How to grab the audience attention in a speech

We’ve all witnessed that special speech that left the entire audience in awe. Everyone was paying attention to the speaker, and it looked like the audience had gained a whole other level of understanding on the topic. 

We’ve all witnessed some lukewarm speeches, too, even some utter failures, no doubt, where everyone was bored, waiting for the relief of the final sentence.

Which type of speech do you want to give? 

Of course, you want to make it memorable. You want to amaze everyone in the audience. You expect them to nod in agreement, consider something new, and ask questions to trigger a discussion after the speech. 

To achieve that, you’ll need to pay close attention to every aspect of your speech, right from the very first sentence that you utter. 

1. State the Facts

Nelson’s Mandela’s I Am Prepared to Die is one of the most powerful speeches ever heard. Its power is in its simplicity. Everything he said was straightforward, true, and eye-opening. 

No fuss, no decorations, no act. But “I am Prepared to Die” is an unexpected fact that is enough to grab everyone’s interest from the outset. 

2. Share Something Personal

Sharing something personal shows that you’re not trying to teach something; you are coming from personal experience. 

It’s especially important to emphasize the need for a personal touch if you’re getting speeches and essays written just for you. When providing guidelines, take the time to explain what you expect from the speech, and write down the experience that you want to share in the beginning. Then, explain how you want that experience to connect with the main theme. A speech written by a professional writer must feel like it was written by you. Its foundation is in the instructions, so take your time to communicate with the writer.     

3. Keep it Short and Sweet

Throughout your education, you’ve probably encountered teachers who didn’t know how to fill in a 50-minute class. They spoke at great length, repeating the same things over and over. That’s something you want to avoid when writing a speech.  

If you have control over the length, keep the speech as short as you can so you wrap up before everyone stops listening to you. You should also get to the point as soon as possible. 

4. It’s Not Just about the Words

A speech also consists of your stance, tone, posture, rhythm, facial expressions, and entire body language. From the moment you step in front of the audience, you grab their attention with the way you look. 

Everybody has an inner magnetism. You just need to discover your strengths and work on them. Is it your smile, your posture, or the way you communicate with your eyes? Practice and perfect your attitude in front of a mirror; it’s what sets up your public speech for success before you say a word.

5. Create Great Slides

If you use slides, the first one should grasp the entire message. You’ll work on the design, but the headline is its most important aspect. 

Here’s a suggestion: write a headline that implies action. For example, instead of writing “World Birth Rate in 2021”, write “We’re Becoming Fewer!” The alternative captures attention with emotion and action. 

6. Trigger Interaction

How do you feel about starting your speech with a question and expecting an actual answer from the audience?

If you’re flexible enough, you can maintain the event’s theme while responding to the answers and creating a discussion around them. 

7. Make It Emotional

If you’re trying to write, say, a powerful military speech, you won’t solely focus on strategies and events. You can add more meaning by arousing emotions. You can achieve that through humor, sharing personal stories, or revealing devastating facts. 

Humor, in particular, is a great trigger of emotion at the start of a speech. But be careful, it works only if you’re natural at it. Never try to force a joke just because you want to start with something funny.

8. Make It about the Audience

Take a look at some of the most influential speeches throughout history. You’ll notice they have something in common: the person speaking is not self-absorbed. You’ll connect with the audience if you focus on their situation and point of view.

About the author:

Robert Griffith is a lover of history, literature, and art. He writes blog posts with the hope to inspire people to read and write more. Robert didn’t use to enjoy writing, but he proved that if you’re focused, you can achieve any goal you set.

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By Mike Parkinson

Yaaaawn. Even the best presentations lose your attention. Why? Because your brain is fast. Your mind drifts once you decide the information presented is unimportant or uninteresting; therefore, it is unnecessary to pay attention. You need to be engaged to stay focused. Your audience is exactly the same.

The following are five techniques to capture and hold your audience’s attention throughout your presentation.

