The Most Important Word For Public Speakers To Use During Presentations

The Most Important Word For Public Speakers To Use

Public speakers need to be masters of communication. They need to know how to use slides to communicate visually, how to leverage body language to communicate nonverbally, and perhaps most importantly, they need to know how to use language to convey their ideas.

Most speakers know they need to effectively use language to communicate, however many speakers forget to also use their language to connect with the audience.

When you forget to use language to connect with other people, and instead only use language to express your ideas, your theories, your research, you miss out on the full power of the human language. Language has the ability to influence emotions, inspire action, and bond people together.

To leverage the full power of language to connect with the audience, stop thinking about yourself, your platform, and your ideas, and start thinking about the people to whom you are speaking. What are their needs, their interests, their experiences?  

When you craft your presentation content in a way that reflects your care for the audience, you make it easier for the audience to care about what you’re saying.

The Word

The easiest way to use language to show concern for your audience is to use the word you throughout your presentation content. Yes, you is the most important word for public speakers to use during presentations. 

As you can see in the video above, there are additional words that speakers should consider using throughout their presentations, however you is the easiest and potentially most impactful word to use consistently throughout a presentation. Other persuasive words are typically harder to use naturally and repeatedly within a presentation without killing your credibility or damaging your connection with the audience.

How-To Use It

If you already have presentation content developed, review your content and look for sentences that can be reworded to change I, my, and me to you and yours. In addition, look for opportunities to change other types of language so the message is focused on the audience, instead of something else, such as yourself.

For example, if you’re talking to a group of executives, and your presentation content has a sentence such as, Executives can empower their employees through X initiatives, connect to your audience by changing the sentence to something like this, You can empower your employees through X initiatives.

presentation example presentation example presentation example

In addition to wording individual sentences to utilize the word you effectively, you should also structure your entire presentation so there is no doubt you care about the audience and the value they receive from your talk. 

For example, consider structuring your content around these three question:

1. What?

2. So what?

3. Now what?

presentation content

When you use this structure, you will introduce your idea/product/message first, and then you will help your audience understand how your idea/product/message relates to them and adds value to their life. 

By ending your presentation by answering the question, Now what?, you ensure your audience has clear next steps. If you don’t give your audience a call-to-action, you leave them hanging and grappling for answers to their questions about how to proceed. If you truly care about your audience, you would never leave them hanging off a cliff, with no implementable takeaways after your presentation. You must deliver next steps or else all of your efforts to connect to the audience will be lost.

Conclusion

When preparing for presentations, remember to use the word you more than the words me or IMost people don’t want you to talk about yourself the entire time, and if they are interested in hearing you talk about yourself, they still want to know what your stories and experiences mean to them, and how your message can improve their lives. 

Additional Resources:

The Complete Guide to Knowing Your Audience

The Shocking Secret To Awesome Presentations

How-To Conquer Short Attention Spans





New Call-to-action




Join our newsletter today!

© 2006-2024 Ethos3 – An Award Winning Presentation Design and Training Company ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Contact Us