How to Use Social Media While Public Speaking

by Ellie Williams

Use social media to keep your audience engaged

Social media has forever changed the benefits and challenges of public speaking. While social media can sometimes distract audience members, who may start posting status updates if they get bored during a speech, it can also enhance the relationship between speaker and audience and allow speakers to reach a much wider audience.

Step 1

Monitor audience interest. When you watch what audience members are saying about your speech on social media sites, you get feedback in real time, rather than waiting for an assessment after the fact. By monitoring social media while you’re on stage, you can gauge your audience’s reaction to your speech. You’ll know right away whether listeners are bored, they think you’ve gone off-topic or they don’t understand any of the material. If you spot any of these problems, you can immediately liven up your presentation, steer your speech back on topic or go over anything that created confusion for your audience.

Step 2

Interact with the audience. Use social media to make your speech more interactive, creating a stronger bond between you and your listeners and making them feel involved. Respond to comments made on social media sites and encourage the audience to post questions on the sites for you to address during your speech. Use these comments and questions to guide your speech, because even if you came well-prepared with a detailed outline of what you wanted to say, you may find your audience is more interested in other aspects of the topic. Even if it’s not what you had planned to discuss, spend some time following up on the issues your audience raises.

Step 3

Get your message to a larger audience. While it may be startling to look out at your audience and see them spending more time looking at their mobile devices than at you, this same action can help you reach a much larger audience than you normally would. Encourage people to use their mobile devices, instead of banning them, which can make listeners feel they are being told what to do. Give them the name you use on social media sites, so they can post updates linking to your account and driving new followers to you.

Step 4

Speak for a social media audience. As you write your speech, keep in mind that your audience may want to post quotes from your presentation on social media sites. Use wit and humor when appropriate, so audience members will have quotes that will interest their followers. Incorporate reader-friendly, “sound bite” type quotes that will fit within the word count restrictions of many social media sites.

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