The Secret to Your Best Public Speaking Presentation Ever

The secret to engaging your audience is to tell a personal story within your presentation.

Bring your presentation to life by telling a real-life story about something that happened to you. No matter what the message of your speech, you can usually come up with an analogy about an event in your life that relates to your message.

For example, if I were talking about what we need to do to keep our heads above water financially, I could relate it to a story about overcoming adversity when I was in grade 4. What matters here is that you provide an analogy that is emotionally stimulating to your audience. Tell a story that you lived through and you will be engaging and authentic. This is how to hold your audience's attention and be more natural when you speak.

Here are 3 tips to telling your story:

1. Open your speech with a startling statement or engaging question that relates more to your story rather than the topic of your speech. If your presentation is about the recent downturn in the economy (and you're going to tell a story about the challenges of running a lemonade stand when you were eight years old), you could open your speech by saying "It was a hot summer's day in 1973 and I had not sold a single glass of lemonade. That's because the neighborhood bullies had dumped the lemonade jug all over my head. But do you think I gave up?" 

2. After you finish your story, you can relate it to practical content and advice that ties directly into the theme of your presentation. As you do so, try to interject a short story here and there.

3. Make sure to wrap up your speech by articulating a very clear call to action. Try to connect the call to action to the story that opened your speech.

Do you think you need practice to make this effective before you dive in the deep end?  Then join Toastmasters. Located in just about every major city on the planet, this organization provides a safe place for people to practice the art of public speaking. Because when you think about it, most of us have very little opportunity to exercise our public speaking muscle.