Improve Your Public Speaking – 5 Ways to Energize an Audience

improve-your-public-speaking

A tired audience is an impatient and distracted audience. To help ensure your presentation is actually heard, it’s important to improve your public speaking skills and energize the audience.

Here are 5 ways to energize the audience before your next presentation:

1. Warm up the crowd by conducting a symphony.

Conducting an audience symphony is one of the easiest ways to get an audience engaged and energized at the beginning of a presentation.  To do so, have separate sections of the audience say different syllables that, when combined, sound out the title of your presentation.

2. Have everyone stand-up and do the thumbs exercise.

The thumbs exercise (demonstrated in the video below) can be a great way to warm-up the audience. It’s something unique that they have likely never done before and gets both the left and the right side of the brain warmed-up.

3. Throw on some music and encourage dancing.

Dancing can be a fun way to energize a room and get people moving.  At the start of the presentation, put on some music and just start dancing.  The courageous will join you, the others will at least be entertained by your mirthful movements.

Of course you could take dancing to the next level and dance to shorten meetings–it’ll certainly encourage shorter meetings and give you a chance to explore different types of music.

4. Get the audience to applaud 3 times.

One of the things I learned from a few stand-up veterans is the importance of the MC to bring the audience together, transforming them from strangers at a comedy show to a collective audience, laughing together.

One way to do that is to get the audience to applaud at least 3 times together.  The act of doing it all together helps them settle in as a group and get focused on what’s about to happen on stage.  This is way many comedians will start with statements like “You ready for a good show?”, “Give it up for your headliner,” and “Applaud if you like breathing.”

5. Do the Wave

The simple act of standing up can wake the body up.  Standing burns twice as many calories as sitting and raises your heart rate.  Doing it multiple times to create a wave in the audience not only increases the energy of the room, but also gets the audience to do something together.

Have a favorite energizer? Share it in the comments.

THIS FREE 129 SECOND QUIZ WILL SHOW YOU

what is your humor persona?

Humor is a skill that can be learned. And when used correctly, it is a superpower that can be your greatest asset for building a happier, healthier and more productive life.  See for yourself...

you might also be interested in...

how-to-stop-how-to-stop-hitting-snooze-and-wake-up-early-humor-that-works-2hitting-snooze-and-wake-up-early-humor-that-works-2

How to Stop Hitting Snooze and Wake Up Early

By Andrew Tarvin | September 10, 2009

One of my biggest challenges since graduating college has been learning how to sop hitting snooze and how to wake […]

Read More
why leaders use humor

Why Top Leaders use Humor in their Leadership Skills

By Andrew Tarvin | October 24, 2018

Why do the top leaders use humor in their leadership skills?  Why is it that the most inspiring leaders typically […]

Read More
5-steps-of-problem-solving-humor-that-works-3

The 5 Steps of Problem Solving

By Andrew Tarvin | October 8, 2012

Problem solving is a critical skill for success in business – in fact it’s often what you are hired and […]

Read More
[scriptless]

3 thoughts on “Improve Your Public Speaking – 5 Ways to Energize an Audience”

  1. Pingback: How to Improve Your Public Speaking Skills - 1Training

  2. Pingback: Appearance Is Everything: Tips to Successful Presentations ‹ Onya Magazine

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top