Having the ability to speak in public is such an important skill to have because it allows you to express yourself and your ideas in a clear and concise manner. If you want to be a great public speaker, then one of the first things you are going to need to do is hone in on a specific topic that you will master.
Choosing between public speaking topics is usually extremely hard to do. What typically happens is you’re given a general role you need to fill like, “How to market your products on the Internet” or “How to speak successfully in public.” The problem is those topics are so big. You couldn’t hope to cover everything you needed to in an hour on stage!
“Very often speakers get overwhelmed with their topic,” says Dan Smith of KeynoteSpeakers.info. “Because they want to cover so many things about the topic, they try to saturate the audience with too much information and then don’t really leave the listener with something specific they can take away.”
What most professional speakers do is figure out three major speaking points that you can branch off of. Now, there are about as many public speaking topics as there are disciplines. Anything from business to sports to cars to outdoors can be talked about. But the really popular topics are things that guests can learn from.
“When people decide to pay attention to your speech, it is because they want to learn something that will either help or inspire them” suggests John Rogan of MotivationalSpeakerz.com.
The niche you choose to talk about needs to be pretty specialized as well. So if your topic is marketing, knock it down to something extremely focused like ‘email marketing.’ Then, put a number in front of that like “3 Tips” and it’ll give you a great place to start your presentation. It’ll also give you a great presentation title!
When you’re choosing public speaking topics, try to tie them with current trends. If you watch the news, keep your eyes peeled for what’s going on in the world and try to form associations between what you’re talking about and the news. It’ll form a symbiotic relationship in the minds of your attendees because they’ve been watching the news and are aware of current situations.
Also, make sure that your research is legitimate. There are lots of sources out on the Internet that is either false or crowdsourced (crowdsourced is like wikipedia.com – user-generated content). Try to find the same information in a couple of places before you go adding it to your presentation.
Also, make sure that you have topic-oriented photos in your presentation. Powerpoints with no words and all images are always received VERY well, simply because a guest isn’t reading your content while you’re speaking!
If you’re delivering a professional presentation (ie. something you’re getting paid for), make sure you have a backend system set up. Obviously, it has to be topic-related, but it’s a super way of generating long-tail revenue from books, surveys, membership sites, and consulting.
In summary, you need to pick a public speaking topic that you’re intimately familiar with. You want to appear as someone extremely knowledgeable when you’re up on stage!