We can all undeniably agree that public speaking isn’t for everyone. Somehow some degree of fear of public speaking has to step in when most of us try to implement it. Only about 10% of the population in the United States can say they enjoy public speaking. Developing your public speaking skills boosts your career and exposes you to opportunities many people may not access.

Getting in front of your audience and confidently presenting can also be a walk in the park. Below you will find expert public speaking practices that can help you achieve that.

The Importance of Strong Public Speaking Skills

Strong public speaking skills differentiate you from others during college and career years. It will boost your confidence levels, and you can confidently take on leadership roles.

Excellent public speaking skills allow you to effectively communicate your thoughts, showcase your experience, and influence others to take action. Your writing and interpersonal communication couldn’t be better with public speaking. You even get to stay organized during the communication process.

You may wonder how great speakers can comfortably speak in front of huge crowds. Some of them started with some significant fear of public speaking. You can overcome this fear too, achieve confidence and enjoy some advantages from excellent public speaking skills.

How to Become a Better Public Speaker

By implementing the following tips, you will gradually enhance your public speaking skills and get more confident in giving speeches and presentations. Some of these best practices include:

Study Great Public Speakers

Observing and learning how exceptional speakers execute their public speaking skills is one of the best ways to improve your skills. You can find great public speakers on YouTube to emulate.

While observing these speakers, you’ll notice that they keep their body language open and inviting. Their arms and hands help them elaborate on their important points. They avoid making small movements while using their space to capture their audience’s attention smartly.

Examine carefully how these speakers pace themselves. They usually take their time while communicating their words purposefully. They also adopt pausing to engage their audience and not rush themselves. Humor and anecdotes may come in handy at some appropriate points of speaking.

You can find and emulate some of the best speakers worldwide from TED talks online and Toastmasters international.

Relax Your Body Language

When fear of public speaking kicks in during public speaking, you become tense and tend to lose control of your body language. Great public speakers manage their body language by having the correct posture, maintaining eye contact with their crowd, and moving naturally.

Good body language helps your audience understand and remember your speech and improves your overall performance. Manage your arms by placing them at your side during the start of your speaking and purposefully making hand gestures to elaborate on some points. Never cross your arms or place your hands in your pockets.

To manage your eyes, never stare down at the ground or your notes for so long. Maintain eye contact with your audience. As you get comfortable with your public speaking skills, you may find yourself making eye contact with individual people from your audience.

Practice Voice and Breath Control

Speaking faster than they normally do is common among some speakers during public speaking. The audience may never understand what is put across. In such a scenario, it’s wise to keep a steady pace while presenting to calm your nerves. With breath control, you can better manage this situation. Breath control involves pushing air in and out of your lungs using your stomach. Alternatively, before you commence your public speech, take ten slow deep breaths.

Prepare Talking Points

Prepare yourself beforehand by having a list of points you will present. Start by outlining 3-6 important messages and several other points that you will use to explain and justify the important messages. Having a sense of what you’re going to talk about will help you deliver your speech in a way that allows your audience to feel, know and understand your perspectives.

Outlining your points in a certain order will help you avoid getting off track during your communication and remember all the key points. The outline should start with what you intend to cover first.

Know Your Audience

Knowing your audience before giving a speech allows you to understand their needs and tailor your communication to them. Their needs involve what they find useful and important or related to them.

How you approach your public speaking will largely depend on the type of event that you’ll be presenting. For example, how you deliver to a group of classmates will differ from how you approach your speech in a formal gala.

Add a Visual Aid

Leverage visual aids such as PowerPoint since it will help you elaborate your ideas while engaging the audience. Ensure that they support your presentation instead of distracting your audience from it.

A good visual aid should feature graphs and images that mirror your ideas. Avoid reading word-to-word from your slides or presenting heavy text, but if you need to add text, use a few brief bullet points.

Rehearse

By practicing, you improve your skills through repetition. Repetition allows you to sharpen your messaging while seeking ways to improve some parts of your presentation. And when you rehearse your speech several times, you naturally feel more relaxed and comfortable presenting anything in front of a crowd.

Record Your Speeches

When you record your public speaking on camera, you can evaluate your body language, listen to your voice, and examine your pacing. Great speakers do that too! It will help you seek ways to improve your public speaking skills.

Phone a Friend

You can have a friend who’s completely honest with you to watch you present. Guide them on what you seek in constructive feedback, and they will be real and honest with you. Tell them what you want to work on, so they can notice it and inform you. For example, you can have them focus on aspects such as your pacing, fidgeting, or delivery in a certain section.

Take a Public Speaking Class

When you take a public speaking class, you gain skills that rapidly better how you speak and present to a crowd. These classes allow you to interact with experts and other peers, and in the process, you gain confidence from your experts, and your peers can support you. You can connect with other students battling with a fear of public speaking.

Go for an online public speaking course if you’re seeking to better your public speaking skills when presenting in virtual sessions. But an in-person class would be suitable for presentations in front of a live audience. Student clubs are the other option where you can practice and improve speaking in front of different audiences.

Consider taking a public speaking class as early as possible. It will help you excel during your school years, and when it’s time to kick-start your career, it will give you an advantage.