Are you a First time speaker?

Are you a first-time public speaker in tech or non-tech, then this a small guide from my experience to help you to take your first step.

1. Create your online branding

Online branding is very important when you start as a public speaker. Online branding could be your own website, twitter, YouTube channel, blog, or Linkedin. This will help in giving you an online persona, conference folks can learn more about you, attendees can know more about you.

Few tips while making online branding:

• Have same user name at every social media platform.
• Have a professional picture and name at every social media platform.
• Keep your personal and professional platforms different. Eg: I don't share my Facebook anywhere and I tell I won't accept any request because it is my personal space.
• It is not important to have a profile at every possible social networking site. You can just be at one platform and just invest your time on that.

2. Pick your comfortable area

You don't need to be an Expert in an area to speak about it. You should be comfortable in that area. Remember no one is Expert. Everyone is a learner. If you are comfortable and spend hours talking about a topic then that is the topic you should speak on. Do not fall in the traps of 'trending topics'. People will be very much interested to hear on something from someone who is passionate about a topic and open for the healthy discussions.

3. Content Presentation

The next thing is to work on your content presentation. When you will start working on your content you might be stuck how much information your presentation has? To be honest, keep it light. Reason? because when you are presenting your presentation and if there is lot of content on that + you will be speaking too. Folks will have an issue to concentrate on the talk - are they supposed to read or hear you? As well as, heavy slides make the content hard to read. So, what should you presently have? Well, only the important information. Might be, just titles and then you engage them by speaking.

4. Dry Run

Do the dry run as many times as you want. With your friends, families or in front of a mirror. No matter how comfortable you are but you need to dry-run with your presentation. Try to see - is the flow of presentation is fine or not? Is there anything you are forgetting? Is there any point you should drop etc.

5. Keep all resources online and offline

When you are a speaker be prepare for all the worst possible situations. Keep your resources - presentation and related demo files online as well as offline. Test it on a different OS.

Ask the organizers the details of the screens your content will be projected, will there be video and audio support (just in case you want to have videos in your talks). Do ask them if you can use your system to present. If yes, carry the connectors and test them before.

6. Confidence is the key

Always remember, confidence is the key to be a good speaker. Be confident and do not forget to smile 😊

Wish you all the best!! Happy Speaking!!