Posted: January 7th, 2023

How to Write a Persuasive Speech: Complete Guide 2022

Have you ever tried proving a point so bad that it escalates into a physical fight or verbal abuse?  A Persuasive speech involves everything from arguing about football, politics, and fashion. You must meet the audience halfway; hence you must agree to disagree.

What is a persuasive speech?

A persuasive speech is a vocalization whose aim is to convince your audience to believe or do something. When writing a persuasive speech, you should have the ability to convince the audience into viewing your opinion from your standpoint. A good persuasive speech should be informative, compelling, and entertaining.

You can only convince the audience if you come across as genuine and well-versed with your topic. How exactly do you convince a group of strangers to share your opinions? You wonder. How do you connect with critics hanging on to your every word?

Do you want to have the audience eating at your fingertips? Well, success in persuasive speech requires attention to what motivates listeners. You must know your audience regarding their age, gender, and beliefs. Knowledge of the audience helps you determine the content and message to deliver. If you are stuck stating a persuasive speech ? seek help from the best persuasive speech writers.

Types of persuasive speech

The subject at hand and the content of a speech determine the type of persuasive speech. We have three main types of persuasive speeches if you want to learn how to write a persuasive speech. They are

1. Factual persuasive speech

This type of speech persuades the listeners on whether a topic is valid or not. Using evidence is especially critical in a persuasive speech when your target audience is unpersuaded. For instance, banning beauty pageants for children is an example of factual persuasive speech.

There have been so many documented overwhelming cases of rape, murder, and suicide among kids who must grow up early. The children are vulnerable to psychotic sexual predators and naively end up as their victims.

2. Value persuasive speech

This kind of speech questions the moral or ethical aspect of an issue. For instance, is graffiti an act of vandalism or art? Is the death punishment moral or immoral?

Life is sacred and should be preserved as such. So, is it right to punish a wrongdoer by death? They are accused of capital offences like treason or espionage, but is it worth taking a life?

3. Policy persuasive speech

A policy persuasive speech is meant to move the audience into supporting or rejecting a policy, rule, or candidate. When choosing topics for persuasive speeches, you need to identify the problem, describe it, and persuade the audience into seeking a solution.

 For instance, if the Senate agrees with the girl child campaign, they can write a speech to their ruler to convince them to agree to their viewpoint. Through the conviction, the feminists get government support and protection.

How do you introduce a persuasive speech?

You might be at a loss on how to start a persuasive speech, right? You need to hook in the audience; hence your introduction is crucial. The most effective ways of creating a speech include:

• Using a relevant quote
• Using an imagined scenario
• Using a rhetorical question
• Using proven statistics
• Using a powerful statement or phrase

What is a persuasive paragraph?

A persuasive paragraph starts with a topic sentence stating your opinion about the chosen topic. To learn how to write a persuasive speech, try to convince the reader that your idea is worthy of consideration. You must consider both sides of an issue but reveal a bias favouring one side over the other.

Do you know how to write a persuasive speech example? If not, bear in mind that you must:

• State your claim clearly
• Understand your audience
• Engage through emotions focus on your side of the argument
• Use concrete evidence to amplify your opinion
• Be organized
• Use active language

What are the five persuasive techniques?

If you are looking to gain website traffic or the accolade of your coworkers and supervisors, persuasion is an important skill to hone in writing a persuasive speech. Being persuasive makes it easier for you to get things done, for you can influence others to your way of thinking.

Some of the effective persuasive techniques include:

1. Establishing reliance and developing believably

To persuade people, you must connect with them by being authentic. The audience will see you as an authority on a subject once they trust you, and that’s the essentials’ for establishing credibility.

Your persuasive speech topic outline should prioritize;

• The target audience
• Ways to appeal to the target audience
• Purpose of the persuasive speech
• How to make your opinion heard

Once you have outlined your persuasive speech, consider these techniques for connecting with your audience and establishing credibility

1. Appealing to emotion

Making an emotional appeal in your speech is a guaranteed way of getting people’s attention and connecting with them at a visceral level. Have you ever seen commercials for nonprofits calling upon individuals to donate and save a life or feed a starving child? Yeah, the advert is meant to move you to tears and action, which is the crucial point in how to write a persuasive speech.

1. Appealing to authority

Speaking entirely from personal experience is bound to fail because people believe it more when you point to an expert’s opinion. In the quest to receive donations for the less fortunate, a non-governmental organization can be involved to make the call to action more credible.

2. Understanding the reader’s purpose and aligning your own

As a persuasive speechwriter, you should think like a search engine. Why exactly are people accessing your content? This helps you in how to write a persuasive speech, meaning you have to be informative and persuasive.

