5 Tips to Gain Your Audience’s Attention | Public Speaking | Pooja Gera

I want you all to imagine yourself on stage, the spotlight is shining on you, you have prepared well, practiced in front of the mirror and now you have an audience who is waiting for you to come up and change their lives. Did you feel an adrenaline rush through your body? Good, let’s begin with our session, 5 magical tips, to gain the attention of your audience.

1. Benefit of the audience: The reason why someone will listen to you is not because you are speaking well, it will be about something they care and you have to ensure you are doing that. For example, I started this session with a basic introduction of why it is important to think about your audience before you even start with preparing your speech, and when you came to know “why” we are doing this, you got hooked and now you are listening to me about “how” you should do this.
   A more relatable example would be, I’m sure many of you must have ordered food from Swiggy and Zomato, right? Is anyone following their pages on Instagram and following their advertisements? Would you like to tell why you like their marketing strategies?
   These brands have gained attention because of their witty one-liners and being relatable to the ongoing scenarios and trends.
   Now, a very valid question would be “How do I do that, How do I be relatable to the audience”, start following the social media trends and start following news about what is going on in your field, if you’re into finance, read finance news, if you’re into business, start reading that, sports? Pick sports and so on. Now for those who have the ‘I do not have time’ issue, in-shorts is going to be your best friend. Start forming opinions about what you have read, go on twitter, engage with the community, put forth your views, but remember, do not indulge into hate or offensive activities, that will only lead to you getting sucked into a pool of controversies and the purpose will not be solved.
   When you will write, and you will get the attention you were looking for, you will automatically get the confidence that you can, in fact, get the attention of your audience and then using it in a public speech would be easy peesy banana spleezy.
2. Opening with a great sentence: While speaking in public, first impression really matters. The moment you start speaking, people start judging. The first line you say decides if the audience will listen to you or they will say, ‘meh boring’. I always open with a great quote, before I even say good morning or good evening to my audience, it works really well in a formal setting. You can also open up w a joke, or with a question that you want your audience to think really hard on and by the end of the session you aim to answer it. To see examples of some really great questions, follow Ted Talks. I watch them in my free time, pretty fun and informative.
3. How to dress up: Well, Steve Martin has a fun answer to this one, just look better than they do.
4. Importance of emotional connection: Mix your experiences, your life ideas in your speeches and then instead of being a “rattu tota” who has memorized the entire script, you will be able to connect with the audience on a personal and emotional level. Real life examples are the best way to get attention because people can actually imagine that scenario, imagine themselves in your shoes and try to feel what you might have felt then, and this is where they start forming opinions, and when you have got them into starting forming opinions, the real fun begins, because this is when the audience will start listening to the rest of your speech more carefully.
   Let me give a very basic example, if I ask you to go watch Abhishek Upmanyu’s stand ups, you’ll send me nice emojis and a lot of thankyous for making you watch his videos. At the same time, if I ask you to watch a university lecture, you’ll get bored and hit me with a brick. Why did this happen? Can anyone tell me?
   Simple really, Mr. Upmanyu’s standups are relatable to you in real life whereas the lectures do not interest you because you can’t think of a scenario you’ll encounter where you will have to use that information.
5. Be Yourself: Okay, what does this really mean? I mean, the first time I heard this advice, I genuinely was thinking, if I am not me, then who I am? It took me a while to realise that when I was there up on the stage I was trying to imitate one of my seniors who was a really amazing speaker, his name was Abhimanyu, and this imitation only helped for a small time because ultimately, it wasn’t me who was speaking, it was a gareebon ki female Abhimanyu speaking on the stage.
   If you have watched ‘Disney Cars’, do you remember how Lightning McQueen always used to say ‘I am speed’ before his races? Notice the phrase, it says, I, am, speed. The ‘I’ here is very important, McQueen doesn’t say he is some really fast racecar who is its idol, rather, he fills himself up with confidence about his own self. This is what being being yourself actually means; it means that you believe in yourself. And I might sound philosophical but, the only person actually worth placing a bet on for a job, is your own self. Before stepping up on the stage, you already are ahead of the hundred people sitting in the audience, you did it, didn’t you? Have that confidence, step up, and own that audience.

On stage, everything matters, every word matters, every gesture matters and always make the audience believe that I am fantastic and nothing can shatter my confidence.