The Purpose Of Your Keynote Speech

When you begin planning for your keynote speech, it’s important that you take a few moments to determine what you would like to accomplish with your talk. 

Ask yourself whether your purpose is to:     

1. Inform
2. Persuade
3. Teach
4. Motivate 
5. Encourage
6. Inspire
7. Entertain

Inform

Depending on your desired outcome, your content and preparation will vary. For example, if you are speaking with the intent to inform, you’ll want to have plenty of facts and statistics to back up your statements. Because you want your audience to leave with more information than they came with, you might want to prepare handouts or have a list of additional resources to give out. 

According to Keynote Speaker Info, they suggest that you focus on one specific solution to a problem and make sure that your audience walks away with at least one idea on how they can improve their current situation.

Persuade

If your goal is to persuade, you need to not only have a thorough understanding of your own position on the topic but also a complete understanding of your opposition’s stance. It would be imperative that you spend time anticipating the questions and objections your audience may have and be adequately prepared. The goal here is to get those in your audience who disagree with you to change their position. 

Teach

When the purpose of your presentation is to teach or instruct, you should know the level of knowledge your audience already has in order to make the lessons appropriate. Determine what the best teaching style is for your audience and whether it would be helpful to use props, visuals or demonstrations to support your material. Anticipate the kind of information that may need to be reviewed and what questions your audience is likely to have.

Motivate

If motivating your audience is what you want to accomplish you would want to pay particular attention to their emotional state. When you are preparing motivational speakers for their performance, you should know what buttons to push to get the response you’re looking for. Having a story, poem, or quote that reflects your message would be very helpful. You should know what buttons to push to get the response you seek. Having a story, poem, or quote that reflects your message would be very helpful.

According to this motivational speaker, it would be very helpful to be able to personally relate to whatever situation your audience is facing and have an inspirational message to share that illustrates the ability to rise above a problem or limitation. Is there anyone in your audience that has successfully handled the struggle you’re addressing? Check with that person and see if you can use their story!

Entertain

When you present to entertain, keep in mind that your audience wants to have fun! Quite often you have a point that you’re trying to illustrate through a stories, jokes, or skits. Always keep in mind the primary purpose of your presentation when selecting appropriate material. Again, it’s imperative to know your audience and use language and material that suits them. It should go without saying that you should never tell jokes or stories that might be offensive or in poor taste!

Of course, many of the decisions you make while doing the preliminary preparation for your talk will require information about your audience — how large a group you’ll be speaking to, the approximate ages of the participants, their gender and educational background are all points that need to be considered as well. It would be very helpful to have a person from the group or organization that you can contact and question about the particulars. The contact might be able to refer you to people that could supply you with valuable presentation content and information. 

If you take the time to narrow down what your primary purpose is in speaking and then create a program that centers on that objective, you’ll go a long way towards guaranteeing a successful presentation!