3. Pay heed to language

The language you use in your writing can be persuasive to impact your readers in a meaningful way, thus forging a connection. Persuasion is fully gained by

• Using flattery
• Writing hyperbolically
• Speaking directly to the reader
• Using active language
• Quoting actual statistics

4. Tone consideration

It should go without saying your tone should be favourable to your reader. Conveying tone through persuasive speech requires a careful selection of techniques and language. Your tone can be authoritative, logical, passionate, witty, intelligent, or neutral.

Some tonal qualities to avoid in how to write a persuasive speech include brevity, abrasiveness, and casualness. They are used when you know that your readers are expecting them. These defining qualities help you determine which literary devices to use and the most appropriate language for your audience.

5. Use of rhetoric and redundancy

This might sound queer, but rhetorical questions and repetition are important when connecting with your audience. Repetition, especially keywords, is an emphatic persuasive speech technique that helps illustrate a point.

A rhetorical question is meant to be emphatic. Its incorporation in persuasive writing allows you to move your paper towards a particular theme or conclusion. Repetition can be monotonous, but not when you use a rhetorical question.

Examples of persuasive speech topics

If you think writing a persuasive speech is challenging, selecting the right topic is a nightmare! The chosen topic must be suitable if you want to impact the audience. When it comes down to how to write a persuasive speech, you must be wise and cautious during the topic selection process.

You cannot convince the audience to believe in your opinions unless you believe in the topic you chose to write about. The topic you have chosen should be close to your heart. Here is a variety of persuasive speech topics whose mention ignites an uproar

• Is graffiti art or vandalism
• Significance of art and culture
• Are Museums the dying reservoir of arts and culture?
• To pay or not to pay the entrance fee to museums
• Is there authenticity in modern arts?
• Political unrest retards economic growth
• Reality shows are fraudulent
• Education is the only source of wealth
• Reality shows diminish IQ
• Extracurriculars are a waste of time
• Media sways political decisions
• Virtual reality is the future of education
• How to write an informative speech 
• Bullying shapes personality
• Legalization of Euthanasia
• Banishment of pageants for kids
• Environmental degradation is a global concern
• Body hawking should be legal
• Men shouldn’t dress in pink
• Punishment by death for serial killers
• Garbs define a person
• Jewellery defines one’s value
• Actualizing a dream is hard
• Social media is the death of face-to-face communication
• Dating sites are a haven for sex predators
• Humans have become cyber addicts

What are the elements of a persuasive speech?

An effective persuasive speech should strike a balance between logical and emotional appeal. As a student learning how to write a persuasive speech, you must demonstrate an understanding of elements of a persuasive speech. Traditionally, persuasion enlists

1. Ethos or credibility

If you want to be persuasive, you must balance logic and emotions. Your compelling speech’s lack of statistics or anecdotes might not yield the desired results. Who wants half-baked statistics and fictional tales in an issue affecting the masses?

2. Logos or logic

If you want the audience to believe in your point of view entirely, you must use proven statistics when writing your speech outline. Tested and proven hypothesis triggers the audience’s minds that such data-driven speech is trustworthy.

3. Pathos or emotions

The bridge between statistics and a powerful connection with your audience is the emotional appeal as a persuasion technique. The best way to emotionally appeal to your audience is by using real anecdotes to wrap up your statistics beautifully.

You can affirm that most commercials have fueled you into purchasing an unnecessary product, right? You are born with the basic human need of emotions, and so does your audience. Therefore, an emotional appeal is bound to be informative and more persuasive.

A persuasive speech format

A persuasive speech is at times structured like an informative speech, but the most used persuasive speech format is Monroe’s motivated sequence and the subsequent reaction you desire from your audience

A persuasive speech format has

• An introduction

-The introduction has a hook or an attention-getter.

The hook when learning how to write a persuasive speech is said to catch your audience’s attention. It can vary from a shocking statistic to a dramatic anecdote. In an attempt to have the audience psyched, don’t ask a question that elicits a verbal response or ask the audience if they agree or disagree with you; of course, someone will always be on the opposing side.

-It has a clear thesis statement

The thesis statement is derived from your topic and communicates your stand. If, for instance, your topic is ‘Body hawking legalization’, your thesis statement should be ‘My speech today is on the legalization of body hawking, and I am against it. ’

• A body

The body contains the information. The information includes a simplified explanation of your topic, for there are people who might be ignorant of it.

When stating your main points, you should try using the

1. Deductive approach – This means you go from a general idea to a specific idea

E.g., All men are immortal

       Socrates was a man

       Socrates was mortal

The above deductive approach is meant to engage the audience. Your audience agrees with the first general statement, then the second general statement. Finally, they must agree with the last statement, which is your opinion on the topic at hand.

