A short Guide to Effective Public Speaking

Many speakers feel that delivering an effective presentation to 20 or 200 people can be difficult. Listeners have better access to information, and many times speakers feel like they are being tested and criticized as they present their material. Thus, listeners expect more content from their speakers today. In addition, because of the entertainment frenzy in the media, audiences want a presentation with animation, humour and pizzaz.

If you’re a beginner speaker or an experienced one, you may be struggling with crippling fear because of how you perceive the audience will receive your message. Here are a few tips to help dispel some of your fears.

1. Start your presentation with something that will grab the audience’s attention. This can be a startling statement or question. Listeners will pay closer attention.

2. Be energetic in your delivery. Speak with different tones. Slow down for dramatic emphasis and speed up to show excitement. Pause occasionally for effect. Also, don’t just stand behind the lectern but move around the room.

3. Tie points together with effective transitions. These could be signposts such as first, second, or finally. Or, it can be an internal summary of what you would like to present.

4. Look directly at the audience when you speak. If it’s a small audience, you can look at each person in a short period of time. If it is a large group, look at the audience in small clumps and move from one clump to another.

5. Include a ‘wow’ factor in your speech. It could be a story, a dramatic point, an unusual statistic, or an effective visual. With a “Wow” factor, you will have something to look forward to in your speech which will impact your audience.

6. Consider using humour in your presentation. This doesn’t mean that you have to be a comedian. But it means that you should add a short humorous story about yourself or someone else to add emphasis at some point in the presentation.

7. Leave the audience with something to think about. There is nothing better than to have an audience that will stick around and talk to you and each other at the end of a presentation.

By following these tips, you could be an effective speaker, and look forward to your next speaking engagement. Just remember, you always know more than your audience because they have absolutely no idea exactly what you will be talking about. That’s a reason to hold your head up high and smile.

Irene S. Roth

The Perils of Redundancy

Redundancies can make your manuscripts look amateurish and unprofessional. Yet many writers will write with redundancies from time to time if they are not careful and don’t edit their manuscripts carefully. A moment’s inattention to detail will do it.

Redundancy can cause wordiness and a lack of economy in your articles. To be a professional writer, you don’t want to waste your reader’s time by using too many words that either say very little or repeat themselves over and over.

Here are a few reasons why you should avoid redundancy in your manuscripts.

1. The flow will be hindered. When you’re redundant, you will repeat words, phrases, and sometimes whole sentences throughout your article. This hinders flow. In addition, the logic of presenting your topic will also be hindered by repetitions. Therefore, it is important to weed out redundancies from your articles.

2. The article will be clunky. Clunky writing has passive verbs, unnecessary strings of prepositional phrases, run-on sentences, repeat words in close proximity, and repeated words in the same paragraph. There is nothing that screams unpolished and amateur more than clunky articles. So, try to write your articles with the least amount of words and convey your points clearly and economically.

3. Your credibility as a writer may be undermined.  Redundancy in your article says volumes about your ability and professionalism as a writer. When you’re redundant, you are telling the editor or agent that you don’t take extreme care to edit your own work. This will definitely ruin your reputation with publishers.

By avoiding clunky, flowless, and redundant articles, you will be helping yourself by looking like a professional writer when you submit your articles. And you may even be get a lot more acceptances from Editors and Agents.

Irene S. Roth

The Benefits of Creating TO DO LISTS

Most writers need to prioritize their writing tasks every day because most of us can be pulled into so many different directions. Writers should try not to stray from their main writing goals if they’re going to be productive and experience well-being.

Here are a few benefits of creating a TO DO LIST.

1. Writers will be able to create time boundaries around their writing.

2. Writers will be able to prioritize their writing tasks.

3. Writers will have time to do other things and won’t feel caged in by their writing.

4. Writers will have a sense of control over their lives and will create balance in other areas of their life as well.

Given these four benefits of creating TO DO LISTS every week, writers should get into the habit of doing their most important writing tasks first and making them part of their TO DO LIST. The rest can fall by the wayside.

Irene S. Roth

Do you feel Overwhelmed?

Most writers feel overwhelmed from time to time. There may be many reasons why they may feel overwhelmed. One of the key reasons is because they try to do WAY TOO MUCH every day. And most of these activities simply distract them from their main writing goals.

If you feel overwhelmed, don’t beat yourself up or be over critical towards yourself as a writer. There are simply too many temptations to fill our time at our desks. Some of these temptations are the internet, answering emails, updating our Facebook profile, and Twitter accounts, just to name a few. Now, I’m not saying that these things are not important. However, they have to take up only a small portion of your writing time if you’re to be a productive writer.

Here are a few tips not to be too distracted by social media.

1. Do your writing first and then update your social media sites. Your writing should be top priority. In fact, don’t even check your email until you finish writing.

2. Decide how long you will spend on social media and networking. They set a timer for the time allotted and stop when the buzzer goes off.

3. Treat any secondary activity as unimportant to your main writing goals. By doing that, you’ll be developing a serious attitude towards your writing.

By following these tips, you’ll feel less overwhelmed and your productivity levels will soar. But what’s just as important, you won’t feel exhausted and distracted. Try it!