Tips to Enhance Your Speech with Visual Aids

Speaking to a room full of people can be intimidating to the most extroverted person. For those who are even more nervous in this situation, they often fear being viewed as boring or uninformative. To help keep your audience’s attention and to provide you with some added security, you can use visual aids. However, it’s important to understand how to use them correctly for the most benefit.

1. Keep Props Relevant and Interesting

Don’t just include visual aids because you can. Instead, make sure they enhance your speech. They may either drive home a point in your speech or bring a topic to life. Sometimes a difficult subject is more easily understood with visual assistance. On the other hand, you want to make sure your props don’t distract from your speech.

2. Keep Your Visual Aids Simple

One of the most popular options in visual aids is a power point presentation or slides. To make this aid effective, keep the information simple and short. A crowded slide will be difficult for your audience to read. Instead, limit your words to less than 10 or include only important words such as verbs, nouns or adjectives.

3. Consider Handouts

While handouts aren’t part of your presentation, they can add to the success of your speech. As people follow along, they will maintain interest and pay attention to what you say. Use handouts to support a specific point or as an outline for your entire speech. Put them in question form that your audience must answer.

4. Speak Clearly

Visual aids can draw your audience’s attention away from what you’re saying part of the time. Make sure you speak slowly and clearly so they can understand even if they are distracted by your props. If you have trouble speaking well in front of a crowd, you can hire a business speech coach to help you improve.

5. Make Photos Clear and Easy to View

If you use photos as part of a slideshow or other visual component, make sure they are large enough to be seen. Extend them over the entire screen for easier viewing. Keep them simple and avoid busy photos or images where the purpose of showing them might be missed. As with other visual aids, the purpose for including them should be clear to the audience.

6. Use Props to Add Humor

Sometimes you need to inject a little fun into a boring or serious topic. Using visual aids is an effective way to do this. Include a slide with a joke or funny image to lighten the mood for a moment. When you incorporate humor into your speech for just a few seconds, you keep the audience awake and listening.

Visual aids can either enhance or distract from your speech. Know when to add them and how to use them to ensure they help you achieve the results you want. Keep your audience awake and anticipating your next sentence by incorporating the right kind of props.

Claudette Roche is a dialect coach who teaches accent reduction in the Los Angeles area. She teaches foreign and American accents to actors and business persons/executives. In 2010 she was named as one of The Top 5 Voice Coaches by Hollywood Weekly Magazine.

Claudette Roche is a dialect coach who teaches accent coach.