Thursday, April 29, 2010

Exercising Tips to Improve Your Public Speaking Skills

If you want to improve your public speaking skills then it's essential to exercise.

Focus On Your Goals


It's important to know what you want to get out of your training. Do you want to be more confident? Do you want to create a better presentation? Ask yourself these questions.
Then write your goals down.

Just Do It


Thinking about doing some exercises is not enough. You actually have to go out and do it.
So stop thinking about doing it and start doing it.

Get Feedback


Feedback is an important part of practicing. You will learn a lot faster if you have someone that gives you feedback as to how you are doing and what you should improve.

Be sure to pick someone that gives you genuine feedback. It's not going to help if your friends are telling you that you are doing everything right. Feedback is about criticizing that person.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

How to Get Better at Public Speaking

Public speaking is the number one fear in the U.S.. Number two is death.

It's strange that people are more afraid of speaking in public then of death. There are definitely ways to overcome this fear, to get better at public speaking.

Reading Books


If you want to get better at this then it's definitely valuable to read books. Books can give you a tremendous amount of information about public speaking. In order to effectively learn from them you actually have to read a book. If you bought one then don't let it rest on your shelf. Start reading it.

Another thing that gets in your way of actually learning from books is not applying the material. The issue is a simple one. Books provide you with theoretical information. But in order to truly learn from books you need to apply this information.

You can do this by following exercises that are presented in the book or simply by using what you have learned on a daily basis.

Taking Courses


Most of the people decide to take courses on public speaking instead of educating themselves through books. That's fine if you learn better that way.

There are lots of courses on improving your public speaking skills. Decide on one and then use all of the information that is given to you. Again if you don't invest any time in it then you will not gain anything from it. Apply the information that was given to you.

Videotape Yourself


One of the best ways to get better in public speaking is to videotape yourself. A video of yourself makes your weak spots obvious and will help you to correct them, making you an even better public speaker.
If you can't record a video yourself then ask a friend to do so. It will help you tremendously.