1. Surprise. Say, show or do something that is shocking or unexpected. It can be as simple as a loud noise (a clap or a few notes of music) or an odd picture added to the slide deck. The purpose is to reengage the audience’s brain. Being unpredictable or incongruent snaps the mind to attention.

For example, I attended a presentation where a hidden presenter “typed” sentences on the screen instead of speaking. The audience was dead silent and engaged the entire time.

2. Cognitive Dissonance. Keep your audience guessing. Hold their brains off balance by feeding bits of information as opposed to revealing your point early. Build a graphic slide by slide like assembling a puzzle. Slowly reveal parts of your graphic, briefly speak to each part and build your graphic so your point is revealed in the end.

3. Storytelling. Tell an interesting story that complements your presentation. Remember the saying, “Facts tell and stories sell.” Stories hook audiences from the start. Share a unique story to hold their attention and make sure to tie it into your presentation.

4. Involve. Ask your audience to participate. Play a game, pose a question, solve a puzzle, or perform an exercise. For example, avoid telling your audience everything. Let them learn through trial and error. Give your group an exercise and ask what worked and what did not.

5. Senses. The more senses (hearing, sight, taste, smell, and touch) you engage, the stronger the interest. For example, play sad music, show images of neglected animals and give your audience a cuddly puppy toy to pet while telling a moving story about animal rescue.

Combine these techniques for a winning presentation. During my graphic training sessions, I show the following symbol (allegedly created for the United States Department of Homeland Defense for use during disasters) and ask, “What does this mean?”

By doing so, I use two of the techniques listed above to capture my audience’s attention (“Cognitive Dissonance” and “Involve”).

Know your audience. If your audience feels manipulated and your approach using these tactics held little relevance to the topic, you will lose their attention—and trust.

In the end, your goal is to affect your audience emotionally. Use these five techniques to spark a fire within your audience. Give them a reason care. Get them excited or concerned to engage their hearts and minds during and after your presentation.

About the Author:

Mike Parkinson is an internationally recognized visual communication expert, presenter and multi-published author. Visit Billion Dollar Graphics (http://www.BillionDollarGraphics.com) and BizGraphics On Demand (http://www.BizGraphicsOnDemand.com) for helpful presentation tools. Mike is also a partner at 24 Hour Company (http://www.24hrco.com), a premier proposal and presentation graphics firm.

“Audiences will forgive almost anything except being boring,” — Patricia Fripp

Did you know that you have only 30 seconds to gain your audience’s attention and motivate them to listen? When it comes to delivering a killer presentation, these precious opening seconds play a critical part. This is the time your audience form an impression of you. If you waste it with a bad joke, rambling, or pointless sentences full of “uhs” and “ums,” your listeners’ focus will probably fade away, and you may not get them back.

Capturing the room immediately is a challenging task for any speaker — and it requires creating and rehearsing an attention-getting opener. But how to start a presentation effectively? Open your speech with a HOOK!

In this article, we’ll walk you through some basic presentation tips on how to really make the beginning of your presentation pop. Even if you learn English as a second language, don’t worry. Regardless of your English level, we’ve created a list of three tried-and-tested grabbers that will help you start a presentation with confidence and hold your audience’s attention with ease.

3 hooks to start a presentation and quickly make an impact

Opening your speech with banality quickly makes you forgettable, especially if you have a cookie-cutter PowerPoint presentation that you simply drone through. Have you ever listened to a presentation where the presenter starts with words:

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“Dear listeners, thank you for coming. So, I prepared a few major points on my topic. We’re going to run through them and be out of here within an hour.”

Boredom! What all people in the room are thinking about at the moment is their coffee break in 15 minutes, or they boldly start checking their Facebook feed or emails. But how to start a presentation introduction in such a way that you could keep your listeners glued to your words?

