HOW TO CAPTURE THE AUDIENCE ATTENTION IN THE FIRST SECONDS OF YOUR SPEECH
The biggest fear of public
speaking is what would my audience say? What happens if they are not interested?
Capturing the audience attention is challenging, and from the onset is
daunting. But if you can do it, you will be hooked on to public speaking. In
today’s fast world, especially with so much portable gizmos, the speaker has to
grab the audience attention from the word go or they may start doing other
thing. Here’s some tips of capturing the
audience attention from the word go.
Get acclimatised: Join the crowd before the presentation. The
last few minutes is not for going through you notes but mingling with them. This
helps you to get rapport with the future audience, know them. This may help you
to tweak your speech at the last minute to suit their needs. Moreover it will
help you to be at ease in the presentation, by having some familiar faces in
the audience. When you stand up to speak, first smile, look around the room and
make eye contact with some of your audience. A smile can instantly relax you
and everyone else in the room.
Catchy
Title and opening: The title is your audience’s first exposure to your
speech. It potentially will appear in an event program or agenda. It will be
used when you are introduced and welcomed on the podium. It is the “Tag Line”
for your speech and provides a first opportunity to influence and warm up your
audience. It is your first (and perhaps only) chance to market your speech. A
compelling title which invokes curiosity has a potentiality to attract a large
audience.
Humour: Add some humor in the first few moments if you can. Adding humour is the
best communication skills one can have in their arsenal. Not all talks call for
humour, but if it's appropriate, some funny talk will help you to relax as well
as your audience. Be careful while adding humour to a speech, it shouldn’t hurt
your audience feelings.
Eye Contact: Practice your speech before you hit the
podium. Make sure you are not reading from your notes while speaking. Make Eye
contact with the audience, this will give the impression you have command on
your topic and are confident. And, its human nature to get attracted towards a
confident personality. Avoid this by not writing out every word of your speech.
Use an outline instead.
Follow the above steps and show
positive energy and enthusiasm when you get to the podium. Capture the audience
in the first seconds, and you'll have them for the rest of your talk.
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