In episode ten, I thought I would give you ten tips on how to make the most from speaking at events.
You can create a lot of authenticity and credibility by speaking at events. But it’s essential, especially as we are all time-poor right now, to plan to make sure that the time spent away from the office is worthwhile.
This episode is for you if you are a seasoned pro or starting out as it acts as a helpful reminder of all the things to think about when speaking at an event to make it worthwhile for you, your biz or your brand, product or service.
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Full Transcription
Emma Drake:
Hello, and welcome to this episode of Communication Strategy That Works, with me, Emma Drake. Welcome to episode 10. So as this is episode 10, I thought I would give you 10 tips. And the 10 tips I’m going to give you is how to make the most out of speaking at events. So this episode is for you if you’re a seasoned pro, or if you’re starting out, as it acts as a helpful reminder, I think, of all the things you should be thinking about when speaking at an event to make it worthwhile for you, for your brand, for your personal brand, your business brand, or your product or service.
You can create quite a lot of authenticity and credibility by speaking at events. Because we’re all so time-poor, even more at the moment, you need to have a plan. You need to make sure that the time spent away from the office or the virtual office is worthwhile. If you’re hosting an event or speaking at an event, this is true of both of those things. If you want to know more about organizing an event and some of the things to look out for and tips and advice on that, check out episode two, Are You a Goal Digger? This episode is focused on speaking and I’m going to dive into the top 10 tips.
So the first five are all about preparation.
Number one. Set out your goal.
What is your goal for speaking at this event? What does success look like in reaching that goal? This is really, really important, actually, because you need to justify the time to yourself, you need to justify the cost for going, if there is a cost at all, and you need to understand how it fits with your overall strategy. So that if this is part of your communication strategy and you’re struggling to set a strategic goal, then maybe you need to question whether or not you should be doing it at all.
So it’s impossible to be specific about why you’re doing an event activity, so speaking in this case, and measure its impact, unless you have that goal in mind. It sounds so simple, but so many times people get this vital step wrong in their planning, in their chase for the excitement of the event itself, or being starry-eyed at being asked to speak in the first place. So that’s number one.
Number two is research your audience.
This is super important as you want to strike a chord with them with your talk. So a lot of the time, we repurpose talks that we give. And that’s absolutely fine, but we need to tweak them to make sure that they’re relevant for that specific audience we’re talking to. And you can make sure you ask the host about the audience. You can do some research yourself, whether that’s desktop research.
If the event is a larger event and has a media pack, you’ll be able to see the sorts of attendees. But generally asking the host, or the person that’s asked you to talk, what the audience will expect from you and what’s most likely to give them benefit from your talk.
If you are on a panel, so that means talking as part of a number of speakers, for example, make sure you ask questions about what the other panelists are going to be talking about. This is so that you can enhance what they’re saying and also to make sure that there’s no crossover. So this is just about good preparation.
So step three is to start to plan those key points you want to cover.
These are important as you want to sound authoritative but you don’t want to be overtly selling your services. We’ve all been to talks where that’s happened and it makes you feel a little bit icky and uncomfortable. So for talks, people are usually tuning in to learn from you. So it’s not sales-led, but it adds authority and authenticity to your personal or business brand, product or service.
So you want to have about three to five points that you want to get across, and you want to make sure that you sense check these are right for your audience. You want to practice them and you want to know them off by heart, as you’ll be asked questions at the end. There’s usually some sort of Q and A. And you want to make sure you can work these really simple points into your answers.
Number four is, in addition to the key points you want to cover, it’s good to also research what’s hot in your industry right now.
So this is about making sure you’re current and up-to-date with what the main issues are for people that might be turning up that day. You can check social media and news outlets for what’s worrying people in your industry. Or you can do some keyword search online, or try and find that sweet spot where you can add valid opinion of thought to help them with that problem, or to have an opinion about that particular topic, or maybe a prediction on how you think that particular situation will turn out for your industry. There are lots of online keyword search tools to use as well. And I’ll put a couple in the show notes for you.
Number five is make sure you read or watch the news in the few days running up to and on the morning of the event, as things can sometimes change quickly.
And it’s good to make sure that your talk is super relevant and timely. And if there’s something pertinent happening, you can work it in. So the first five are all about preparation. So now that you’re prepared with your key points and you’re ready for the talk, the next five steps are all about making it happen.
So point six. Make a plan of what activities you need to undertake to achieve your goal.
So this is about the communication aspect. You can’t just rock up to a talk and expect that to be it. You have to do some groundwork. So at the beginning, what are you looking to achieve? You set out a goal. Are you launching a new course, a new product? Are you publishing a report? Are you recruiting? Are you looking for people to engage with your new product or service? And what you want to do is write down those things that you’re looking to achieve.
Point seven is to create some killer content. So you’ve researched your audience.
You’ve thought about what activities you need to undertake. And now you want to create some content that speaks to them. So whether that’s some social media posts to seed your talk in the weeks running up to the event, or to help generate signups for the event itself, or maybe that’s emailing your list or sending out a newsletter. But you want to start seeding and generating a bit of a buzz around your talk before the event.
Number eight is be visible post event.
So you’ve done your talk and you walk away. You’ve answered a few questions. The time after the talk is actually when you’re going to be most visible. So you’ve just launched to a new audience. You’ve just spoken to a new bunch of people. So plan to be on your social media channels. Email your list, or send out a newsletter. This is a really critical time.
Maybe write an article or a post up on LinkedIn. Maybe do a story on your Instagram, maybe reflecting or something on the talk that you did and some of the key points that came across. It’s most likely that you will have an audience for a very short space of time just after that event. So you want to try and start to build relationships with that new audience.
So number nine is you can be a little bit cheeky here and you can ask for the attendee list. So it’s not always possible due to GDPR, which is the General Data Protection Regulation, but it’s worth asking because you can contact attendees after the event. You can poll them to see if they enjoyed it. You can involve them in your social media. You can connect with them on social media if you know who they are.
So number 10. Review what went well.
What didn’t work? Was it worthwhile? Did you hit your goal? What would you change for next time? I find it’s best to do this straight away. So you can hit the ground running for that next talk that you’ve got planned.
So I hope these 10 top tips, that sounds just a bit of a tongue twister on how to make the most of your speaking opportunity have been really useful for you. I’d love to hear your feedback, either on social media or feel free to DM me or email me. My details are in the show notes. As I said at the beginning, you can create quite a lot of authenticity by sharing your knowledge and your experience of your industry and what you do at an event, however big or small that event is.
Whether that’s a Facebook live, or whether that’s a huge industry event. You just need to make sure it’s the right event for you, it’s worthwhile taking the time out of the day, and you can keep one eye on that goal.
So finally, thank you for listening to this episode of Communication Strategy That Works. Don’t forget to check my show notes for those links that I mentioned, and I’d really love it if you would subscribe to my podcast and leave me a review. And also, if you think there’s someone that could benefit from listening to this podcast, please share this within your networks. So I’ll just say bye for now and see you next time.