More and more speakers are being asked to deliver their speeches remotely.  

On one hand this is a good thing – we are being asked to give more  speeches and we can share the importance of public speaking. On the  other hand, it can be challenging to transform our in-person speech into  a speech that works when presented on a computer screen. The good news  is that this can be done. You have the ability to give a speech that  will connect with your audience and you just may change their lives even  though you are not there with them. 

However, in order to make that  happen, you are going to have to change how you give your speeches.

I think that we can all agree that we are now living in the 21st Century. 

The old school way of giving a speech required us to show up at  a location, take the stage, and deliver a speech so that we could  demonstrate the importance of public speaking. In our modern time, we no  longer have to travel to a location in order to deliver a speech – we can do it virtually. 

However, with this new found flexibility comes the responsibility of knowing what it takes to successfully deliver a virtual speech.

As speakers, we are always looking for ways that we can use the importance of public speaking to make our next speech have more of an impact with our audience.  

We’ll consider what we can do with our body language, the use of props,  and many other things. However, it turns out that one of the most  powerful things that we can do to give our next speech a better chance  of connecting with our audience is to enhance the words that we use when we are creating the speech. 

Great idea, now just exactly how can we go about doing that?

If you are like most speakers, the next time that you give a speech you  are going to be hoping that your audience understand the importance of  public speaking and puts their phones down while you speak. 

I  mean really, you’ve spent time creating and rehearsing this speech, the  least that they can do is to give you their undivided attention.  Unfortunately, I think that we all know that this probably is not going  to happen. Perhaps a different approach is called for. Maybe you should  be telling your audience to take their phones out. 

Maybe that Twitter app just might be your new best friend.

Let’s all agree on one thing: you’ve worked hard to prepare for the next  speech that you will be giving. 

When you take the stage, you are  assuming that your audience will be interested in what you have to say  and they will pay attention to you while you are speaking. However, in  this day and age, there is a very good chance that some of the members  of your audience may not be giving you all of their attention. Instead they may be using their mobile phones to text or tweet while you speak. 

What’s a speaker to do?

So just exactly what does disaster look like to a speaker? 

I think that  we can all agree that disaster can take on many forms when it comes to  delivering a speech in public. However, I think that if you are on a  stage and you lose your train of thought and can’t remember what you wanted to say next, then that can count as a speaking disaster. This is something that can happen to any of us at any time. 

We need to be ready to deal with it the next time that it happens.

As speakers we can become comfortable standing in front of an audience  giving a speech because we know about the importance of public speaking.  

However, if we are asked to be the moderator of a panel everything changes.  It’s almost like we will be giving a speech, but we can’t practice this  one beforehand. Additionally, there are a lot of things that we are  going to have to do in order to get the most out of our panel members.  

We are going to have to use all of our speaking skills in order to make moderating a panel a success.

The ability to stand in front of an audience and use the importance of  public speaking is a powerful skill to have. 

It turns out that we can  take this skill one step further if we are willing to teach ourselves how to use our speaking abilities to sell a product.  The good news for speakers is that we are already doing most of the  work that is required when we create, practice and deliver a speech.  

However, when we want to use our speech to sell something, there are a few extra steps that we’ll need to take.

Back in the old days, when we came up with a new idea that we wanted to  use in a speech, we really didn’t have a lot of choices when it came to  trying out our new idea. 

Oh sure, there were family and friends, but you  know as well as I do that because of the importance of public speaking  they would never tell you if one of your ideas was really bad. What we  were desperately missing was a test audience – one that could  give us honest feedback on our speech idea. 

Well, fast forward to today  and it turns out that now we all have what we’ve been looking for – a social media audience.

Speakers want to be remembered.  

We’ve put a lot of effort in to creating, practicing, and then  delivering our speech. We want this effort to mean something because we  understand the importance of public speaking. We want to be remembered.  The challenge that we are facing is that we are talking to a diverse  audience. Everyone who is listening to us is different and they all  remember things differently. 

We need to understand how they remember and  then find ways to make them remember us.