Personal interest in your audience is a crucial ingredient in developing as a public speaker. Why? It gives evidence that the thoughts and feelings of your listeners and/or readers are important and you interested in their welfare. Taking their interests into consideration will more likely enable a connection to take place between you and your listeners / readers.

What type of Personal Interest Do We Mean?

How to Show Personal Interest

1. One way is to be observant. What is the difference between a crocheting club and a business owners organisation? Nothing. They are distinct groups of people who share an interest, a niche in the community, if you will. That gives you a foundation to work from as you prepare the talk. Now you can tailor your preparation to suit the audience. Think in advance about the type of questions they may be asking in their mind as they listen to you. Answer those in your material. If you get a chance to talk to some of the audience before your speech, make mental observations that could be incorporated into your material.
2. A second way is to be practical in what you teach or share. Show the audience why it will be of value to them. Have these concepts in mind as you prepare your introductory questions or comments. Use that opening 30 seconds to show that you are thinking about this group, these individuals.
3. Thirdly, don't give the impression that you are selling something. Sure, the action they take may result in them spending some money in the future. But in our niche marketplace, we want to establish our authority about this subject. We need to show that the audience will benefit in taking some action. Learn to give the impression that you are giving something of value. That you are interested in them.

Is There More to This?

This is by far not a comprehensive consideration of how to show personal interest. There is so much more, including developing the listening skill effectively so that you can clearly discern the needs of others.

(I have written a training called Listening Skills - The Forgotten Skill That Is Vital to Business. Here is the link if you would like to review that:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/listening...)

What's Next?

The next page is the wrap up of this training. Please complete the last tasks and then in our concluding page, we will connect all that we have learned to our online businesses. We will emphasize the connection between developing our public speaking skills and building our websites through the Wealthy Affiliate Network.