Humor In Public Speaking

The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

The same applies to jokes. The first time you tell it, it might bomb. The second time (with practice) gets the laugh.

Choose your joke carefully:

- Do not offend your audience

- Never refer to any person (other than yourself), or group of people, in a negative or stereotypical way.

- Make it personal.

Is your audience religious? Sport fans? Professionals? Use material that they will connect with.

If your speaking about computers, make a computer related joke. Likewise for other topics.

Follow these steps to making an effective joke: recall an experience from your life to draw on. Test the story with friends. Write the story down and edit it. Practice your delivery. And finally, practice your pauses. A good pause after a joke will let you drive home your message afterward.

Pauses are really important to how effective you joke will be. Let your audience have a good laugh after the punchline. Wait patiently for the laughter to die down. Then hit them with your most important messages.

Your audience is most attentive right after a good laugh. Use those times to give important messages they should recall. Use humor throughout a speech to create more of those memorable moments for your listeners.

As you begin using jokes in your speech, remember that all speaking is an ongoing editing process. Keep track of which jokes get big laughs, and which ones fall a little flat. Incorporate your friends suggestions, and test them again. Having recordings of your speech will help you do this. Then, spend a few minutes editing or changing your jokes before your next speech.

For more details, see Funny Public Speaking in 5 steps

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