Top 11 Tips On How To Engage An Audience

In essence, you want to measure your audience’s energy level... and when you get up on stage, you want to do so, one or two levels above where they are.

Allow me to explain.

I actually learned what I’m about to teach you, back when I was a Taekwondo instructor years ago.

One of the groups of people I used to teach back then was little kids around ages four to six.

I’m sure you know this, but keeping little kids engaged with anything is serious HARD WORK.

What I discovered then, was that if I was the most exciting and energetic thing in the room, it was easier to keep the kids engaged with me. Put simply, wherever they were energy-wise, I’d come in one level or two above that.

My guess is that you aren’t teaching kids Taekwondo.

 
You’re probably about to talk to adults from a stage. In a way, it doesn’t matter, because the same rules apply to both scenarios.

You may be wondering, why didn’t I ask you to come in at a nine or a ten?

Well, the answer to that is... you don't want to blow them out of the water with your energy.

You should be the most exciting thing in the room, but you should come in with just enough energy, that the audience doesn’t go “whoa, whoa, slow down there... that’s a bit too much”.

If your audience is at a nine, then yes. By all means, come in at a ten.

But if your audience is at a three, then you should come in at a four or five, energy-level-wise. That way, you're the most exciting thing in the room, and you get the engagement you want.

At the same time, you don’t want to come in so high, that you blow them straight out of the water.

So for tip #1, you should measure the energy level of your audience and then come in a level or two above that.

As you may very well know, stories or storytelling is pretty much hardwired into our DNA as human beings.

Before YouTube, social media, TV or even radios, there were groups of humans, sitting around campfires and sharing stories.

When you were little and you were going to bed at night, your parents likely read you a story or two before leaving the room. And when they did, you more than likely enjoyed these stories. You may be all grown up now, but your love for stories is 100% still there.

So when someone starts off their speech with a story, it is basically hardwired into us as people, to listen and engage with that story. Therefore, one of the things you absolutely want to do is to regularly use the power of stories to your advantage.

The other side of this is to use personal experiences as well.

It's easier to engage with someone when you feel a connection to them. One of the best ways to share a connection with a person or group of people is to share your personal experiences with them.

So tip #2 is to share personal experiences and use stories to get and maintain audience engagement.

You should tell one part of the story first, and then break things off. When you don’t finish your story immediately, you can create an “OMG, what is the end of that?” effect with your audience.

Here’s a great example. When you watch an episode of a TV show that ends in a cliffhanger, and you have to wait until the next episode to see what happens after, that’s an example of an open loop.

When you watch these shows, you want the loop to finally close. And as long as that loop remains open, you’ll have that insatiable desire to see it closed.

One of the ways you can do something like this as a speaker is to use open loops to create curiosity about your stories or speech. You can tell your audience the first half of something and then reveal the end later on.

Doing this does a great job of keeping them engaged throughout your entire presentation.

To wrap things up, tip #4 is to use open loops.

People love to laugh.

This tip is actually easier to use than you think. It is true that some people are naturally funnier than others.

If you’re outside the category of the “naturally funny”, don’t worry about it. There are many great ways to go around this and get your audience laughing.

Take this as an example.

Assume you’re giving a speech about dog training. What I would do if I were you, is to find a funny dog training meme. One with a dog attacking someone, or something along that line.

And then, I would start off my presentation by showing that meme.

I would make that meme my opening slide as a way to get my audience laughing… I already know the meme is funny, because I literally made a google search for “funny dog memes” before I found it.

If you can do that, then viola! You have a predictable laugh, early on in your presentation.

That laughter would help a lot, by way of audience engagement.

The more humor you can add to your presentation, talk or speech... the more you can get people laughing, then the better off you’ll be.

If you ever get a chance, you could always google “ways to add humor to a presentation,” and see what I’m talking about.

One of the things that help people connect and engage is when they see the 'real' person speaking to them.

When you're on stage, one of the things you want to do to engage the audience is to be vulnerable.

Let me be clear: When I say "be vulnerable", I'm not asking you to turn your talk into some "doom and gloom" sad-fest.

That’s silly.

Don’t get up on stage and bare the deepest parts of your soul to your audience. What I want you to do instead, is what is called ‘authentic vulnerability’.

If you're being vulnerable, only to try and get a certain outcome, then that's manipulation and doesn't count as genuine or authentic vulnerability.

On the other hand, if you’re being vulnerable because it’s legitimately part of the story or something your audience needs to know, then you should absolutely share it.

It’s okay to let yourself appear in a light that’s less than perfect. Because you’re human, and perfect people don’t exist.