Know Your Audience Before You Speak
You can make a significant impact in public speaking if you put in a little effort to know your audience before making the speech. This does not have to be a mammoth task if you know the kind of questions to which you need to get answers.
What Are The Needs And Wants Of The Audience?
The topic of your speech is about what the audience needs to know. However, not everyone is excited about hearing what they need to know. It helps if you can figure out what they want to know.
To know your audience will require you to know how they perceive that the need will be of value to them. Just giving them the content will not be sufficient. It is important that you are able to show them what is in it for them to make an impact.
Just providing them the knowledge or content is only the first part but igniting enthusiasm about what you are talking about will be what will make the difference.
What Does The Audience Already Know?
It is so easy to bore your audience if you tell them what they already know.
Taking a little effort in finding out as much as you can about the audience you will address is actually your first step to helping succeed in making your speech. If they are new to this topic, then you will need to cover the basics. If not, then you may want to summarize the basics, before you continue with the rest.
It is also a good idea to inform the audience of the level of prerequisite knowledge required on the subject matter. There have been speakers who have been known to do a preparatory session for people who are new to the subject before actually doing the presentation proper. People, who already know basic content, are appreciative of this as they do not have to sit through information that they already know.
The intent of knowing your audiences’ knowledge level is not about impressing people with how much more you know than your audience. Rather, it is about imparting information and knowledge in such a way that will trigger something in the audience for them to make a decision and/or to take action.
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