Nine Practical Guides to Public Speaking and Presentations
Tom Pick
Whether you’re the type of person who eagerly dashes off a proposal for every speaking opportunity that comes your way, or the type who avoids the spotlight as much as possible, public speaking—delivering presentations to our peers, customers, prospects, or other audiences—is a part of virtually every marketing and PR professional’s life. And something most of us could improve at.
How can you get and keep a roomful of people engaged with your presentation? Visually optimize the content you deliver? Effectively use humor? Tell a story that keeps listeners focused on you—instead of checking email on their phones?
Find the answers to those questions and more in these helpful guides from professional speakers. IvyPanda recently published an excellent summary of public speaking anxiety tips. Some of the articles below date back a few years, but all are still relevant and useful.
Jane Porter passes along five valuable tips from master storyteller Kevin Allison. Among them: realize you’re never up there alone (think of it as a conversation, not a monologue); decide where you want to end up and work backwards; and vary your pace (“the juicier moments in your story should take up proportionately more room”).
Noting that Pixar continually tells great stories in its movies, Gavin McMahon shares 22 rules for storytelling from Emma Coats, former story artist at Pixar. He highlights two rules in particular that are essential to telling a great story: tailor your content to the audience, and structure your story (think hook, meat, payoff).
Michael Brenner writes that the teams behind the best events think in terms of “multi-format, multi-channel and a steady and continuous promotion of great content. The event is seen more like a conversation that continues well before and long after the physical part.” He also shares specific tips from three professional event planners.
Based on his extensive experience both delivering and listening to presentations at social media and marketing events, Joe Pulizzi lists 15 helpful tips for better presentations, such as putting your Twitter handle on every slide; walking around; smiling a lot (it’s contagious); and “switching the flow and telling a story every eight minutes.”
Erik Devaney provides advice for content creators on how to avoid getting stuck in the “mediocrity loop” and instead embrace the improvement loop when creating new content. His seven practical recommendations for continually creating better Slideshare decks include choosing the perfect fonts (“a bold, stylized font for headers, and…a simple, easy-to-read font for body text”); using contrasting colors; and placing text legibly on top of images using a semi-transparent overlay.
Public speaking rock star Michelle Mazur shares a video outlining a handful of tips from Darren LaCroix, a past winner of the Toastmasters Superbowl. Among Darren’s recommendations for being a more successful public speaker: let go of the ME mentality – “On that stage when you are focused on the me, you are not focused on the ‘you’ in the audience. It dampens your connection with the audience.”
Dino Dogan presents a video interview with speaker, writer and standup comic Brendan Fitzgibbons about how to be funny (rather than intense) when presenting. It’s not easy (at least not for many us), but it is powerful. Brendan recommends starting off by showing vulnerability with some self-deprecating humor.
In this timeless piece, Agnieszka Wilinska presents four dozen helpful tips covering all the bases for delivering a successful webinar, from focusing on providing value and setting goals (“If the webinar is designed to produce sales, set your expectations in units and in dollars and cents”) to polling participants, managing and concluding the meeting.
Barbara Nixon shares a baker’s dozen recommendations for delivering as a guest speaker. She recommends starting by learning about the audience and tailoring your presentation for them, as well as creating a presentation with the flexibility to expand or contract the content. She also suggests being prepared for the technology (including the Internet connection) to fail, with a backup plan to keep the show going on.
