Public Speaking Tips: 10 ways to speak with confidence

The fastest way to get better at speaking in public is to talk out loud, watch the recording afterwards and fix one specific thing. Rereading your notes trains your memory. Delivery only improves when you speak in real time with a bit of pressure on you.

The gains show up sooner than most people expect. Confidently has scored 8,184 practice sessions, and by their sixth to tenth session people averaged confidence scores 6.6% higher than on their first attempt: from 6.22 to 6.63 on a scale of 10. Close to six in ten people who practiced at least six times beat the score of their very first recording.

Keep each attempt short. Clarity scores are highest in practice runs of 20 to 59 seconds and fall once a run goes past a minute. Five repetitions of a 50-second answer teach you more than a single long run-through you never watch back.

Feedback is the hard part. You are a biased judge of your own delivery: most people cringe and stop the video, or watch the whole thing and notice nothing. Your phone camera gives you the recording but stays silent on what to change. Confidently fills that gap with a free test in your browser. It shows you two random words, you speak for 30 seconds and work both words into what you say, and the app gives your voice and your face a score out of 10, counts your filler words and tells you the single thing to fix first.

Your audience is the group of people who will hear your message. Knowing them is a pillar of public speaking: Harvard lists it among its ten tips, and an article in PubMed Central notes that knowing your audience makes the message more relevant and more personal.

The University of Pittsburgh calls this audience analysis: work out who is listening and adapt the talk to their interests, their level of understanding, their attitudes and their beliefs. An open course from Texas splits it into five categories: situation, demographics, psychology, culture and prior interest in the topic.

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• How many people will be there, and where will they hear you?
• What are their ages, jobs and cultural backgrounds?
• What do they already know about the topic?
• What do they hope to take away from your talk?
• What attitude do they bring to the topic: for, against or neutral?

What to do: before you write a single line, spend ten minutes answering the five questions below. Then talk with them, not at them. Harvard recommends inclusive pronouns such as "we" to build a bond from the first sentence.

Practicing with realistic exposure is the most reliable way to improve. The skills of a good speaker are learned by doing the real thing, often. Mayo Clinic sums up the path in three steps: prepare, practice, and ask for help if practice on your own only gets you part of the way.

Start small and start at home. Purdue Global recommends practicing out loud, and the University of Pittsburgh suggests timing every rehearsal. Say your opening alone, then in front of a friend you trust, then to a small group: that is gradual exposure. A study in PubMed Central found that practicing in front of a supportive virtual audience improves how you rate your own confidence in real life.

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How long: 5 minutes a day out loud is a realistic, measurable goal. If you prefer a group, Mayo Clinic mentions clubs such as Toastmasters International. And to practice in front of real people from your own home, there is AmberWillo, the sister site of this guide.

Your body speaks before your mouth does. Harvard points out that credibility in a speech comes from three things: open, friendly body language, an unhurried pace and steady eye contact.

What to do: stand up straight, shoulders back, arms loose. Use open gestures with your palms visible when you want to underline an idea. Rehearse in front of a mirror to see your posture and your gestures, a habit that coaches such as Shola Kaye keep recommending.

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For your eyes, use the 50/70 rule from Michigan State University Extension: make eye contact about 50% of the time while you speak and 70% while you listen. Hold one person's gaze for 3 to 5 seconds, roughly one sentence, then move to another part of the room.

Your voice is your main tool. Purdue Global recommends varying your speaking rate: slow down on a key point and speed up a little on the supporting detail.

The numbers help you calibrate. A comfortable rate for presentations sits between 100 and 150 words per minute, and TED Talks average 173, with a range of 154 to 201, according to VirtualSpeech. One recommended band runs from 120 to 170. Above 180 words per minute, comprehension drops. Record yourself for 1 minute, count the words and you know where you stand.

