How to Attract Your Audience’s Attention in Less Than 30 Seconds

This article is part of Communicate Effectively Series – A series on how to communicate publicly for success. Please read 9 simple steps before reading this post.

A good speech starts with a great "attention grabbing" introduction – an introduction that generates curiosity as well as alerts the audience. For a successful speech, it is important to attract your audience early in your talk. An inattentive audience suggests the speaker and their message is not important. If audience isn’t listening to what you are saying, the purpose of your speech will be never achieved. If you plan to motivate or inform or sell your ideas and people are not paying attention, you won’t achieve your goal.

First Things First

Before starting to write the introduction, make sure you know the steps for giving a great presentation. Make sure you know the purpose of your presentation, understand who the audience is and research the topic thoroughly. Once this is done, start thinking about how to organize the presentation.

The Four Simple Ways to Start your Speech

After first things are done start writing an attention-grabbing introduction. Below we present some ways to grab your audience’s attention. These tips, if used properly, will improve your speech by a great degree. Here are the four simple ways to attract your audience’s attention -

Ask them a Question – Questions are great way to start a speech. Questions engage people. Questions start our thought process, we tend to find answers for questions. One thing to keep in mind – questions should be appropriate to the group. Keep your audience in mind and ask the right question.
Tell them a personal story – A personal story connects the speaker and audience. When speaker talks about a personal story or an experience, it creates a sense of belonging and audience is attached and attentive.
Use a Quote – A quote from a famous personality is a great way to attract attention. Most famous personalities have made some comments that have become famous quotes. People can relate to those quotes. They are moved by these quotes because they force them to redefine their perspective. Quotes are thought-provoking. This technique is specially useful in motivational speeches.
Present Interesting Facts – Presenting statistics and facts tells people that the speaker has done some research. Data are perceived as more authentic than most other methods. Everyone loves surprising facts. People like to be surprised and this makes them more attentive. Facts are very useful in informative and persuasive speeches.

Once you have an attentive audience by delivering good introduction, next step is to keep the attention. To keep the attention of your audience present an equally good body and an with a punch. There are seven more ways to grab your audience’s attention.

How did you do it?

What are some of the tricks or techniques that you have observed? Any suggestions on what you have used? Do you think the few ways mentioned above work? What are your favorite tricks? Share your comments below.

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