2. Inductive approach – This is the reverse of the deductive method, meaning you go from the specific idea to the general idea using the laws of probability. The final statement should always be your stand on the topic at hand.
3. Carrot-stick approach – This approach presents both sides of the issue but depicts your side as weightier than the other hence should be adopted. You are required to list both the pros and cons of the topic.
4. Primacy or recency approach

Primacy means that you should start your persuasive essay’s body with the strongest points and end with the weakest points. Starting strong demonstrates your knowledge and understanding of the topic at hand.

Recency is the opposite of primacy, meaning you start the body of the persuasive speech with the weakest points and build to the strongest point hence creating a climatic approach

When writing down your points in the body, it’s wise to include the following

i.statistics

 Using proven statistics helps strengthen your argument, thus making your persuasive speech more credible.

1. Testimony

A testimony is a direct quote from an authority or person and a recommended addition to a persuasive speech. A personal testimony makes the idea more relatable to your audience.

3. De anchoring beliefs

The de anchor beliefs is a highly recommended persuasive speech technique. To de anchor other people’s views, you can appeal to their emotions and thus change their mindset. The different feelings you can appeal to include fear in adults.

Psychiatrists have proven overtime that adults experience fear of the loss of basic needs, freedom, and the fear of the unknown. The fear of the unknown includes death. Appealing to these emotions is very effective.

You don’t get emotionally involved by involving the audience and not your ego. In a way, you manipulate your audience’s emotions and steer them to action.

• Summary

The conclusion reiterates the thematic statement. You also must use concluding remarks to make the audience aware that the speech is over.

How to write a five-minute persuasive speech

Have you ever motivated a person? How about trying to change a person’s conviction through persuasion? Well, persuading an individual is almost downright impossible. Learn how to write a persuasive speech here in an instant.

You might think that a five-minute persuasive speech has an organizational pattern, but it isn’t so. A persuasive speech is about convincing your audience of a different possibility for their lives.

Therefore, a five-minute persuasive speech has the following framework

1. Establishing a problem your audience cares about and finding a solution.

Your audience has their perspective on things because they have had a lifetime of experiences. Therefore, it would be very wrong to convince them to delve right into your solution. Your priority in how to write a persuasive speech should be the audience’s problems.

For instance, individuals suffering from obesity have plenty of evidence bluntly telling him or them that they can’t lose weight. The most significant thing is that they still care about being healthy. Your persuasive speech should meet the audience where they are, not where you want them to be.

2. Identifying typical solutions

Why is it so hard for people to embrace new solutions? They have tried them in the past, and there was no observable change to their predicament. Their reluctance should be an opportunity for you to set up a solution.

You wonder how you will set up a solution that has already been tried and yielded negative results, right? First, you must identify the errors that occur as the people try to solve the problem in question.

Try explaining that they aren’t the cause of the negative results. Instead, the problem is in the solution. This eases their tension and gives them a sense of relief and hope to try again.

3. Explaining your solution

Most people will start with the solution when writing a persuasive essay. You have spent so much time developing the steps, components, and other information related to the solution; hence should keenly explain it.

After explaining the solution to the audience, you might provide a call to action to prompt them into taking the next steps with you. The call to action in how to write a persuasive speech should not be void of emotions.

Critical mistakes to avoid when writing a five-minute persuasive speech

Your audience will often mention the qualities that you must embrace and add to your personality, but none will guide you on how to write a persuasive speech. Below is a list of things you need to avoid when writing an effective persuasive speech in five minutes

1. Avoid using big words and complex sentence structures.

Words are the greatest strength when it comes to how to write a persuasive speech; hence you should use them wisely. Big words and complex sentences that the audience can’t easily understand discourages them from reading your speech.

2. Dont use styles that don’t come naturally to you

Every author has a unique personal style of writing. Deviating from your comfort zone can be disastrous and not earn you the applause you want from your audience.

3. Never overgeneralize

When you generalize, you make your speech less persuasive; therefore, you should be specific about your writing information. Over generalization may preach to too many people instead of the target audience.

4. Don’t use any slang

The use of slang is awkward and reflects poorly on your professionalism. Keeping language as basic as possible should be your priority. Connecting to the audience isn’t achieved by using slang but rhetorical questions.

5. Don’t tailor the message to yourself

As Benjamin once said, ‘talk to a man about himself, and he will listen for hours ‘. If you don’t speak to the audience about themselves in your persuasive speech, they most likely won’t listen. You should make sure you address their needs in your persuasive speech outline.

