Tips for Seeking the Right Topics for a Pitch and a Persuasive Speech

Making a pitch and presenting a persuasive speech have something in common—trying to persuade someone to do something. When you have an idea to pitch to someone, you hope that your idea can be considered and accepted. When you persuade people, you will give a good reason to create, reinforce, and change their beliefs or actions. Your topic should be controversial in nature when pitching or persuading people—you are just like an advocate that involves people’s attitudes, beliefs, and actions. In other words, you are changing people's minds to agree with your opinion about a controversial topic instead of taking a neutral position by educating and enlightening them. You also wish to get the listeners to take immediate action as a result of your speech.

When selecting a topic for your speech, you have to determine your audience and purpose before exploring further your topic and making a plan. Your audience consists of those who will listen to your speech. Hence, ask yourself: Who are my audience? What does my audience know about my topic? What does my audience need to know about my topic? What does my audience feel about my topic? How much knowledge do I have about this topic? Lastly, what does my audience expect? Standard spoken English, correct grammar and spelling, accurate information, and logical presentation of ideas are the answers in general. Besides, follow the directions and requirements of the assignment by questioning yourself the following:

A purpose is a reason you are presenting. Whenever you speak, you always have a purpose and most speaking fits into the categories of to inform and to persuade. Both may be used, but one will be the primary. When brainstorming for topics, make sure the topic meets the purpose of the assignment and you can accomplish it in the time allotted. Consider the following criteria of your topic: specific, achievable, interesting, relevant, current, new, opinion-based, and availability of sources or support with graph(s). Nevertheless, avoid the topic that is too sensitive, sexist, trivial, technical, broad, and lengthy, which will make your audience uncomfortable and make you too emotional.

After confirming the purpose and audience, your topic will be confirmed when you start to gather information through visiting the library, browsing websites, searching databases, and conducting interviews. Below are the 50 suggested topics of pitching and persuasive speech. Be noted that the bold-faced fonts are the replaceable keywords, which can be served as other speech topics.

To share your thoughts by commenting on this post, kindly sign up as a member by filling in your details in the Contact below.