3 Things to Know About Making a Good Speech

In this blog, we’ll break down the three parts of every good speech: the content, structure, and delivery. It doesn’t matter where you are speaking or whom you are speaking to. It could be a date, a job interview, a presentation in front of a thousand people — these three sections create the foundational block for speaking.

What Are Some Qualities of a Good Speech?

First, start with your content. This is the most important part of your speech. It’s about understanding the audience, their motivations, and giving them something that they care about. If you ever feel like you are stumbling during your speech, fidgeting with your hands, or you’re using a lot of ums, and “uhs” it’s likely because have a problem with the content – you’re not quite sure of your message what takeaway you want your audience to have. The content determines the “what” behind your speech

Structuring the Content into a Memorable Narrative

Second, your structure. There’s no point having an incredible message if you just ramble on and on and on, and nobody understands it. Worse, if you cannot package your content in a way that’s easy to understand, your audience will lose interest. For instance, people use an introduction, middle and end to demarcate points in their speech. Other common structures include “past, present, future,” “bullet point 1, bullet point 2, bullet point 3,” to help people clearly remember their message.

Delivering a Good Speech

And then third is your delivery, which adds the oomph. When we think about great orators, Barak, Obama, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Gandhi, Mandela, they all had this special oomph when it came to delivery. Part of it is based on authenticity and spontaneity. The other part of it is based on your verbal, visual and vocal delivery. The words you use, the way you change your voice to use those words and your nonverbal body language. Yoodli AI speech coach, is especially helpful with your delivery because it provides you with a private, judgement free place to practice and improve. If you have a good content and good structure but don’t deliver it with conviction, the audience isn’t going to buy your message.

The next time you’re working through a speech, remember to go content, structure, delivery, and then practice that delivery over and over again.