As a motivational speaker, you want to deliver powerful messages that inspire and persuade your audience. But how can you craft speeches that resonate with your niche and showcase your expertise? In this article, you will learn six steps to create impactful speeches for your niche, from identifying your ideal audience to refining your delivery.
The first step to create impactful speeches for your niche is to know who your niche is. Your niche is the specific group of people who share a common problem, goal, or interest that you can help them with. You need to research your niche and understand their needs, challenges, desires, and preferences. This will help you tailor your content, tone, and style to suit them and make them feel like you are speaking directly to them.
When ive given talks in the past, i think about the audience (the niche). What would they like to know? What actions would they like to take after attending my talk? And then, reverse engineer what their needs are. And ensure each slide builds to solving their problem.
The next step is to choose a topic that is relevant, valuable, and interesting for your niche. Your topic should reflect your niche's pain points, aspirations, or questions, and offer a solution, a benefit, or an insight that they can apply to their situation. You should also choose a topic that showcases your unique perspective, experience, or knowledge, and that sets you apart from other speakers in your field.
Interesting ways to come up with topics: - Chatgpt - Reddit groups - Google Trends - mini-surveys of the audience (e.g. using a Linkedin Poll) The more you can understand what is of interest to them, you can shape your talk to help them as much as possible
Once you have your topic, you need to craft your message. Your message is the main idea or takeaway that you want your audience to remember and act on after listening to your speech. You should be able to summarize your message in one sentence that captures the essence of your speech. Your message should also be clear, concise, and compelling, and appeal to your niche's emotions, logic, or values.
I've found that when i stopped treating my talks as a data dump, rather as a catalyst to change someone, I saw success. Too often as speakers we get trapped into this notion of including all that we learnt along the way. Instead, keep it simple, keep it focused on how the person can be changed by attending your talk. Focus on them, not on you!
The next step is to structure your speech in a way that supports your message and engages your audience. A simple and effective structure for a motivational speech is to begin with an attention-grabbing hook, such as a story, a question, a quote, or a statistic. Then, introduce yourself and your topic to establish credibility and rapport with your niche. Preview the main points you will cover and then develop them with evidence, examples, stories, or anecdotes that illustrate your message and connect with your niche. Use transitions to link your points and create a logical flow, as well as repetition, contrast, or parallelism to emphasize your message and make it memorable. To conclude, summarize your message and the main points of your speech. End with a call to action that motivates your audience to take the next step or implement what they learned from your speech. Leave a lasting impression with a memorable closing statement such as a quote, a challenge, a question, or a vision.
The next step is to polish your language and make it suitable for your niche and your speech. You should use simple, clear, and direct language that is easy to understand and follow. You should also use powerful words that convey emotion, urgency, or authority, and avoid weak words that dilute your message or create confusion. You should also use rhetorical devices, such as metaphors, analogies, or anecdotes, to make your speech more vivid, engaging, and persuasive.
I typically run any of my talks into software that rates the level of language used. I keep it as simple as possible, like i am talking to a 10 year old. This way, the person can focus on your ideas and how they can change their lives. They should not spend energy on understanding academic or fancy words that dont help them.
The final step is to refine your delivery and make it effective and confident. You should practice your speech aloud and record yourself to check your voice, pace, tone, and pauses. You should also use gestures, eye contact, facial expressions, and body language to enhance your speech and connect with your audience. You should also prepare for possible questions, feedback, or objections from your niche and have ready answers or solutions. You should also be flexible and adaptable to adjust your speech according to the situation, the mood, or the response of your audience.
Ensure that after every talk, that audience members are sent a survey. Include open-ended questions like: what did you like about the talk or speaker? what do you wish the talk discussed more of? what do you wish the speaker did differently? and then act on this feedback!