173wpm

Pace is also the signal that carries the most weight: across the 8,184 sessions scored by Confidently, average confidence rose from 5.52 in the lowest pacing band to 6.68 in the highest. For volume and pitch, use the five Ps of the voice: pitch, pace, pause, projection and passion. Match your volume to the size of the room and lift it on the sentences that matter.

The first words out of your mouth are the most important ones: that is how Dr. Rosenbaum sums up his rule number one. The Moxie Institute puts a number on it: you have the first 30 seconds to deliver a convincing hook, and right after it you need to make your central message unmistakable.

What to do: write your opening in full and learn it by heart. Three openers that work: a surprising fact, a direct question to the audience, or a short story of 3 or 4 sentences. Then say in one sentence what your talk is about and what they will take home.

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For the rest, use the 3:2:1 rule: the three most important things you want them to remember, backed by two concrete examples. That structure cuts the rambling and gives you clarity under pressure. How long: writing and memorizing a 30-second opening takes about twenty minutes.

Nerves are normal: Harvard says so in its very first tip, and Mayo Clinic describes fear of public speaking as a common form of performance anxiety. The typical symptoms, according to the University of Pittsburgh: shaking, sweating, a dry mouth, a racing heart and a high, thin voice. Close to 77% of people feel this fear, and between 15% and 30% have public speaking anxiety as such, according to studies in PubMed Central.

What to do with your body: Mayo Clinic recommends two or more slow, deep breaths before you start and during the talk. If you want a count, use 4-7-8: breathe in through your nose for 4 seconds, hold for 7 and breathe out through your mouth for 8. The ADAA (Anxiety and Depression Association of America) adds yoga, meditation and cutting back on caffeine, and the University of Iowa's counseling service notes that daily aerobic exercise can reduce anxiety by up to 50%.

15% to 30%

About 77% of the general population fears public speaking.

What to do with your head: picture it going well and focus on your ability to handle the situation, as the ADAA advises. If practice alone only gets you part of the way, Mayo Clinic says cognitive behavioral therapy eases this fear, and a meta-analysis in PubMed Central found a large effect for psychological interventions (Hedges' g of 0.74). How long: two minutes of breathing before you walk in changes how your voice comes out.

Stories and humor are the most direct way to make your message stick. Harvard includes it among its ten tips: using humor, telling stories and letting your personality show grabs attention and gives the talk a personal touch.

What to do: pick a personal story that connects with something your audience has lived through too. Tell it with a beginning, a problem and an outcome, in under a minute. Put the humor inside the story, in an observation that makes people smile, rather than a stand-alone joke.

How long: one story of about a minute for each key idea. With the 3:2:1 rule from tip 6, your two examples per idea can be two short stories.

A visual aid is any object, image, slide or demonstration that reinforces what you are saying. The University of Pittsburgh explains that visual aids can help the effectiveness of a speech a great deal when they complement the talk instead of replacing it. American Public University adds that a visual aid eases anxiety.

What to do: make every visual truly visual, with an image or a chart instead of paragraphs. Babson puts it in two words: keep it simple. Harvard asks that every aid do one of two jobs: clarify the content, or grab and hold attention.

• One idea per slide.
• An image or a chart instead of text.
• Type you can read from the last row.
• Equipment plugged in and tested before you start.

Set everything up and test it before you begin: Pittsburgh recommends installing the visual aid before the speech. How long: arrive fifteen minutes early to plug in, project and look at one slide from the back of the room.

Feedback is your compass. Purdue Global recommends asking for it to keep practice and growth going, and an article in PubMed Central defines it as information you ask for with the goal of improving your performance. Harvard closes the loop: getting better at public speaking is an ongoing process, and the goal is progress.

What to do during the talk: read the audience's signals and adapt as you go, as Harvard recommends. What to do afterwards: ask someone you trust for one concrete comment on one thing (your pace, your eye contact, your filler words).

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What to do when you are on your own: record yourself and score yourself. Confidently does exactly that in 30 seconds: it rates your voice and your face on a scale of 10, counts your filler words and points you to the one thing to fix first. Repeat the test after every block of practice and compare.