When you haven’t done your homework on how to write a persuasive speech, your content will be shallow, and your audience will know you lack the skills. The audience’s response will be disappointment, anger, frustration, and disengagement. Who are you without your fan base?

6. Data dumping

When you rely too much on logos as a persuasive speech technique, you are too wordy in your writing. Your audience disengages and undermines your innate ability to inspire, connect, and persuade them.

7. Failure to inspire

When writing a five-minute persuasive speech, you decide based on emotions first. You then embark on the journey of finding facts and figures to justify that emotion. Ironically your audience also does the same.

Seek your words, actions, and visuals to inspire emotion. Then, deliver the analysis to justify that emotion. A good persuasive speech should communicate facts and feelings to the head and heart.

8. Not crafting a powerful opening hook

The beginning of your persuasive speech is the most critical part. It determines whether your audience is hooked or disappointed. Don’t waste the opportunity to catch their interest by rambling pointlessly, apologizing needlessly, or stating half-baked statistics.

You and your audience deserve better. Bag them in by telling an engaging or relevant story, stating a startling statistic, or asking a thought-provoking question. If you can get their attention at the beginning of a persuasive speech, you get them to the end.

9. Using too much humour

Do you want your persuasive speech to be dry and monotonous? The answer to this question should be a big no but remember not to try too hard to be funny. In how to write a persuasive speech, it’s advisable to be yourself and infuse a bit of humour when necessary or appropriate.

10. Summarizing your speech with a question and answer

Your conclusion is your grand finale to emphasize your key points more. Emphasis on the key points ensures memorability of your message and motivates the audience to action. Don’t start strong and end weak; keep the strength until the curtains close.

Do you know how to write a persuasive speech example?

If you want to know how to write a persuasive speech example, follow the following guidelines

• Select a topic

The topic should be controversial enough to spawn a heated debate regardless of your standpoint. The issue could be about anything and passionate to you. If the subject is too broad, choose a specific angle to focus on. Ensure you research extensively while focusing on the key facts and arguments.

• Define your persuasive goal

After choosing the topic in preparation for how to write a persuasive speech, decide precisely why you want to persuade the audience. Knowing your compelling goal helps you make wise decisions about how to approach writing your persuasive essay.

• Analyze your audience

When writing a persuasive speech, knowledge of your audience’s perspective is critical. Remember, you are not only writing to get their attention but also to move them to action.

Ensure you are aware of your audience’s

• Age
• Gender
• Education level
• Culture
• Beliefs
• Interests
• Attitudes
• Size
• Egocentrism
• Build an effective persuasive argument

If you want a compelling, persuasive argument, develop persuasive techniques to help you attain your goal. Persuading the audience is easy once you build on a good idea.

• Outline your speech

You must have a speech outline example to organize your main points and structure your speech for maximum impact. When creating a speech outline, remember

• Be strong by letting your audience know your theme, why it matters to you and your hope to have them persuaded towards change.
• List your main points in an orderly sequence and build on each argument for your position, thus overcoming opposing perspectives.
• Summarize by appealing to your audience to respond in a way that shows you have successfully persuaded them.
• Write a winning speech

Your opinions are essential, but writing them when it comes down to how to write a persuasive speech is more important. A winning speech has standard and easy grammar, a good flow of ideas, a simple sentence structure, and is self-explanatory.

How to build on your persuasion skills

It’s pretty difficult to convince an individual without an altercation. If you have seen men argue over football and politics while women argue over fashion, you know how ugly it can get. Building on your persuasive speaking and writing skills is vital for peaceful coexistence.

Effective persuasion skills include

• Excellent communication

Communication can be verbal or non-verbal, but it should impact your audience. When the audience engages with you, they are open to hearing you speak.

• Active listening

Attentiveness shows that you respect the other person’s opinions. Listening to them talk makes them feel valued, hence establishing trust. It’s easier to build effective arguments to win their support if you understand their viewpoints on a particular subject.

• Emotional intelligence

You can pick up on your audience’s emotions by watching their body language and mood, thus responding appropriately. Emotional intelligence helps you adjust your persuasion tactics, thus achieving your set goal.

• Logic and reasoning

Do you need your audience to commit fully to your idea? First, help them understand why they should pursue that idea. Use logic, reasoning, and evidence to back that idea.

• Establish credibility

The ability to maintain positive interactions and maintain meaningful relationships with your audience is the basis of better credibility. Work towards that and have your audience eating at the palm of your hands.

Summary

Writing a persuasive speech can be challenging because you need to hone your persuasion skills, writing skills, and diction. It’s tough teaching an old dog new tricks unless you can navigate its mind and conquer the old habits and beliefs. This article is meant to inspire you on how to write a persuasive speech and impact people.