How to Write Your Speech - Do Your Research

If you want to give a good speech, you must start by doing your research. Far too many people believe they can get up in front of a crowd and deliver a speech based on something they’ve come up with on the spot or something they’ve thought about—but never truly investigated in any serious sense of the word. And once things start to go poorly—they get asked a tough question or they flounder around—they then start to believe that they’re just not a good public speaker.

In fact, this couldn’t be any less true. Preparation and research are a critical part of public speaking. And without them, delivering a speech to a large group of people—friends or not—could potentially be a disaster. So here’s what I suggest you do to gather research for your upcoming speech:

i. Wedding Speeches. You might assume that no research is needed when it comes to a wedding speech. You know the bride. You know the groom. What do you need research for? But, in fact, even a wedding speech can be significantly improved through research.

And, here, when I say research, I mean interviews. That’s right: don’t be annoying, but try to find times to interview different people in the wedding party. Talk to the groomsmen, talk to the bridesmaids, and maybe even consider talking to the bride and groom themselves. Use this process to gather important information about moments in the bride’s and groom’s lives, so that you can incorporate them into your speech and include heart-felt and surprising moments.

You’ll find that the bride, groom, and wedding-goers will be surprised and delighted by your wedding speech, which will provide not only your unique perspectives on the bride and groom, but will also provide beautiful reflections from family members and friends who will not get the chance to make a speech at this wonderful occasion.

ii. Business or workplace speeches. When it comes to this variety of speech, research is critical. The last thing you want to do is to present an argument in favor of a new method of doing business—only to find yourself with absolutely nothing other than pure opinion to back it up.

Here, research can take on a number of forms. One form is the process of finding out whether or not other businesses have already adopted your suggestion— and, if so, how things have done for them. If you can convincingly demonstrate that several similar businesses have done the same thing, and they are profiting as a result, then you’ll find that your bosses will be much more willing to adopt
your ideas.

So how can you do this? One way is to search through trade magazines and news articles online. If you can find evidence of successful businesses adopting the practices you mention, you’ll gain some traction there. In addition to this, you might consider searching Google Scholar for articles in the operations research, marketing, or business literature that find support for your argument.

Another possible route you can take is to look at the numbers for your own business. For instance, can you readily access databases on the accounting and production numbers for your own business? Can you reference specific cases where outcomes for particular clients were good? All of these things are important to find out and to use when building a case for your argument.

Finally, in order to build the credibility of your argument further, you might also consider providing some evidence to the contrary—and then explaining why it isn’t as convincing or why it doesn’t apply in your case. While this might seem like a bad idea, it will demonstrate to your detractors that you have considered all arguments, and will allow you to attack counter-arguments before anyone in the room is able to pose them.

iii. Academic speeches. If your speech is purely academic in nature, research will be even more important than in most other cases. If the audience gets a sense that you haven’t done your due diligence, they will quickly latch onto this, and will attempt to expose your ignorance of the
literature. This is especially true when your audience consists of academics who are familiar with all of the literature in your field.

Furthermore, it is important that you not only know the research that is related to your presentation, but that you also use it in your presentation. So don’t simply writing down paper findings from memory when you’re quickly scraping everything together, but take some time to find out where you read these findings, who wrote them, and in what context they wrote them.

In short, make sure that you not only know the findings in your field, but that you have explicitly written down the exact findings and their sources. This will ensure that you don’t get caught off-guard at your presentation.

Source of Information : Public Speaking Exposed