Building emotional connections with your audience lies within the age-old art form of storytelling. Leveraging your unique professional stories is one of the secrets to building emotional connections with your target audience. Whether you are speaking to a client, customer, large or small audience sharing your unique and authentic professional stories about a customers’ success with a product or how you got into your particular field and how it changed your life for the better is a great way to gain greater impact and visibility.
To deliver your message effectively and entertain your audience, you will want to have these storytelling techniques in your repertoire.
Learn from the Masters
Throughout history, there have been orators who are well-known for giving passionate speeches. Take some time and watch a few of these inspirational speeches. As you do, take note of how they incorporated body language into their story. Do they raise their eyebrows as they ask a question? Do they invoke excitement as the reach the climax of their story? Notice how delivering a great story should also include more than just saying a few words. By varying your speech patterns and synchronizing your body language, you can draw listeners into your story.
Identify Your Purpose
Every good speech should be centered upon a purpose whether it is obvious or subtly included. By identifying your purpose, you will be able to avoid going off on a tangent while selecting a story that will nail down your main points. Additionally, this will help you to focus on hitting the three main points of every good speech: motivation, information and entertainment. When your audience leaves, they should feel as though they have learned something new and be motivated to implement their knowledge in their life and work.
Find Your Story
The right story is essential for a perfect delivery of your speech. Take time to examine your repertoire of stories. The ideal story to tell will be one that further expands upon the ideas offered in your speech while incorporating a bit of humor or entertainment. If your goal is to gain sympathy, then including a humble anecdote or personal story can also be a great pick. Once you have found your story, practice telling it during your speech to be certain that it fits.
Follow the Audience
Although practice will always help you to deliver a speech effectively, it is also important to gauge your audience’s reaction to your story. Effective storytelling should always include making your audience feel included. Therefore, look for visual cues throughout your speech. Has your audience begun to get restless? Then, it may be time to get more animated and incorporate a small bit of humor. Additionally, smiling and showing your audience that you enjoy being there will help you to connect. By focusing on truly connecting with your audience, you will captivate them with your information while empowering them to take action after your speech has ended.
Brand Director,Author & International Speaker
Joie Gharrity
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