How to Make a Speech Memorable

Speaking at an event is an honor whether you're delivering a commencement address, corporate lecture, educational discourse or wedding toast. Employ several public speaking strategies to connect with audience members and help commit the most important points of your speech to their memory.

Instructions

1. Determine one point you'd like the audience to remember and build around it. Discuss it immediately in the introduction and again during your conclusion. Try to limit your other essential ideas to 3 or less so the speech will be easier to organize, write and follow.

2. Include humor, personal experiences or powerful anecdotes that audience members can identify with. Listeners will remember the fascinating story or joke and then recall the message associated with it.

3. Consider the age and background of your audience as you write. You want your speech remembered for the right reasons, not because of its abundance of off-color jokes or inappropriate anecdotes.

4. Reference touching or humorous stories from books and movies or borrow effective snippets from historical speeches when they coincide with your subject. If you found them memorable, so will your audience. Remember to give credit to the original source.

5. Encourage audience participation to keep the crowd involved. Have them repeat key words or finish popular phrases. Ask questions with predictable answers that can help further your point.

6. Devise a catch phrase, buzzword or creative last line that the audience will remember and repeat to others.

7. Practice until your voice, tone, hand gestures and facial expressions are relaxed and natural. Memorize anecdotes so you can deliver them without reading the cue cards. The more comfortable you are, the greater your ability to draw the audience into your words.

8. Recite your speech in front of friends and family before you speak in public. Discuss which points they consider most memorable. Rework any sections that don't have as much emotional impact as you'd like.