SHUT UP, YOU SOUND STUPID! KEYS OF MESSAGING

How good are you at conveying information to others? One of the keys to success is effective communication. Here are some pointers to help you deliver your messages more effectively:

1. Speak with a powerful, mature voice:

Speaking with a full breath of air gives you a voice that can be heard, whereas speaking with a full breath of air slightly lowers your voice. Your agent will now have a confident and knowledgeable tone to it.

2. Take a firm stand:

You can take a full breath and show confidence with good posture. Even if you don't feel confident, stand tall with your shoulders back and tell yourself, "I can do it!".

3. Smile:

Smiling makes you feel better, adds vitality to your voice, and shows your audience that you enjoy the topic of your presentation. Smiling engages the audience. Make an effort to smile at other speakers and express your support.

4. Do not speak up:

Use confident phrases with a falling inflection to deliver your message. Falling inflection occurs when we begin a sentence with a slightly higher pitch and gradually lower it throughout the sentence. When we speak with a rising inflection pattern, a questioning inflection when making statements, we seem worried about our subject. Remember, you're the authority on your subject! Present your knowledge with ideas that have a confident, dropping tone.

5. Underline your main point:

Use vocal variations such as volume, pitch, and tempo. When you vary your voice, it is easier for your listener to understand you.

6. Don't ramble:

Before you speak, plan out what you're going to say in your head (or on paper). Be short and to the point.

7. Pay attention to your nonverbal communication:

Are you making good gestures and using suitable body language?

8. Outline what you believe their viewpoint is:

Before answering your point of view when disagreeing with someone, outline what you think their perspective is. Don't answer without first making sure you comprehend what they're saying.

9. Concentrate on communicating your vision rather than focusing on the underlying issue.

People want to hear things that are upbeat and encouraging. They desire optimism, hope, and faith. They're looking for the art of possibility. Give them fantasy or vision of how life could be if we only took action or changed our habits. Organize individuals around a shared goal.

10. Tell stories to elicit inspiration and support for your message:

I, like everyone else, enjoy a revealing or surprising statistic, but a list of data without context or stories becomes meaningless and boring. People are persuaded, and their behavior changes by appealing to their hearts, not their heads.

11. Focus on ONE concept rather than a laundry list of them:

It's tempting to consider every possibility. A laundry list of options or solutions, on the other hand, isn't memorable. The importance of repetition and reinforcement of a notion cannot be overstated, yet this cannot be accomplished if the topic is changed every few minutes. A great concept must be adequately conceived and grounded before being expanded. The audience has to feel like the message is growing, gathering momentum, and heading someplace; therefore, the commentary can't seem random.

12. Make it simple for people to distribute your message:

People can become so engrossed in their subject (or their passion) that they lose the ability to provide a clear message about it. It's a typical case of missing the forest for the trees. Jargon and specialized terms have no place in a general-interest message, and the most inspiring presenters are those who can make their topic interesting to anyone and shareable by anyone. Keep your head out of the weeds and concentrate on the fantastic takeaway idea you want people to remember long after you've left the stage. (Can you explain how each component of what you say supports that one idea?)

13. Don't let the visuals take over or become the primary source of entertainment:

Visuals, of course, should not be a distraction. The focus should always be on the speaker, and the visuals should either support, illustrate, or accentuate a point made by the speaker. There shouldn't be so many slides that none of them are worth showing for more than a few seconds, and no slides should convey a message that contradicts what the speaker is saying. The name of the game is reinforcement.