If you do free or paid speaking engagements, there are opportunities galore to get in front of audiences that need to hear whay you have to say.
But some Publicity Hounds don’t quite know where to begin. In Friday’s issue of the SpeakerNet News ezine, Michael Schatzki said he wants to give a new hour-long speech he has created at least 20 times so he can polish it before charging a fee.
His target audience is people in their late 30s to early 60s, business people or a general audience. His topic is on how to motivate people to fitness. Micheal asked for tips on how to let groups know that he speaks for free. He’s compiling all the results for the SpeakNet News archives.
I responded and offered these nine ways to publicize free or paid speaking engagements:
- Contact local chambers of commerce, Rotary, Kiwanis, Business Networking International, and any other business networking groups.
- Consider joining Toastmasters. You’ll get instant feedback. And Toastmasters know which groups in town welcome speakers.
- Go to MeetUp.com and see what business groups are meeting near you. I belong to a MeetUp group for Internet marketers in Wisconsin, and at our last meeting, we discussed which speakers we could invite to speak for free.
- Go to Craigslist and check out the community category. You’ll find sub-categories for classes, events and small business. Post a note in the best category offering your services. Make sure you don’t post the same item to more than one category. See How to Use Craigslist as a Global Publicity Tool.
- Get a local business journal, daily or weekly newspaper or business magazine and check the section of the paper that announces local business events and who is speaking. You’ll find many groups you probably never knew existed. There’s usually a phone number to call for registration. Call that number and ask for the meeting planner.
- If you’re Twittering (you should be), let your followers know about your topic and ask them for suggestions. If you’re speaking in a specific geographic area, use a hashtag (#) with the name of a city in your tweet, like this—#Chicgo— so people who are searching for information on that city will find your tweet. Learn more about how to use hashtags for publicity.
- If you’re on LinkedIn (you should be), post the question in their Q&A section and you’ll probably get many responses from people who do business near you.
- If you’re on Facebook, ask your friends to spread the word. See 11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook.
- You probably won’t have to resort to paid ads. But if you do, you can target people in specific geographic locations with fairly cheap ads on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Do you do free or paid speaking engagements? If so, what are some of the ways you publicize them?
(Shutterstock photo)
With so many international reporters and editors, TV producers and radio show hosts, it’s more important than ever that you pronounce their names correctly, particularly if you are appearing on their shows or pitching them by phone.
The Publicity Hound