While there are multitudes of motivational speakers available nowadays, how many of them can you say are effective, that too with complete surety. No doubt that Motivational speaking is an art, but proficiency requires more time and effort than people are willing to invest. Motivational speaking comes naturally to some, but even those people need to refine their skills to become any good.
Speaking from their heart may work for some, but it is essential to polish your motivational speaking skills. Following are some of the tips to become an effective motivational speaker.
Highlight your area of expertise
What are your strong points? Consider your deepest passions and come up with an idea for how to make them unique. This will assist you in outlining the key points that you will discuss during your speeches. If you’re genuinely enthusiastic regarding your community and have a strong special attachment to your hometown, this is an excellent field of expertise to pursue.
You could perhaps narrow it down even further and target a more specific demographic. You could, for example, incorporate your understanding of local culture with a sector in which you have worked. You could combine your expertise through both areas and deliver an elegant speech about your industry.
Identify your target audience
Now that you’ve worked out the kinks in your speech, you can focus on your intended audience. In order to gather important information, ask questions such as what age the people who need to hear this message are, what they do for a living, and where they are from.
You’ll feel much more confident in providing a quality speech once you’ve defined your audience. This stems from our fear of the unknown, and once you’ve gathered some essential information on those in front of you, you’ll know exactly what to say and what not to say.
Use an open and close loop
Open and close is a compelling tactic to keep your audience engaged and interested. It’s similar to the common speaking advice of “tell them what you’re going to tell them,” but you should sprinkle it throughout the speech. Opening a loop entails posing a question to the audience that makes them want to keep listening to find out the answer. For example, “in just a few minutes, I’ll share with you the most common mistake new speakers make on stage that you can avoid.” I just started a loop. You want to keep listening because you’re curious about the answer to the question.
Work on your skills
Planning and strategizing the content is essential for your motivational speech, but it is not enough. All this effort will fall through if your execution is faulty. Practicing is essential for your structure, but there is more to it. You need to learn from the examples of other successful motivational speakers.
There are hundreds of videos available online to watch; they are an excellent resource of information and shared learning, and if you pay close attention, you can see the attributes that make a strong public speaker. You can stand to gain from the techniques presented in such talks by incorporating them into your arsenal of motivational speaking weapons.
Besides that, you should think about taking external public speaking classes to hone your skills even further. There are a variety of courses available to help you better understand your communication skills by teaching you how to overcome that rush of overpowering anxiety you may feel before entering the spotlight.
Don’t mimic other speakers
As I mentioned before, it is important to learn from other more experienced motivational speakers, but this has its downside as well. You need to make sure that you refrain from mimicking their style or content as it can have adverse effects on your content. Other writing styles won’t come as naturally to you, and molding your style until it no longer suits you will feel disingenuous when you deliver your speech.
Answer “now what?” for the audience
Your audience is constantly asking two questions: “So what?” and “Now what?” So, what does all of this have to do with me? What do you want the audience to do as a result of your presentation? Give them action plans to help them put what you’ve taught them into practice. What’s the point of hearing you speak if they don’t do anything differently?
