Speech Writing - 2nd Production

Greetings all!

As a brief recap from last week's post, we went over:

-A brief introduction into public speaking
-The dangers of being nervous
-The unavoidable factors of being nervous, and symptoms of such

This week, we tackle the topic of knowing your audience.

Whether you're doing a school presentation, running for president for a student government program, or going as high as running for a local or federal government office, you have to know who you're speaking to. If you're doing the hula on stage for a local citizen gathering where you're trying to gain financial support for a project, you'll probably get laughed off the stage, and have a year's worth of bad reputation to live up to. But if you're doing the hula for a Hula Club in which you're trying to be elected as the best hula-dancer, you'll probably receive a more appealing and positive reaction from your audience.
Right now, you're probably thinking, yeah, okay, tell me what I don't know. I obviously am not going to start dancing half-naked on stage while trying to fund-raise. But the metaphor is relevant.
Barack Obama, for example, does an excellent job when it comes to connecting with his audience. He might clap as he comes on stage, shake hands with the audience, or as he is famously known for doing, toss his own untouched water bottle to a dehydrated woman at a caucus in February 2008.
It's heartwarming, it makes you appear as if you understand them, know what they want, and will listen to the public. Barack Obama's watertoss proved more than an accurate throw, but it showed that he cared for an average, lowly, American citizen. It put a positive grin on many peoples face as they saw what Barack Obama could be, and it made him unique. I mean, come on: when was the last time you saw George W. Bush toss a waterbottle to someone, or shake hands without the businesslike, professional act that he always tries to put on?
It's what can make the difference between an A- and an A+ on a speech grade from your teacher, or having to shake hands with your competitor with a false happy smile as he clinched the ticket to the desired political office, or you being that one who is absolutely bursting with happiness as you finally shot down your competition and got that political office. Knowing and connecting with your audience is the best way to sway opinions in your favor; the key part that causes many people to fail is knowing how to do so.

Thanks for reading this blog, and as a peek at next week's, we'll go more into the specifics of connecting and to use it in a speech. Thanks for reading!

-Fresh Writing