How to speak confidently in public

A confident speaker is someone who, first and foremost, feels confident in his own self and his ability to deliver a good speech confidently in public or a presentation. Being confident is not something anyone can give you nor you can buy from somewhere. Confidence is built, step-by-step, from our previous successful experiences, and can be boosted and improved as time passes.
How do you build and improve it? By never wasting any chance to practice. If you mess up or make mistakes during your initial attempts, learn from these mistakes and move on. Remember, even the most renown speaker has started as a beginner. So, practice! Practice by yourself in front of a mirror or your own video camera at first. Soon enough, you can practice in front of a small, trusted audience. You can even practice in front of your pet, in the absence of a trusted human audience. Anyone can speak confidently in public provided he or she agrees to work on it. So in order to achieve this goal, the following methods will act as some kind of help in doing it.
How to speak confidently in public

Know enough of what you want to say: If you are just making an informal speech or presentation with no subject restrictions, it would be helpful to choose a topic that you yourself are interested in. This way, it would be less difficult for you to talk about the subject, as opposed to something that you know very little about. Of course, it would also be better if the subject that you choose is engaging enough to a wide variety of people to begin with, so that it wouldn't be very hard to capture their interest.
Carryout research on the subject: With any talk that you are giving, it is important that you know your subject matter very well. The general assumption of your audience is that, as the subject matter expert, know about the topic more than they do, and that you are there to share knowledge and information that they do not know about yet. There is nothing more embarrassing than a speaker who does not do his homework, and who comes to a talk unprepared and with little knowledge about the topic. If you research and prepare adequately, that in itself will already boost your confidence level and lessen any apprehensions that you might have with giving the talk.
Prepare several versions: Depending on the reception and response of your audience -- which you will not know until the minute that you start your talk -- you might want to rehearse different versions beforehand to tailor to your audience's needs: one shorter, one more detailed, one for interested people, one for an audience who seem to be losing interest. This will ensure that you keep the audience engaged.
Always smile: This is an important thing to remember, no matter how stressed you are during the time of your talk. People are inherently attracted by a smiling face, and will already create wonders for how your talk would go.
Don't bother about speak errors: If you mess up along the line, just laugh it off and don't stress over it too much. You may have made a mistake, but you likely noticed it more than your audience. Remember that mistakes are an integral part of the learning process, and will help hone you to become a better public speaker in time.
Make a paper copy of your handout: This is so you can have a hard copy of something to refer to during your talk, and so you can distribute copies to your audience as well and that is if you wish. Even if you have a beautiful, stylized, and well-rehearsed PowerPoint presentation, you never know what you will find when you get to your speaking place. It is always important to have a contingency plan in cases like these, so that you are not at their mercy and that how you speak confidently in public.

Finally, keep a pleasant, cheerful dispositio

Finally, you have to find a way to keep a pleasant, cheerful disposition all throughout the talk. Maintain eye contact with the audience members. These actions will also allow you to relax better, since by establishing a connection, you will be able to see your audience as humans -- just like you are -- who want you to do well in your talk, and not as high-and-mighty beings who would take a lot for you to impress.