Public speaking is a great way to get in front of your target audience, start relationships with them and other members of your industry and generally build your image as a highly credible professional. Apart from being a great way to get exposure, speaking at events also lets you share value all while you are promoting your business. If that sounds like something you want to try, read on to learn five ways to apply for or get invited to speaking engagements.
Know Your Audience
Creating a customer avatar is probably one of the first things you do when you set up a marketing plan and a PR strategy. That’s great because apart from making it easier to design your campaigns, deep knowledge of your target audience will also help you find great public speaking opportunities.
Because you want to bring value to your listeners, it’s obvious that you should speak where people go to seek the kind of expertise you share. If you know which kind of events your potential customers favor, you can quickly draw up a list of meetings, social events and gatherings where you’ll have an easy time getting in front of them. This could include certain types of networking events, industry trade shows or business luncheons.
Demonstrate Your Value
By going to a few of the events you identified in the step above, you can get a good feel for what kind of topics the attendees appreciate. If you think you can bring something valuable to the table, find out who plans these events and talk to them. Learn what they are looking for and show them you’re the right person to deliver it.
Highlight how your experience and knowledge can benefit their guests and attract both regular and new event attendees. That’s why organizations hire speakers: to keep existing members engaged and attract new ones by proposing to share interesting and useful information. Showing that you can help achieve this goal will create a win-win situation for you and the organizer.
Start Sending Pitches
Because it might not be possible to go to every event you want to speak at and meet the organizer personally, you should also consider sending pitches nominating yourself as a speaker. To do this, create an application that outlines why you should be chosen and how your presentation will benefit the audience. Highlighting how you will help the event attendees is one of the most important points because it shows the organizer that you have something interesting to bring to the table that will attract more people to the event.
Another key element of your pitch is presenting credentials of past speaking engagements. This can be in the form of a few simple clips from past speeches and some feedback and testimonials you received. They don’t have to be from big events but rather show that you have a great presence on stage and were able to draw in your audience and create a memorable experience for them.
Make Yourself Interesting
A good way to make people come to you and invite you to speak is to make yourself interesting by positioning yourself as an expert. One way to do this, is by regularly writing about your topic. This could be on a company blog, on LinkedIn or even in industry publications as a guest contributor. Getting your work published is an excellent way to build your credibility and get yourself noticed. When doing this, take full advantage of all your social media channels to maximize your reach and get in front of people who are looking for someone just like you for their next event.
Collaborate with Others
Working together with someone else from your industry or a closely related field can help you to offer a more interesting set of insights and give you a larger network to which to promote it. This will make it easier to attract a bigger audience because they will hope to get a lot out of your presentation. An example of this could be a photographer partnering with a graphic designer or a website designer working with a user-experience specialist to provide two sets of information that complement each other and set your presentation apart from those of others.
Do you want to start a company blog to get attention or need some input on how to manage your online presence to get more speaking invitations? Then get in touch with us by e-mail or have a look around our website www.midas-pr.com to learn how we can help you to get in front of and in touch with the right people.