Public Speaking Tip: Involve Your Audience

Everyone seems to agree that engaging your audience in your speech is a great way to make it more enjoyable, but few suggest just how to do that. There are countless ways to include your audience in your presentation—you can ask for a show of hands or request volunteers to help you with parts of your presentation. But the best way to involve your audience is to play with their emotions.

Make them feel like they’re a part of your presentation by using audience-inclusive stories to demonstrate points. Keep them on edge by using hypothetical situations involving members of your audience as an example. Instead of throwing facts at them, you can use Barbara the accountant in the front row or Brett the hot-shot manager to make your point (just don’t poke fun or make them feel bad). Make the audience feel like protagonists in your presentation and they’ll feel more connected to your talk.

Additionally, try putting faces to ideas to involve them emotionally. Turn ‘I’ or ‘he’ in your story into ‘we’ and ‘you’. Use metaphors and analogies of experiences that everyone shares to help explain new concepts. Eventually, you’ll want your presentations to feel more like conversations than lectures.