The ability to captivate an audience through your speech or presentation is a beneficial skill to have. Whether you are trying to climb the ladder at a company you work for or build out your own brand, great public speaking and presentation skills can certainly offer a lot of mileage. To help you make the most of the benefits that being a great public speaker has to offer, we’ll take a look at five presentation design tips for crafting speeches and presentations that are sure to wow your audience.

Tip #1: Know Your Idea and Your Audience

Before you can get started crafting an ovation-worthy presentation, you first need to form a firm understanding of the idea you are trying to convey and the audience that you are trying to convey it to. Every speech or presentation needs a point or a key message that it is meant to get across. Rambling on about various topics without providing your audience any key message(s) that they can take home with them certainly isn’t likely to win you any awards as a skilled orator.

In addition to forming a solid understanding of the message you would like to convey through your presentation, it’s also important to consider the audience that you are presenting to. A speech that is delivered to an audience of business executives, for example, obviously needs to be much different from a speech that is delivered at an amateur magicians convention – even if the message you are trying to get across is the same in both instances. By pinning down the message you are trying to convey and taking into account the audience that you are presenting it to, you can hone your presentation and message in a way that will be best received by your audience. A perfect business idea can enhance your business objectives.

Tip #2: Avoid Writing a Script

It can be tempting to write and follow a script when giving a speech. After all, a script ensures that you are able to deliver all of your thoughts without losing your place or getting sidetracked. The problem with scripts, though, is that it is easy to tell when someone is reading from one. Even if you happen to have a teleprompter that allows you to avoid staring down at a piece of paper throughout your entire speech, your audience will still probably be able to tell that you are reading from a script – and the quality of your speech is likely to suffer as a result.

If you feel the need to create something to help keep you on track during your speech, consider creating note cards that cover your speech’s key points and main ideas. Ideally, you will have practiced your speech enough times before you actually deliver it to a live audience that you don’t even need these note cards. Either way, though, they can still be a nice safety net to have and one that shouldn’t impact the quality of your speech in the way that reading from a script is prone to do.

Tip #3: Make Use of Visual Aids

Human beings are visual creatures. Visual ads increase your brand awareness in the mind of the audience more effectively.  While it is certainly possible to deliver an amazing speech that only consists of you speaking to your audience, visual aids make it much easier to keep your audience entertained and engaged. If you are delivering a presentation as opposed to a speech, visual aids are a must. No one wants to watch a presentation that consists of slide after slide of nothing but written text. At the very least, you’ll want to include some relevant images on your slides. Sprinkling animations or short videos into your presentation design alongside the images you use is even better.

There’s a reason that television is more popular than radio. Even if you are gifted with a silver tongue and your speech is eloquent and captivating, your audience is sure to still enjoy something interesting to look at while they listen. Sprinkle some visual aids throughout your presentation and the quality of your presentation is almost certain to improve.

Tip #4: Inject Storytelling and Humor

Have you ever noticed that almost every speech – no matter the subject or the person presenting it – includes some degree of storytelling and/or humor? The reason why these elements appear in just about every speech (or at least the good ones) is quite simple – nothing keeps an audience engaged better than storytelling and humor. In fact, it’s even fair to say that most audiences are going to expect it from a speech.

Before you can inform your audience and deliver the point that you would like to get across that audience has to be engaged – and no matter how informative your speech might be, it’s difficult to engage an audience unless they are entertained. By telling them a story or injecting some humor into your speech, you can ensure that your audience is entertained and enjoying themselves. Ultimately, keeping your audience engaged and entertained is an important prerequisite for any great speech.

Tip #5: Learn From the Best

There’s no better way to learn a skill than studying the people who have mastered it, and public speaking is certainly no exception. If you would like to craft a speech or presentation that will be well-received, studying the tactics of master public speakers is definitely a great place to start. In some cases, you may be able to find resources written by great public speakers where they lay out their strategies for crafting a great speech. If not, even watching speeches from master public speakers is an excellent way to pick up tips and tools of the trade that you can apply to your own speech.

Research people who are renowned for their public speaking skills, watch a few of their speeches, and see if you can pick up on what it is that makes them great. Once you’ve pinned down some of the things that make these people so enjoyable to listen to, try and apply those same attributes to your own speech.