Ted what makes a great speech

This way, they all had similar exposure, had about the same amount of time to rack up views, and were moderate in length so as not to skew volunteers' ratings. Each of the volunteers was given only 10 TED talk videos to watch so as not to experience fatigue which could affect their ratings. They found that five specific, nonverbal patterns differentiate the most popular TED talks from the least popular ones. And they believe these five patterns show us how to be influential and charismatic.

Let's dig in to their results, as well as the helpful public speaking tips Van Edwards and her team derived from these results. Think about how you'd normally prepare to deliver a talk.

You probably spend the majority of that time preparing what you're going to say, right? I certainly do. But in the future, we might consider spending more time preparing how we're going to deliver our content rather than what we're going to say. In the Science of People's study, half the participants watched all their videos with sound, and half of them watched the videos on mute.

Then, participants were asked to rate each TED speaker on their charisma, intelligence, and credibility. Ratings were exactly the same whether they'd watched the video with sound or without sound.

So the next time you deliver a speech in front of an audience, practice standing up straight, purposefully using the space on the stage to move around, and using natural and appropriate hand gestures to improve your delivery. Van Edwards and her team found a correlation between the number of views on a TED talk and the number of hand gestures.

The most popular TED talks had an average of 7,, views and speakers used an average of hand gestures. The least popular TED talks had an average of , views and speakers used an average of hand gestures. The more hand gestures, the higher the speaker's charisma rating as well.

In general, TED speakers who used fewer than hand gestures scored lower on charisma. Their suggestion? Use your hands to help illustrate and reinforce your ideas. When you do, you will seem more relaxed, confident, and authoritative. Van Edwards and her team found a correlation between the number of views a TED talk had and the speaker's vocal variety.

Participants were asked to rate speakers on the amount of fluctuation in their voice tone, volume, and pitch. The results? The more vocal variety a speaker had, the more views they got. More vocal variety also correlated with higher charisma and credibility ratings. Vocal variety also correlated with high view count: TED speakers delivering the most popular talks had It makes sense that a speech with little vocal variety will turn listeners off. When you speak in an expressive, energized way, your audience is much more likely to maintain interest -- which probably means they'll like you more, too.

So the next time you practice your speech, practice switching up your pace and pitch, and pausing to allow your message to sink in. More importantly, don't memorize a script. Memorized speeches sound like memorized speeches. Most of the time, memorized speeches don't sound natural -- and, in Van Edwards' words, they actually "kill charisma. Van Edwards and her team found that the more time a TED speaker smiled while delivering his or her speech, the higher their perceived intelligence ratings were.

Speakers who were rated high in intelligence typically smiled for more than 14 seconds of their entire talk, while speakers rated lower in intelligence typically smiled for 14 seconds or less. This may be counterintuitive to some of you -- and Van Edwards and her team cite this in their research. Close the loop. Practice with clock counting up. Practice with clock counting down. Be noteworthy. Do one more FULL timed rehearsal right before you walk on stage. Have two natural ending points.

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Here's Julian Treasure to help. In this useful talk, the sound expert demonstrates the how-to's of powerful speaking -- from some handy vocal exercises to tips on how to speak with empathy. A talk that might help the world sound more beautiful.