Hooking your Audience

The opening of any speech is essential. The first few second of your speech will determine whether you can engage your audience, grab their attention and make them care about what you have to say. You need to do something to set yourself apart. You need to make yourself stand out. You need to hook them if you don’t want to let them go.

Your first ten-to-thirty seconds are when you will either make a connection with your audience, or won’t. Within this time your audience will decide whether they are going to give you their attention and whether they are going to be open to caring about what you’re going to say.

Generally speaking, you don’t want to start by discussing your topic too directly. Instead, you may want to pick something a bit broader, and focus in on your real issue (in order to give it context). Alternatively, you may want to choose something more specific, like a specific situation, and open up into your real topic (in order to show it effects on a smaller, more relatable level). Another potential option is to start with something related but distinct, and perhaps more familiar, and take a side-step into your topic (in order to show the parallels between the two things). In each case you are trying to give the audience something relatable, which helps them to contextualise your topic and link it with their own prior knowledge and/or experiences.

There are an infinite number of ways to begin a speech. There are no set rules that you need to follow, and there are many approaches not listed here (such more basic ones, like starting with an interesting fact or evocative quote). The most important thing to do is to remember your goal: to engage your audience, gain and keep their attention, and to make them care about what you have to say. With this in mind, you may find the below techniques useful when it comes to trying to ‘hook’ your own audience. This list is by no means exhaustive, but you may want to try a few out and see what feel would work best with your chosen topics and audience.

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Option 1: Begin with a Story

If used correctly, stories or anecdotes are often the most effective way of beginning a speech and engaging your audience. We have a natural predisposition to stories, and a well-crafted narrative is able to establish an emotional connection very easily.

Your story should serve as a pathway into your issue. It doesn’t need to set up everything and it doesn’t need to be long or detailed. Rather, it can illustrate an aspect of the issue you are discussing and how it can affect people on a more personal level. Stories, after all, are about connecting with people.

Personal anecdotes are especially effective. Not only do they help to introduce your issue and illustrate your perspective, but they help to establish your own personal expertise and experience in this issue, giving you a position of authority and making you appear more genuine. These are all traits that an audience will react to positively.

Stories should be brief, but with enough detail for the people listening to it to feel what’s happening (make sure you ‘show’ and don’t just ‘tell’ what’s happening). If you can get the balance right, and have an interesting story to tell, this can be a very effective means of hooking your audience.

Finally, the story must have a lesson or moral that supports your argument, and, if you are opening with it, then this should be a story that your audience is likely to be sympathetic towards.

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Example: Teenage Homophobia

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Option 2: Place your Audience inside your Issue

Another approach is to tell a story, but use inclusive language to place your audience inside it, and thus make them part of the issue you are discussing. This approach is very similar to using an anecdote, but focusses on experience, perception and making your audience an actor in what is happening.

Consistent and very frequent use of inclusive language and the second person “you” is needed. Avoid using names of people or locations, as you want the audience to fill in the blanks with things that are familiar to them. Use descriptions, but focus on feelings and actions, rather than describing places in too much detail. If you want to be particularly heavy-handed, you can even tell your audience that “I want you to imaging that you are…”.

This approach has a number of benefits. If done properly, it can cause your audience to become invested in your issue very quickly. It can also begin introducing key aspects of your issue or topic: the causes of the problem, or the effects being suffered by the victims.

If you take this approach, consider very carefully how you want your audience to react. Do you want them to be feeling sympathy for those affected? Do you want them to feel uncomfortable, and challenge them to consider what type of role they would play in a situation? Do you want to reinforce their existing expectations, or make them view a situation in a new way?

Because you are trying to make people visualise themselves in this situation, storytelling elements must be used heavily, and descriptions are a necessity. You need to not only be able to place your audience within the situation, but also guide their actions, thoughts and responses. It needs to be done step-by-step: if you take any leaps that your audience does not follow, or disagrees with, then you risk losing them.

Example: The Bystander Effect

Option 3: Invert Expectations or a Surprise Reveal

The opening of your speech can provide a great opportunity to invert your audience’s expectations about what you are going to discuss. You make the audience think that you are going to talk about one thing, playing on their assumptions, stereotypes or societal conventions, before switching tracks and going down an unexpected path.

