Reading time:9 min reads
It seems as though there’s a smartphone app for everything these days, and public speaking is no exception. Public speakers have existed for millennia without having smartphones to help and support them, but applications have changed the game and opened up a whole raft of new possibilities.
You can get by without them, of course, but that doesn’t mean that you should. If there’s a tool out there that can help you, you need to take advantage of it, whether that’s a smartphone app or an old school projector.
And so with that in mind, in today’s article, we’re going to take a look at nine of the best smartphone apps out there to help public speakers to perform at their best. Let’s get started.
Ummo is a super useful smartphone app that’s designed to help you to get rid of the weasel words in your presentations. Weasel words are words like “um” and “ah” that don’t add anything to what you’re talking about and simply act as a way to fill some space while you think about your next move. You can also add your own words or phrases so that Ummo can look out for them on your behalf. It will even give you a score to help you track how clear your speech was overall.
PromptSmart Pro is basically a quick and easy to use teleprompter app that makes it easier than ever before to speak to the backdrop of a visual presentation. One of the most interesting things about PromptSmart Pro is the smart part – it has a patented speech recognition system that allows it to automatically follow speakers through their presentations and to react to their voices in real time. It can then proceed to the next slide automatically with no input needed from you.
Learn more about PromptSmart Pro.
Powtoon is designed to stop audiences from suffering from the natural fatigue that comes into play when we spend a day sitting in a crowded room listening to dozens of different presentations. It’s been said that human beings start to get bored after ten minutes or so in such a situation, and so it can be a good idea to change the content of your presentation to keep people interested. Powtoon is a great way to do this because it allows you to make information-led animations that communicate information on your behalf.
Orai is designed specifically for people with thick accents and speech impairments, or those who speak English as a second language. It works by recording you while you speak and then providing you with feedback on how you can improve your pronunciation. It’s specifically designed to give you action-oriented feedback that you can use to actively improve your presentations, and it covers other factors like how often you pause, and how you emphasize certain words to get your point across.
LikeSo is a lot like Ummo in that it aims to help you to get rid of those bad habits that distract from your message. It gets its name from the fact that “like” and “so” are two of the most common weasel words that we use when we’re trying to decide what to say next. It also has the ability to give you real-time feedback about your talk, as well as offering up pacing tips to make sure that you’re not speaking too quickly or too slowly.
Metronome Beats is a specialist app that’s not designed for public speakers but which can come in handy anyway. A metronome is essentially a ticker that musicians use to make sure that they’re staying in time when they’re performing or recording. Public speakers can benefit from metronomes by timing the number of words that they speak each minute. You’ll want to aim for approximately 150 words per minute, but you should also occasionally vary your pace to keep your talk nice and dynamic.
Learn more about Metronome Beats.
EngageNow is a super useful tool that’s designed to boost engagement during your presentations. It allows you to create quick and easy polls and quizzes that you can use to ask the audience for their feedback. It also has a super useful feature that enables you to ask the audience for their questions or allows them to chat with each other, boosting engagement not only between audience and presenter but also between different members of the audience in general.
Slido is another audience engagement tool, and this one is particularly good at sourcing the questions that your audience really wants an answer to. It works like Reddit, so any attendee can submit a question and then other attendees are able to vote on which questions they most want to be answered. You can also get your event team to keep an eye on the questions and act as moderators so that you only have to worry about answering the ones that are both relevant and appropriate.
The chances are that you’ve already come across Canva at some point, and it’s also not designed specifically with public speakers in mind. That doesn’t mean that it should be overlooked, though. It’s basically like Photoshop but for people who aren’t graphic designers, and it makes it super easy for anyone to create stunning visuals that they can add to their presentations to give them a bit of flair and pizazz. No public speaker’s smartphone is complete without it.
Now that you know a few of our picks for the top smartphone apps out there for public speakers who want to be at their best, it’s time for you to share your thoughts. What are a few of the smartphone apps that you couldn’t live without? Or do you prefer to keep things old school?
As always, be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments so that we can keep the discussion going. You can also follow us on your favorite social networking sites for more. We’ll see you soon for another article!
Popular Categories