There are benefits associated with being a funny speaker when presenting to other people. You can capture people’s interest and sustain it. You also engage with your audience and make them like you. People have a limited attention span, but when they find you to be engaging, they might listen to you.
Don’t act it out
You need to be naturally funny. Yes, you can plan your jokes and when to say them, but it doesn’t mean you have to sound fake. The audiences will know it if you’re trying to act things out. Besides, there are many ways to make people laugh. You don’t have to make fun of yourself or make funny faces to capture attention.
Make jokes related to what you’re saying
Don’t spit jokes out of anywhere and hope that people will love them. You need to see that what you’re saying makes sense. No one wants to listen to you if your jokes are irrelevant. People might even feel confused about the presentation.
Be sensitive
We laugh at different things. Some people laugh even at insensitive, racist and offensive jokes. You might find them funny – but keep it in private. When you’re in public, you have to screen the kinds of words that you say. You don’t want your jokes to overshadow your presentation. Even if you have something significant to say, no one will listen to you anymore if they feel offended.
Tell the jokes to your friends
You have to run the jokes past your friends first. Find different people to listen to and criticize your jokes. There needs to be a consensus about what you will say; otherwise, you have to think again. If some people in your circle didn’t like it, you could expect more people to dislike it too.
Practice your speech
You can try practising what you will say at the venue so that you will know how it feels. You can imagine that many people are listening to you while you deliver the lines. If you feel that something is off, you have to change parts of your presentation.
Being at the presentation venue ahead of time also helps so that you can check what else you have to prepare. For instance, you might need to prepare the slides. Check if the projector is working well. You don’t want to experience technical difficulties in the middle of your speech. You can consider investing in a projector mount that you can buy at www.unicol.com so that you don’t need to look for the projector. You also don’t need to worry about its quality.
You have to write your entire speech first and decide what jokes to say and in which part of your speech you will include them. You can’t expect everyone to have the same reaction, but you need to try at least. The point is that you want to gain attention and not appear boring to your target audience.
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