What are the 5 most important quick ideas for improving your public speaking?  I’m going to go for broke this week and blog on 5 quick takes in 5 days.  Put them together and you should have a good ‘cheat sheet’ for fulfilling your resolution to improve your public speaking in 2012. 

5.  Make your speaking personal – talk to individuals.  Many people have been told to talk the foreheads of the audience, or look just over their heads.  That’s the wrong approach.  But don’t just make eye contact.  When trying to use that advice, most people find their eyes darting all over the room.  That makes you look furtive. 

Instead, focus on real individuals in turn, and talk to each one as if you were having a conversation with them.  How long you spend with each person depends on the topic, where you are in the talk, and a host of other issues.  But if you talk to one person for 30 seconds to a minute or so, and then move on to the next one, that’s good starting practice.  And pick people in different places in the audience, so that you bring everyone in and make the room feel small.  If you’re willing to walk around a bit, you can make even an audience of 500 or 1,000 people seem small. 

There you go.  5 days, 5 ideas, 5 quick ways to improve your speaking this year.  Good luck and here’s to better speaking in 2012.