You’ve decided to take your show on the road and market yourself and your business with public speaking.  You call the local Chamber of Commerce and say, “I’m here.  Book me.”  They can’t run a credit check to find out who you are, but they can do a Google search, and if they find nothing you won’t be getting booked.  Before you kick off your public speaking initiative, it’s important that you build a solid pedigree or background portfolio that demonstrates your industry knowledge and positions you as the go-to expert in your field. 

Associations are constantly getting calls from professionals like you looking to educate their members with unpaid public speaking.  Everyone has a web site and something like a speaker one-sheet or resume they can email out to get the ball rolling.  What most don’t have and where you’ll differentiate yourself is by building a strong online presence that offers prospects more than just what you’ve used to promote yourself. 

Building your pedigree doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated.  A few ideas to consider include:

Article Marketing  Write articles and blog posts that cover topics your audience will find important.  You can pitch your articles to select online or print publications or send them through mass distribution services for broader reach.  Long term, you can use the articles you’ve written to develop a book, a strong credibility booster.

Interviews  Respond to interview queries distributed through HARO and other sources.  There’s nothing that builds credibility and gets the attention of decision makers like other industry professionals thinking what you have to say is important.

References  Your web site should include a section specifically for your public speaking business that includes, among other things, references that are happy with the presentation you gave and an event schedule. 

Responses to Other Peoples “Stuff”  Respond to blog posts, social media and discussion forum posts that could benefit from your expertise. 

Once you decide to build your online pedigree, it doesn’t take much to get going.  And, if you’re consistent and offer quality input and content, another benefit of making yourself “findable” via the web is that event planners looking for a speaker may just find you on their own. 

Have other ideas to help improve your online presence and credibility?  I welcome your thoughts!

• Leave a comment...