Three top tips for starting any talk.
How should you start your talk, your pitch, your presentation, your interview? Whatever it is. How should you start so that you engage your audience? Well, I think there are three simple things you should do which will really help engage your audience, get them interested and have them listening to everything you say.
The first one: eye contact, who’d have thought? Look directly at your audience. It’s easy to get distracted by the technology or to be thinking of something else, and avoid their eye contact. Look at them, connect with them.
The second thing is to smile, and so many people forget to do this. And maybe they think it’s not professional to smile while you’re giving a talk. This greases the wheels of social interaction. You should smile. It helps connect with the audience. But it also tells them that you’re happy to be there. And so from that, they might take it that actually you know what you’re talking about. Maybe you’ve done this before, and that this won’t be a massive waste of time. Smiling also tells your subconscious that you’re enjoying what you’re doing even if you’re nervous. Which is a really clever trick.
And the third thing you should do, after you’ve said your name, is to state the reason they should be listening. Give them a hook, give them something interesting. It could your why, it could be the reason that you’re there. It could be your area of expertise. But give them a hook, give them something that has them listening and waiting for the next thing you’re going to say.
So: eye contact, smile, give them an interesting hook. And that’s how you should start every talk.