7 Books For Becoming an Exceptional Public Speaker (Plus 7 Tips)
By: Oli Gardner
Tags: Public Speaking, Marketing

7 Speaking Tips From Me

In line with the idea of rapid skill acquisition, here are 7 things that I’ve identified as significantly impacting the quality of my talks that I’ve learned along the way.

You should also check out Be the Keynote which is everything you need to become an exceptional public speaker and virtual presenter.

Be the Keynote

1. Daydream before you practice — Visualize

This is something you can and should do all the time if you want to be a great speaker. Walk through your presentation in your head, imagining the gestures and movements you’ll make, memorizing the order of your slides and the reaction from the audience based on each point. This will build your motions into a form of muscle memory so that when it comes time to speak, you’ll start to embody your visualized self. It really helps you remember what’s coming up next in your talk. Try it. It works.

2. Be a pro

I can’t shout this one loudly enough. Sadly some conference organizers don’t put enough emphasis on the speaker experience — this is a shame as a bad one can translate directly into a shitty attendee experience, so unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) you sometimes have to take matters into your own hands.

If the contrast on the screen is shitty, work with the location staff to close curtains, or turn off the row of lights directly above the screen. If it means I’m not nicely lit, I’m okay with that as long as the slides look awesome for the people watching.

If you have a habit of turning your head to gesture or point at a screen while talking through a point, you will often move out of direct range of a lapel mic. If there is a choice of mic and you have a tendency to dance around, choose the kind that sits in front of your mouth.

Show up early and walk the stage. This will help you add a higher level of visualization for your internal-brain-practice-daydreaming. You’ll be able to feel yourself on this stage.

3. Get your own gear

Part of being a pro is showing up prepared for things to go wrong. I suggest you buy the following items:

A wireless clicker. I recommend this one: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Professional-Presenter-Green-Pointer/dp/B002GHBUTU/ — it‘s nicely weighted, has a laser pointer, and best of all, has a timer on it you can subtly look at, and even gives a gentle vibration when you have 5 minutes and 2 minutes left to go in your talk (you set the length of talk in advance). An adapter that lets you connect an Apple laptop (if you have one — most speakers do) to the projector. I pretty much always use my own laptop so I can use Keynote (not Powerpoint) with all the weird and wonderful typefaces I use in my decks. http://store.apple.com/ca/product/MB572Z/B/mini-displayport-to-vga-adapter Your own laptop ☺ A universal power adapter that lets you plug your laptop into the power source in any country. Something like this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/digipower-world-travel-usb-power-adapter/1306233291.p?id=mp1306233291&skuId=1306233291 A wireless mic setup — I explain why in the next tip — this isn’t for giving conference talks. http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/product/AT-ATW-2110-E6I.prod

4. Do webinars standing up

Webinars are a great way to practice your material, but we all know that the majority of webinars are boring as fuck. To make your webinars waaaaay better, use your wireless mic and clicker you bought after reading tip 3. This lets you walk around the room as if you are on stage when you’re delivering your webinar presentation. The uplift in energy combined with legit practice will make this more than worth the cash outlay for the equipment.

5. Chase someone

Don’t literally run after someone. Choose another speaker whom you respect and set a goal to outperform her. The easiest way to gauge this is by comparing speaker ratings and reviews. When you get your ratings back from a conference organizer, ask where you sit numerically compared to your target speaker, or at the very least in comparison to all speakers (i.e. were you rated 3rd highest). I’m chasing Rand Fishkin, Wil Reynolds, and most recently Scott Stratten — a fellow Canuck who is a delightful chaos of awesome on stage.

6. Become excellent at delivering 5 things at once

Communication has a lot to do with body language. So when you are visualizing and practicing, try to incorporate 5 things into each point you make: A meaningful facial expression, an appropriate gesture with your arms/hands/legs/feet/chest/head/whatever, a tone that conveys your message of happiness/delight/anger/frustration, adjust your volume to help recapture your audience’s attention — a sudden drop or increase in volume can work wonders and makes your delivery far more dynamic, and finally, timing — try to inject the occasional pregnant pause, it really helps to build tension.

7. Play air guitar after a 6-pack

I mean it. Get a little drunk and rock out to your favourite music. Why? Your showmanship will escalate as you release you inhibitions. Am I suggesting you should go on stage hammered? Of course not. But once you’ve seen where you *can* take things, your eyes will be open to new possibilities.

8. NEW: Watch the one you love watch you

Watching video playback of your speaking gigs is a scary, but essential way to observe what you did right and wrong. I highly recommend it. Even better though, is to watch someone you care about, and respect, as they watch a video playback of your speaking gigs. Ask them to take notes. As you watch them, you’ll see how they react to the parts of your talk that you wanted to get an audience reaction from. Did it happen the way you wanted? You’ll also get a massive amount of insight by watching the note taking they do. Nicole Mintiens is a marketer, an up-and-coming public speaker, and my fiancée. Watching her face light up, or frown, or wince, or take notes, was one of the smartest things I’ve done as a speaker.