You're gearing up for a public speaking event. How can you ensure you deliver a powerful presentation?

One thing I have found helpful is giving your personal experience/ example that adds value to the knowledge as your audience will predominantly be moved by emotion. There has to be synergy between the knowledge facts and your personal experience.

Over the years I have found that showing passion for what I'm speaking to the group about often helps catch their attention. Know your stuff, believe in what you're saying and try to encourage listeners to engage with you in different ways. Visual aids are great, but I think that if you can't connect with the audience, it doesn't matter how wonderful your visual are :)

Try to ban visuals. It's useless and distracting. Most of the time. And spend some time ahead of the event on why you are presenting. Then share that "why" with the audience. Building and structuring your key messages are the only success factors for your engagement. Mastering non verbal comm is a plus but not a must. I remember memorable speeches from people who were nervous and made multiple non verbal communications mistakes but, yet, I remember what they said. Because they were confident on why they would get me interested in what they were saying.

My approach is straightforward: avoid using PowerPoint unless it is essential and directly relevant. If you do use it, try to keep the number of slides to a minimum, as excessive use can hinder eye contact with the audience. Secondly, whenever the topic allows, incorporate as many examples as possible into your lecture. Lastly, always prioritize the audience. Encourage their participation by inviting questions and welcoming their viewpoints.

Here are five tips to make your public speaking more powerful than a double shot of espresso! Channel Your Inner Superhero: Imagine you're Iron Man or Wonder Woman on a mission. Confidence levels skyrocketing? Check! Power Pose Pep Talk: Strike a Wonder Woman pose before stepping on stage. Science says it boosts confidence. Just avoid doing it mid-speech! Storytime Magic: Weave in a gripping tale. Make them laugh, cry, or gasp. Even data looks better with a side of drama. Cue Card Charades: Use quirky symbols on your cue cards instead of words. It'll keep you engaged and add mystery to your speech. Audience High-5: Start with a surprise high-five or fist bump. Instant connection and energy boost!

Early in my speaking career I made the mistake of telling stories that failed to relate to my audience. Someone told me - tell stories, so that is what I did. What I failed to do was make the stories relevant to the problem the audience was looking to solve. The more you can connect to the specific pain your audience is experiencing and how you can solve that pain or problem the more impact your message will have. Do your homework before creating your presentation.

Remember to create key phrases for EVERY audience that may listen to your talk: the folks attending, future social media viewers, industry elite, students, etc. Rather than making everything general, have key points of hyper specificity. (Think about how Taylor Swift's music works.)

Work the crowd by making eye contact early...find the smiling faces or those who look interested in you. Make verbal contact.. warm up the crowd....make small talk.. then when you 'go onstage' you will be relaxed and powerful since you have already picked out the people you will look at as you start your program.

High quality content is of course key but don’t underestimate the value of a relaxed, confident presentation style. Be sure you understand what “take a deep breath” really means so that you don’t end up inadvertently fueling any jitters instead of calming them.

One thing I’ve found extremely helpful is what I like to call “Radical Relevancy”. The content needs to be radically relevant to your audience and if you focus on that, you'll have a powerful and memorable speech. A few ways to do this include: - having a deep understanding of your audience’s needs, desires and challenges. - relevant stories and case studies - clear and concise messaging

I love sharing my insights on stage! To make my talks more memorable and engaging, I like coming up with clever acronyms. By condensing complex ideas into memorable phrases, I help listeners retain information and key points. Feel free to connect so we can exchange tips on how to make your message stick!

If you can weave a gripping story around your content, the audience will listen and as with stories, they will remember. It exemplifies your creativity and adds the touch of uniqueness.

Share your stories. People are more captivated by a story than they are about ideas. Craft your messages about your ideas utilizing your stories. Have the audience live your ideas through your own life. More people go to movies than they do lectures. Captivate them using your own experiences.

Speaking engagements allow me to use my voice and expertise. I aim to educate, inspire, and motivate, ensuring the audience leaves enriched and empowered. To achieve this, I use: SINGLE CORE MESSAGE: Identify one central theme that encompasses my entire presentation. I ensure that each section of my talk reinforces this underlying theme. THE POWER OF VISUALS: I use fewer words and more visuals. They say a picture is with a thousand words, right? The same holds true when delivering a speech. TELL A STORY: Great storytelling is a must. I use a narrative with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Incorporate personal anecdotes to illustrate key points. Make your speech come alive using vivid descriptions and details that engage all senses.

To deliver a powerful presentation with visual aids, ensure they enhance rather than distract from your message. Use visuals strategically to reinforce key points or illustrate complex ideas. For example, in a sales pitch, use infographics to display market data succinctly, helping the audience grasp trends. Ensure visuals are clear, uncluttered, and relevant, supporting rather than replacing your verbal communication. Practice with the aids to seamlessly integrate them into your speech, maintaining eye contact and engagement while guiding the audience through the content. This approach ensures your visuals amplify your message, making your presentation more compelling and memorable.

It is very easy to get lost in power point. The more you use storytelling, the less danger from that. To train yourself on that, consider using Prezi, rather than PPT. And even better, use props - the best visuals that you may have. Toastmasters is a great place to learn these skills. Even if you do not join, watch the speeches of the world champions of public speaking - this is a great way to learn how to use props effectively, and much more.