There are two approaches to this. Firstly, you can begin discussing your issue or topic, but leave out a key piece of information, and thus cause your audience to make assumptions about what is going to be discussed that are then shown to be wrong. This can be a great approach if your goal is to identify and break stereotypes, or if you want people to focus on a perspective that is usually ignored.

A second approach is to go down one path, making your audience believe that a certain tone or approach will be followed, before making an unexpected statement that completely changes the course of what you are discussing (for example beginning as if you are going to give a very serious, depressing speech that is then turned into something more light-hearted). The trick with this approach is to make sure that your initial content and redirected content are linked in some way, and that this link becomes clear by the end of the speech. If you don’t make your opening material relevant in some way, then you can come across as cheap or your audience may feel cheated.

Example: Gay Right in Africa

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Example: The Puzzle of Motivation

Option 4: Rhetorical Questions

The key to using rhetorical questions is to use a series of them. A single question on its own is unlikely to resonate with an audience, particularly at the start of a speech. However, providing a series of questions helps to get your audience thinking.

Your questions should revolve around the key idea, issue or theme of your speech. This is an opportunity to introduce the different dimensions of your topic.

Each new question should also build on a previous question. Add new information to contextualise what you’re discussion, then ask another series of questions. These aren’t going to be questions with a simple or easy answer – you may not be able to answer them in your speech – but they should help to illustrate the nature, scope and importance of your topic.

Example: How great leaders inspire action

Option 5: Use Humour

When used successfully, humour grabs an audience’s attention. If what you say is genuinely humorous, you can establish a strong, positive connection with your audience.

Just because you’re dealing with serious subject matter doesn’t mean you can’t use humour. In fact, the contrast that is created between the initial humour and the serious nature of the topic being discussed can be extremely effective. However, in order for this to work, there needs to be a clear and controlled transition where the tone of the shift speech goes from humorous to serious.

Importantly, if you want to switch between a humorous to a serious tone, this needs to happen at the start of your speech. Once your prevailing tone is established, you should stick with it. Going form humorous to serious puts people at ease and builds a connection, before calling on them to question their assumptions and ideas. When discussing a serious topic, going from serious tone to a humorous one, especially if it occurs in the middle of your speech, undermines the seriousness of the topic being discussed and can make it seem trivial.

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Option 6: Use an Extended Metaphor

Metaphors are a form of comparison, where one thing becomes something else: one thing becomes symbolic of something else. When used correctly they spark the imagination. If they are particularly creative or unique, they will stand out in your audience’s mind and will leave a lasting impression. This makes them very effective for establishing and emphasising ideas, or helping your audience to understand the context of an issue.

However, if you are going to use a metaphor to open your speech, then it shouldn’t be something brief. You need to tell a bit of a story, and tease out your metaphor to explore its different facets and nuances, and show how apt it is when describing the subject matter of your speech. This means that you need to provide an extended metaphor that is built up over a few sentences. Like any story, it needs detail before it can become read for the reader.

If you are going to use a metaphor, it can be a good idea to make it clear what parallels you are drawing. This can either come when you are presenting the metaphor itself, fusing it with your topic, or afterwards, when you are introducing the actual subject matter of your speech. Just remember to take your audience through it step-by-step.

Example: Political Soup

Option 7: Shock your Audience or make an Extreme Statement

By choosing words that you think will draw disbelief from your audience, you can draw them in to what you are going to say. An unexpected, shocking or extreme statement has an immediate impact, and causes people to pay attention from the very start of your speech.

However, if you are going to make a statement that is designed to provoke shock or disbelief, you will need to justify it. If your claim is huge and forms the central contention of your argument, then this may take the majority of your speech. Remember that the purpose of this approach is to hit your audience when they have their defences are down, but once they react you should expect a degree of scepticism. It is then your job to bring them around to this new point of view.

This statement doesn’t necessarily need to be the very first thing you say – after all, some brief context may need to be established – but it should come very early on (i.e. within the opening two or three sentences of your speech).

While this may seem to be a versatile opening, you should use it with caution. If your statement is too extreme, you risk alienating your audience. A shocking fact can be effective, but if it is something that your audience may have heard before, it will lost its impact. If jarring your audience or making them feel uncomfortable is out of keeping with the purpose and tone of your speech, then it won’t be effective either. Play around with this one, but use a degree of caution and consider how you want to position your audience both intellectually and emotionally.

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