A creative hook or grabber motivates listeners to pay attention. In fact, people have a lot on their minds. Just imagine that they might be attending several talks that day or a week ago. Hence, you need to show them right away that your presentation is going to be interesting. To make an excellent lasting impact from the very beginning, you should use brief and catchy hook relevant to your topic.

Here are a few ways to start a presentation with a bang and make your speech stand out. The choice of method that works best for you will depend on your topic and speech type. Let’s take a closer look at the most popular presentation hooks.

1. Tell a story

Telling a compelling story is a good way to start a presentation. Research shows that brain is hardwired for storytelling. Have you ever noticed how kids begin attentively listening to their parents after the words: “Once upon a time.” That reaction doesn’t disappear when we become adults. In fact, narrating a story and sharing experience is something people do every day. Thus, adding it to your presentations won’t be a great challenge. Starting with a good story can also help you find creative ways to communicate the purpose of your presentation, besides just making a positive first impression. You can visuals to your presentation or use a video editor to make a quick, yet effective video within your presentation.

Your story should be brief and relevant to the point you’re trying to make. But don’t overload it with details. It can be a personal story showing your listeners why you’re so passionate about the topic. You can also tell a story about a person who can be an example for others to follow. If you can make a bold statement or a bold claim with this story, make eye contact, and communicate it with confidence, it will draw in the listener (even if they don’t agree with you).

Darlene Price, an author of “Well Said! Presentations and Conversations That Get Results!”, emphasizes that as a speaker you can use a wisdom tale, fable, historical event, or even a good joke to start a presentation. The key is to start with a short story relevant to the central point of your topic. Price also suggests considering some questions to help you compose own version of “Once upon a time”:

• What challenges have you (or another person) faced regarding your message?
• How did you (or another person) overcome it?
• Who or what helped you?
• What lessons did you (or another person) learn?
• What do you want your listeners to feel or do after the story?

2. Ask rhetorical questions

If you’re wondering how to start a presentation speech, start it with a question. One of the best ways is to ask a series of rhetorical questions. A great example of such techniques is Simon Sinek’s TED talk. He used the following words to start a presentation:

“How do you explain when things don’t go as we assume? Or better, how do you explain when others can achieve things that seem to defy all of the assumptions? For example, why is Apple so innovative?”

Such set of questions stimulate the listeners’ minds while they are thinking about the answers. Laura Bergells, an instructor of LinkedIn Learning course Public Speaking Foundations, recommends asking only open-ended questions, not closed-ended ones with a “yes/no” answers. For example, “How has social media changed your daily life?”. A worse example is: “Has social media changed your daily life?”. Using an open-ended questions helps you create a knowledge gap that you’ll later close in your speech. Another great way to get the audience involved is by asking for a show of hands on a particular question.

3. Use quotations

One of the funny ways to start a presentation is to quote movies. Why? Because it’s entertaining! Videos play a critical part in most people’s lives. So a well-placed movie quote at the beginning of your speech can liven up your listeners. Here are some examples:

“The first rule of leadership: everything is your fault” (Bug’s Life)

“The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room.” (American Gangster)

“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” (Forrest Gump)

It’s also a common but effective practice to start a presentation with an opt quotes. In this case, speakers state the quotation and then add a twist to it. For example:

“We’ve all heard that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. But we need to remember that a journey to nowhere also starts with a single step.”

There is a lot of sources for finding appropriate quotations online such as Brainy Quotes and Goodreads. But don’t pick an obvious quote to open with, like “little strokes fell great oaks.” Try to find more creative ways to start a presentation by using the following Steve Job’s quote: “My favourite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”

Go and change the world with your speech!

Remember the first seconds of your talk matter. You have only half a minute to win the audience’s attention. So, if you don’t know how to start your next presentation in English, do not hesitate to use one of these proven hooks.

But think carefully which hook to choose and, of course, be honest with yourself. Does the story you want to tell have any relevance? Are listeners going to laugh at your joke? Make sure you don’t overlook how your audience will react.

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