Only use visual aids if the "aid" what you're saying. Don't give your audience reason to look away from you, except if absolutely necessary.

Visual aids are good, clean slides that move the audience along the journey you've designed. YOU are a visual aid, so make sure to use space and body to capture and keep attention. The best tip I use is to pretend you've just swallowed the sun. Keeps you bright.

Don't rehearse relentlessly. Know your story - but don't obsess over hitting every point perfectly. This just makes things more stressful. Instead, identify a few key points you need to nail. Be flexible with the rest so you can adapt to your audience. Do the work. Tell your story. Be yourself.

Consider rehearsing with a trusted peer, mentor, manager, and/or loved one. Ask for their candid input on your stage presence (e.g., body language, vocal projection, pacing, etc). Where possible, consider the input of someone who isn’t close to the topic; ask for their feedback on whether your material is clear to understand, even without a ton of context. Finally, consider audio/video recording your practice sessions, and watch them back to critique and improve based on your own perspective and subject-matter expertise.

1. Speak slowly, clearly, and mindfully. 2. Don't use fillers or mindlessly talk to fill the gaps. 3. Use examples to illustrate your points. 4. Rule of 3 - 3 points per topic. 5. Eye contact with your audience. 6. Light humor. Helps retain audience interest.

I'm in favor of rehearsing, both by yourself (my cat listened to my last presentation 50 times) as well as peers and friends. I took their feedback and rolled it back in to changes. Sometimes you will be heavily challenged, and you need to know that. Most of us are not complete naturals, can't wing it, don't have incredible memories, so the better you know the material the better it will flow into a better presentation. Athletes taper before major meets, but there's plenty of hard practices beforehand.

"Success lies in preparation." Treat rehearsal as a critical part of your presentation strategy. Go beyond mere repetition—analyze your tone, pace, and body language to fine-tune your delivery. Use varied rehearsal methods like recording yourself or performing in front of a trusted friend to gain diverse perspectives. This approach transforms preparation from a routine task into a strategic advantage, ensuring you deliver with confidence and clarity.

Manage your nerves by being prepared. However, this preparation does not include "relentless rehearsing." When you over rehearse, you sound over rehearsed. Also, when you over rehearse, you constrain yourself to presenting exactly what we rehearsed. Therefore, if you make a mistake or forget something during the presentation, that nervous energy, anxiety, and fear will kick in. And because you have not created room in your preparation for improvisation, you will likely freeze, fumble over your words, get flustered, and not present as powerfully.

I work on the assumption that there's always an element of the unexpected and that not all the things I want to say will be. So I save myself stress by thinking in advance about what I'm going to "forget" to say. So I don't put so much pressure on myself to make sure my speech is perfect.

The comedian Bill Hader - who performed live on SNL for years - suffers from terrible nerves, and has said it's amazing he ever became a comedian at all, let alone on a live show. The way he handled his anxiety was, he expected it to come, every time. He would visualize it as a little monster that would sit on his shoulder. When he got nervous, in his mind he'd be like, "Oh, hi, there you are." However you do your own version of this, the key is to get rid of the sense of failure or weakness or fear you feel in the moment when you start feeling nervous, and understanding that those feelings are distinct from feeling of being nervous in itself.

One of the most difficult things one could manage is nerves! I saw once in a movie the trick a "congressman" gave to a child, which has actually worked for me a lot: "keep a paper clip in your hands, it'll make you drain the nerves of speaking in public." I constantly do it when I have to be in front of a tough audience, specially at work. People may say you don't seem nervous if you can conduct yourself without any inconvenience or disruption in your speech.

If you're feeling nervous that means you care, it's a good thing. Realize that people want to hear your voice, your voice is unique and special and deserves to be heard and... Realize although you are delivering the information, it's not about you. You're in a safe space and you're sharing knowledge and perspective that other people want/ need to hear.

We are who we image ourselves to be. So imagine yourself being confident, poised, and connected while doing your speech. Then lean into that feeling, and do this exercise daily. Your mind doesn't care if an experience is real or imagined, so rehearing your feelings during the talk is actually more effective than rehearsing the presentation itself.

Tell a story. Show vulnerability. No canned speech, pour your heart in it. Open with a question, show how questions are an art form, make people at ease with questions.

One thing that never fails: Be Yourself! Time and again, my most impactful presentations were those in which my authentic curiosity, passion, knowledge guided me throughout the process. When planning, creating, editing and ESPECIALLY delivering material that was conceived with a true sense of purpose and personal conviction - the rest comes naturally. This is more challenging if you are not responsible for choosing the topic or format, such as work assignments outside the area of expertise. However with a little imagination, it is likely you can find a uniquely individual way to bring perspective that resonates with any audience if you focus on showing up with your authencity on your sleeve (and face).

Public speaking is a conversation more than anything. If you can have live voting, either by raised hands, dropping responses in a chat, or a software like poll everywhere, you should engage people and shift what you say based on live feedback. Some examples are to gain a baseline for preexisting knowledge in the room, assess the interest in different things you could share, and emphasize those points based on the response. If there is a lack of engagement, emphasize what’s important and don’t waste anyone’s time.

Are you clear why they asked you there? Are the participants clear why you are there? Are you clear why YOU are there? Authenticity and relatable go a long way!