Time to shake the sand out of your shoes, finally, and get into fall with our top tips from the action-packed month of September on the Eloquent Woman blog. Here's what our readers consulted most this month:
- Can gesturing help your speaking? The answer is yes, and this month's most popular post explains the science behind gestures and why they work so well.
- Speaking from strength is an issue for many women, so I offered these 6 statements I think are the strongest ones any speaker can make--keep them at the ready!
- Handling questions -- especially when they get your talk off-track -- continues to be a topic our readers consult, making these graceful ways with Q&A popular in September.
- Webinar or conference call speakers will want these tips for handling yourself when the audience is invisible, our next-most-popular post.
- Prepping to speak in a meeting? The [non]billable hour blog thinks our checklist for the whole speaker is the "perfect preparation" for meetings, negotiations, even court appearances, and made it a popular tip this month.
- Developing a message was among the coaching areas we covered this month with contest winner Stephanie Benoit. Readers followed along with this post on message basics.
- How can you learn more about your audience? A reader posed this question, and the answer was one of the month's top tips.
- Building up your confidence as a speaker? So is our contest winner. My advice to her on her top priority as a speaker: Fake it until you make it, with 12 ways to seem confident before you really are.
- Confidence tips from other speaker coaches made up this "confidence bible" post, one of our top reads.
- Can you see yourself speaking? Better yet, can we? This post urges you to post a photo of yourself speaking on The Eloquent Woman on Facebook--I'd like to build a photo gallery of women speaking so there are good role models out there. This was inspired by one of our Facebook fans, who uses a picture of herself speaking as her profile photo.
