How to Emcee Like a Pro: 11 Tips

Learn from the Masters

Study the greats. Watch the best emcee you admire closely and take notes on how they work a room and use their voice to maximum effect, qualities such as: volume, cadence, projection, vocal variety. It may take a while but patience is key.

Practice to Live Audience

Reach out to event planners or emcee for your friends at parties or in front of small crowds to get used to being in the limelight and facing a group of people while you’re speaking directly to them. Jumping from speaking 1-on-1 to doing it in front of a crowd will make you nervous because there’s more pressure when it’s only one person judging you vs many which leads me to my next tip…

Sell Yourself to the Crowd

When you feel confident in your ability to grab attention, make an effort to speak in public often and face the crowd when doing so (unlike having a casual conversation where you’d talk with your friends while looking at them not speaking/looking directly at everyone)

Practice Reading Aloud

In order for stage presence to come through it’s important that you get used to speaking clearly and loudly, since this will help you reach all parts of the room during a speech or presentation. You can practice this by reading out loud from books or newspapers daily just as if you were giving a formal presentation on these pieces of literature.

Be Prepared

Know what you are going to say. Rambling is a big no-no in public speaking.

Watch Your Hands

When you’re at a meeting, put your hands flat on top of the table or desk while talking so that people can see them lying there motionlessly while you are still speaking/presenting – this will make you look more confident and give off the impression of ‘togetherness’.

The best way to avoid constant fidgeting is not placing both hands inside pockets, one hand in pocket looks awkward even if it works nicely for some emcees out there.

Command Respect

A lot of the above suggestions work well together because if your voice projects well then you will appear more confident. Also, if you speak clearly and loudly it will be easier to reach everyone in the room so this is a very important point to keep in mind – always have your volume higher than you would have it during a casual conversation with friends.

The one thing that can ruin an emcee’s public speaking performance is a lack of confidence, because he/she may stutter or stumble over words or simply not project their voice enough. You must exude self-confidence to win over the audience!

Smile & Be Vibrant !

Make eye contact with audience members whenever possible, smile a lot… and make your energy match the occasion – if it’s a casual gathering you can use a calmer tone whereas for more formal presentations keep your voice energetic and engaging.

Pace Yourself

Your voice will tire out before your body does so pace yourself accordingly. It’s often best to start off not at full volume but rather low and let the energy build naturally as you go along which means it’s important to give yourself enough time to gradually warm up.

Read The Room

Listen closely to how the crowd reacts because that will help you anticipate their needs, wants, and mood swings better than anyone else on stage with you.

Start off slow with a few jokes that are solidly funny then build momentum through an increasingly larger variety of vocal flavours until finishing strong in one or many ways (use of pauses, inflection, drive home a point etc). Remember laughter is contagious so if people are laughing at something make sure it’s worth it.

Be Confident

Now we’re getting into the meat of things so to speak: Once you feel comfortable and confident with what you’ve prepared and rehearsed it’s time to take a risk or two in order to keep audiences engaged and interested in your performance.

Whether that means making bolder statements, using different vocal timbres/tones, playing with pauses, modulating volume etc it’s important to be willing to step outside your comfort zone at least some of the time if not most of the time or else people become desensitised which means they aren’t going to care about anything you say/do anymore which is never good for an emcee.

This doesn’t mean always speaking over top of a crowd either because eventually they will all learn to tune you out too which is why it’s really important that you develop a balance between giving people what they want and delivering the unexpected with confidence.

This should be good enough to get you going on your way to become an emcee.