Saying nothing at all can be as powerful as anything else you do when giving a presentation. You see, really good speakers use pauses to great effect. The most important thing to remember about pauses in public speaking is that although the silence seems to last forever, this is purely subjective and pauses seem to last longer to the speaker than they do to the audience. So get comfortable with pausing in your speeches and presentations. Once you are comfortable with pausing regularly, you can start using pauses to make an impact in your speeches.

• If you giving a humorous speech, a brief one or two second pause allows the audience to enjoy the joke and show their appreciation in laughter. Don’t be too keen to move on. Let the audience enjoy themselves.
• When you make a serious, important point that you want the audience to remember use a pause for a maximum impact.
• If you are a nervous speaker you will find that pausing lets you catch your breath and relax more.
• When using slides, remember to pause to allow the audience to absorb the information you are displaying. This is essential with statistics and graphs.

So next time you speak in public, try out a few well timed pauses to create maximum impact on your audience.