TJ Walker tells a student how to get better at public speaking through practice videos. Upload any speech to YouTube or Vimeo, get peer feedback that names what works first then what to fix, and review yourself repeatedly. Perfection isn't the point.
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Teresa writes in from Udemy with the following question. She says, TJ and this relates to my request for students to post videos. She says, I get at the importance of posting the videos. What type of videos? When I ask you to post your videos here, I mean whatever speech presentation, talk media message you're preparing or you're using as practice for what you're doing in these online courses, create a video of it. It can be on an iPad, an iPhone, a webcam, and then upload it to some video file sharing platform. YouTube is the most popular, the most common, the easiest. But it could be Vimeo, it could be any source as long as anyone can access it by clicking on the link. Now, it's perfectly fine in this forum to post a video of yourself as long as it's not promoting anything or just some sales gimmick. But if it relates to what it is you're trying to learn in this course and how to speak more effectively, you can post the video here and others will critique it. Teresa continues with the question, are we talking introduction videos to other students? Yes. Sales pitches? Yes. Elevator pitches? Yes. Any or all of the above? Well, yes, any of those. I want to do this right and according to what you want. Could you elaborate on that? I think I just. Are we encouraged to comment on other student videos and what are the guidelines? Yes. I'm really glad you asked that. So we're trying to create more of a community right here for people who are interested in learning how to speak more effectively to live audiences to the media. And that's why it's important for you not to just put your own videos up, but to critique and comment on others. Here's the format I use in my own training practice. I always start off by telling people exactly what they're doing well, and be really, really specific. Don't just say, oh, everything is great. Enumerate exactly what it is you like about your fellow students presentation. Then give them specifics on what to improve. Tell them exactly what you think was less than great, and then how, in your view, it could be made better. That's the way to critique. That's what I do professionally. That's what you can do right here in this forum and ask, yes, if there's anything else you want me to be doing. That's really the main thing. The number one thing, you heard me in the first lecture in this course, you've heard me in the discussions. The number one way to get better at this is you have to speak on video, review it yourself numerous times. Keep doing it until you like it, until you get feedback from people you respect, letting you know you're accomplishing what you want. Do that and you will be in great shape. So don't worry about it being a perfect video to share. This isn't perfect. I didn't have time to put on a tie. I'm doing this in one take. Don't worry about making it perfect. Just get something up and out there so the critiques can begin.
