Keynote Speaking: Entertainment is Just as Important as Education

I recently gave a social media keynote at a conference and had the opportunity to watch the other keynote speakers. Most of the other speakers were respected industry experts with great knowledge and sound advice.

The problem was that they spent all of their time on their presentation and no time on their delivery.

The slides were perfectly crafted with beautiful charts and they shared interesting, timely and relevant data.

But they were boring!

Looking around the room people had a difficult time paying attention.

Why?

The delivery missed the mark. They focused all their time on content and none on delivery. So how can you easily improve delivery? Even if you aren’t an experienced speaker, these 3 tips will help you succeed.

3 Tips to Deliver Your Presentation Like a Pro:

1) Make use of space

Move around the room, or at least move around the stage. This makes you seem comfortable and confident and keeps people paying attention. Plus, if you stand at a podium or near the computer you tend to constantly look at it and not make eye-contact with the audience.

Get out from behind the computer and move!!!

2) Build-In Engagement

People are more interested when they participate. Build participation in to your presentation upfront. Bring someone on stage, ask questions, have them vote…. There are plenty of opportunities to engage people.

Build this into your presentation to keep people paying attention.

3) Add variety into your speaking style

Speed up. S L O W D O W N. Get excited. Be creepily calm. Speak quickly. Emphasize and repeat slowly to make a point. Move a lot. Stand still.

Even great speakers become monotonous after a while because they use the same tone. Mix it up. Especially if you are speaking for over 20 minutes.

Practice parts that you’ll go slow and parts to go fast. Try using different tones of voice to grab attention.

Even if you are a great speaker the same voice gets hard to listen to for long time periods.

The bottom line is if you want to be a great speaker and keep people engaged, focus beyond your presentation and spend as much time (if not more) crafting your delivery.