Public speakers in India who are audience-centred can relate to the audience easily by sharing their personal experiences. Taking an audience-centred approach is essential as the effectiveness of a speaker will get improved if the presentation is created and delivered in a proper manner. Identifying the audience and their thought process is often difficult, so audience adaptation mostly relies on the speaker’s imagination.
Who is an audience-centred speaker?
Have you ever attended a public speaking event and found yourself being mentally and emotionally connected with the speaker? Then you were probably listening to an audience-centred speaker who attempts to make a strong connection with the audience by sharing with them meaningful experiences.
Don’t think that the speaker is a mystical being who knows how to get into your mind. This process is more of calculations than magic. What this speaker probably did before the event was researched a couple of necessary things for determining what is important to the audience. By knowing information regarding demographics and psychographics about his audience, the speaker is better equipped and informed and tailors a speech according to the audience’s preferences.
How public speakers can be audience centred?
Audience analysis does not mean grovelling or grandstanding to the public. It’s more about adapting the style and content choices a speaker makes for a presentation. Being one of the leading Indian speaker companies, London Speaker Bureau offers tips for public speakers on how they can be audience-centred.
- Keep an account of the audience’s expectations
Audience members in a live speech situation bring expectations along with them regarding the occasion, topic, and speaker. So when a speaker violates audience expectations, it can have a negative impact on the effectiveness of their speech.
For instance, when a local politician is asked to speak at the memorial service for a beloved former Mayor, the audience comes with expectations that the politician will praise the life and career of the deceased. If the politician uses the opportunity for discussing a piece of legislation, the audience would get offended and the speaker would lose his credibility.
Therefore, it’s important for famous public speakers to keep an account of the audience’s expectations for delivering an audience-centred speech.
- Having knowledge of the topic
The knowledge of the audience regarding a topic can vary widely, therefore, speakers should find out what their audience already knows about the topic. Public speakers in India should never overestimate the audience’s knowledge of a topic.
If a speaker introduces a technical discussion of genetic engineering in between the speech but the listeners are not familiar with basic genetics, they will be unable to follow your speech and lose interest. On the other hand, underestimating the knowledge of the audience may result in a speech that sounds snobbish.
- Attitude towards the topic
Famous public speakers should know the attitude of the audience members towards a topic. This will help them determine the best way to reach their goals. For instance, when a speaker is trying to convince a community to build a park, he would probably be inclined to spend the majority of the speech time explaining to them how a park would be beneficial for the community.
If he finds out during his speech that most neighbours think establishing a park is a good idea but are worried about the safety issues, the speaker would spend most of his time addressing them that the people would be safer in the park as compared to the streets.
- Size of the audience
A lot of elements of speech-creation change according to the audience size. Generally, the larger the audience size, the more formal the presentation should be. In situations such as speaking to a group of 10 people, sitting down and using common language is often quite appropriate.
Although, this style of presentation would probably be inappropriate or ineffective while addressing 1,000 people. Large audience settings mostly demand that you use a microphone and speak from an elevated platform.
Wrapping It Up
Audience analysis is one of the major aspects to consider before delivering a live speech. After reading this article, you might have learned a few tips on delivering a good speech and capturing the attention of your audience.
We, London Speaker Bureau, are among the top Indian speaker companies, providing public speakers for your corporate and government events. If you want to hire speakers for various niches, contact us on our website.
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