicSpeakingSkills.com, an international consulting firm specializing in training businesses of all sizes to communicate for maximum efficiency. The firm spreads its unique knowledge through on-site classes, public seminars, and high-impact videos, and can be reached through the Internet or at 888-663-7711.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Colette_Morris

So you’ve got to give a speech in public? Once your stomach stops churning, here are some public speaking tips that should make your job easier.

1. Outline your speech Write out what you are going to talk about. Your outline should cover all the points you want to make in your speech. Ideally in a reasonably logical order.

2. Make notes One of the easiest ways is to use old-fashioned 3×5 index cards. Each one should have a bullet point on it that you can expand on. If you’re using a PowerPoint slide show then this should give you the basis for your notes.

3. Practice your presentation Stand in front of a mirror and practice your speech. If you’re likely to be embarrassed, do this while no-one else is at home. Speaking out loud is a necessary part of this practice. Sure, it may be uncomfortable the first few times you try it but you’ll get better as you go along. Note where you stumble – this gives you pointers for where you need to change your speech slightly.

4. Talk to one person It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking in a business meeting with one other person or addressing hundreds or even thousands of people. Talk as though you are talking face to face with one person. Apart from anything else, you’ve done this all your life so it should be easier. If you’ve got a large audience, focus on one person and talk to them.

5. Stay away from humor Unless you’re a renowned after dinner speaker, humor is best left out of your speech. Not everyone shares the same sense of humor – otherwise Friends and South Park wouldn’t both still be on air – so keep it out of your presentation.

6. Don’t fidget If you’ve got a podium then there’s a natural place to put your hands. If you haven’t, be aware of what your doing with your hands and don’t fidget with them or gesture too much. Fidgeting makes you look nervous!

7. If you stumble, carry on Most of your audience will be relieved that it’s not them giving the speech. If you stumble, recover as fast as you can. Do your best not to get flustered and make sure you keep your place in your speech so you can recover from any glitches quickly.

8. Keep it short Unless you’ve been told that you absolutely have to speak for a set amount of time, stick to the idea that less is more. Don’t bore your audience. Ideally they should be wanting more when you’ve finished your set speech.

9. Don’t resort to alcohol Tempting as it may be to have a shot of something before you take to the stage, it’s better to be 100% sober and in control.

10. Ignore distractions Unless the fire alarm has just sounded and you all need to leave the building, keep going! Keep your speech going as planned. Don’t panic if one or two of your audience walk out – they may just have had an urgent message or need to answer a call of nature. And make sure your cell phone is turned off as well!

About the Author

Get more public speaking tips and lots of useful public speaking strategies to make your next speech memorable.

7 Tips to Improve your Public Speaking

We all have to speak in public one time or another, and according to some (somewhat doubtful) research, public speaking is the number one fear of most people. However, with some preparation, mostly anyone can do a pretty good job at it. There isn’t as much magic to public speaking as some make it seem. By implementing the following 7 Tips anyone can come across as a pretty good speaker. You don’t believe me??? Try it!

1. Dress for success! While this might seem an obvious one, I regularly encounter speakers who majorly underdress or (some) overdress. The thumb of rule is, of course, better be overdressed than underdressed. Your audience wants to look up to you and good “packaging” will enhance your image tremendously. When unsure, contact the event organizer and find out what is the expected attire for speakers.

2. Develop a great intro and closing and practice them till you can say them forward and backward even in your dreams! There are only few things screaming “I’m not a professional” than someone starting their presentation with excuses or some weak mumbo-jumbo. Start your presentation with a quote, an intriguing question, humor, or a short story, or even magic; then link your intro to the topic of the day. Close your presentation by bringing up elements of your intro and build to a strong finish to elicit your well-deserved applause. One of my favorite techniques is the short suspense story that captivates the audience, then without finishing it, link it to the topic of the day. Then as a closing of the presentation, bring up again the suspense story, make a comparison to the topic again, and this time finish it.

3. Notice your tendency to use “Ah’s,” Mmm’s” and other fillers in your presentation! It can become really annoying when a speaker is uncomfortable with pauses in between sentences or while thinking, and fills those gaps with “Ahhh..,” “Mmm.,” or other sounds. Another, almost equally, annoying fillers are the constantly repeated “You know what I mean,” “You see what I’m saying,” and other constantly repeated fillers. There are two good ways to raise your awareness about these fillers: a) record one (or more) of your presentation(s) and listen with an ear for filers; b) Join your local Toastmasters International club – they are really good about helping you break your filler habits. (I had around 60 “Ahh’s” and “Mmmm’s” in my first speech I delivered at Toastmasters. By the time I gave my 7th or 8th speech I had zero fillers.) Once you are aware of your tendencies of using certain fillers, you can consciously take steps to eliminating them.

4. Don’t overwhelm your audience with too much information! Do you want your audiences to leave with a sense of “This was great! Today I learned something?” Then narrow down the information you want to present in a way that will not overwhelm your audience. Ask yourself “What is it that the audience really needs to know about this topic?” Then break down that info into chunks that will fit the length of your presentation. At the end of your presentation give your audience information on how they can learn more about the topic – hopefully, by buying your book(s), tapes, CD, extended course, etc.

5. Build your presentation in an easy to follow format! Whether you are using PowerPoint, flip chart, or other methods to stay on track and to keep your audiences on track, make sure that you tell them in the introduction what points you will cover, then stick to the “plan” as close as possible. An easy way to accomplish this is by giving out handouts where participants can follow your train of thought. One of the most effective ways would be to have the main points spelled out on the handout, then have some fill-in-the-blanks fragments relating to each particular point.

6. Time yourself! When you practice, time each segment of your presentation and prepare a little cheat sheet (a 2 X 4 card, for example) that you will keep in your sight while you speak, right near a timer or watch. With this little “tool” you’ll always know whether you are on track. If you are running out of time, speed up or skip parts of your presentation and conclude with your rehearsed closing.

7. Keep eye contact! One of the biggest difficulties of novice public speakers is keeping eye contact with the audience. However, this is a very crucial element to come across as a great speaker. When a speaker keeps looking above the audiences head, the ceiling, the floor, etc., after a while the audience starts wandering “Who the heck is this guy talking to?” The easiest method to keeping good eye contact with your audience is by finding one smiling or friendly face and keep eye contact most of the time with that person… Then as the presentation moves on, start making eye contact (for a second or two) with some other audience members, but always returning to your smiling/friendly face. Then once you find another encouraging audience member, start keeping eye contact for some time period with this second person, while also wandering away to make eye contact with other audience members for a second or two. By following this method, usually one finds themselves more and more encouraged and the confidence gained that way will result in an easier flow of the message and more and more audience members will become engaged and be transformed into “friendly and smiling” faces.

……

Public speaking can be one of the most rewarding experiences. When applying the above 7 tips should make it more enjoyable for anyone, including your audiences who definitely do not want to see a speaker fail, mumble, talk to the walls, etc. People listen to a speaker to learn something or to get entertained; so follow the above tips and give your audience the great presentation they deserve.

————————————————————————————— © Copyright E.G. Sebastian, 2007. All rights reserved.

To hire E.G. to provide Public Speaking/Presentation Skills training – for groups or for individuals – call him toll-free at 877.379.3793, or contact him by E-mail at info@egsebastian.com.

E.G. Sebastian is an international speaker (speaks 6 languages), Certified DiSC Behavioral System trainer, and is an Authorized Inscape Distributor.