How to Market Yourself as a Speaker on Social Media

Posted by Will Blunt

Finally the day has come…

You’ve been working hard for years to establish yourself as an expert in your industry, and someone has tapped you on the shoulder to speak at their upcoming event. All of that hard work is paying off.

Or maybe you already have experience with public speaking, and know how to handle yourself on stage.

But what if you want more from the experience? What can you do to make sure you get the best results for your hard work?

This is another area that social media can help – and we’ve got a template to make sure you cover all your bases!

Our Speaker’s Social Media Template helps you market yourself as a speaker on social media; before, during and after an event.

It will help you make the most of your next speaking engagement by effectively marketing and promoting your presentation.

Just like preparing for the presentation itself, you should be preparing to maximise your return on effort, and social media is the platform to do that.

The rest of this article will go through the template step-by-step, so that you stay on track to not only promote your event, but to build and excite your audience.

The benefits of speaking at an event should go without saying – getting this kind of opportunity can do wonders for your career, or your business. Incorporating the use of social media to further promote the event and your presentation will only help to boost that.

This template has been downloaded tens of thousands of times as a part of our 33 Web Marketing Templates – if you don’t have a copy you can download one below.

Table of Contents

Pre-Event: The Lead Up
The Big Event: On The Day
During Your Presentation: On Stage
After Your Presentation
A Few Extra Tips

Pre-Event: The Lead Up

If you have time before the event to start hyping things up, the top left of this template is where you want to start.

Before the event begins, you’ll want to help share as much information as you can about it – let your own audience know what they can expect from your presentation and the day of the event. This helps raise awareness for the event, something the organiser will appreciate.

77% of event marketers use social media to promote before and during an event – usually with the use of a unique event hashtag. So check to see if the event has a hashtag assigned to it already, and use it in all of your social messages about speaking at the event.

Including the hashtag in any of your posts and tweets can help attract new social media followers. Plus, by diving into conversations going on before the event starts, you are building engagement and excitement before you’re even on stage.

Preparing Your Slides

When you’re prepping your slides for the presentation, be sure to include your Twitter handle and the event hashtag on each slide – this is an easy way of reminding people where they can find you, and join the conversation.

Image Source: SlideShare

You may also like to upload your slides to Slideshare before the event, that way anyone who comes across your speaker profile can learn a bit more about your topic before the event. (This isn’t for everyone though, because it can lose the “live reveal” effect)

Be sure to set up a resources page on your website, that way fans can contact you and learn a little more about you before the event. And if you’re looking to land more speaking engagements, consider a page on your site that includes a press kit or bio. Just like our social media speaker page here at Bluewire Media;

The Big Event: On The Day

It’s the big day, and while your nerves might be a bit shot before your gig starts, take some time to interact with the audience before you’re on stage – both online and in real life.

Buzz about the event will start early – 78% of event professionals increase their use of social media to promote events.

Check out Twitter the day of the event and jump into any conversations that are already going on.

The below examples are from the 2016 Lightning in a Bottle (LiB) festival, a highly attended music event with workshops, art exhibitions, and performances over the course of 4 days. You can see in the sequence of tweets below how festival-goers and professionals hosting workshops at LiB keep the buzz going about the event.

And there’s no telling what issues or hold-ups you might run into before the event actually kicks off, so it’s always a good idea to pre-schedule a few tweets and posts on your social media platforms. That way you’re helping to drive engagement around the event and your speaking topic, without physically “Tweeting” the whole time.

Buffer or Hootsuite are both great tools for setting up your posts before the event – you can even set up tweets to reference the topic that you’re speaking on. Then audience members can follow the conversation online too. (Remember to use that event hashtag)

During Your Presentation: On Stage

While your on stage all of your energy needs to go into delivering a first-class presentation and keeping the audience engaged from start to finish. But don’t miss the opportunity to leverage all your hard work with social media interaction and post-event calls-to-action.

While you’re on stage, it’s helpful to remember that when people are at events (or really anywhere), they’ve likely got their smartphones with them. Most audience members will be on their mobile devices during the event, so Twitter is by far the best platform for engagement during your speech. It’s quick and easy to use, and your event organisers are probably driving the Twitter stream with content anyway.

So keep them engaged through your presentation and on Twitter – remind them of your Twitter handle and the event hashtag, and tell the audience that you’ll be happy to answer their questions by inviting them to Tweet questions to you during your presentation.

You should definitely take note of whether or not your presentation will be filmed. If it’s not going to be, try and get a friend or colleague to film it for you. Having this type of video content to use once the event is over is going to be priceless, on the resources page you set up on your website, on social media, on YouTube, and in any future event marketing materials.

Also, during your presentation is a great opportunity to let people know they can sign up for your newsletter to get resources from your keynote – slides, notes, images, etc. You can collect their business cards at the event to make it easy for them to sign up (by signing up for them).

After Your Presentation

Once you’re finished with your speech and are off stage, you can breathe a sigh of relief. But now there’s real work to be done – it’s time to follow up with everyone you’ve just interacted with. This is an extremely important step that most people miss.

Be sure to take time to mingle with attendees afterward, get photos of the event, and follow up with any questions that people might have about your presentation topic.

This is a great opportunity for chatting with event-goers and building your reputation in a genuine way. Good content can go a long way online, but great in-person conversations are just as (if not more) valuable.

Once the event is over, take time to reply to any additional tweets about your presentation, and post any photos of the event to Facebook, tagging the event attendees you can. Email anyone whose address you have, and upload the contact information from the business cards you collected. While this might seem tedious, responding to people and talking with them (outside of the context of the event) will make a big impression.

Another important follow-up task is to send a thank you note/email to the event organiser. This small gesture can go a long way – and they’ll keep you in mind for future events. What a great connection to have!

Finally, you can build your connections further through LinkedIn – reach out to anyone you were able to talk with at the event and ask for recommendations to further build your professional network.

A Few Extra Tips

Now that you have a game plan (and template) for your next event, here are a few takeaways so that you’re prepared on your big day.

• A good hashtag can go a long way – even months after the event check out the hashtag. For Hubspot’s Inbound 2015 conference people were still talking about the event month’s later, and it’s all trackable because people knew to use the #Inbound2015 tag.

• While you might not be able to choose the event hashtag, you can include other hashtags that are relevant to your speaking topic. This gets you in front of an even larger audience online, and not just the event attendees.
• Engaging with your new audience – in person and online – is an effective way to build your reputation and further establish yourself as an authority in your industry. Answer their questions, retweet their comments, invite them to sign up to your newsletter. Following up with new connections after the event will help you nurture those relationships and gain some loyal fans.
• Consider writing a blog before the event to help promote your speaking topic, or post a write-up after the event to keep the conversation going. Keep the content engine running and stay relevant.

Next time you are speaking at an event, take the time to prepare your web marketing strategy – website, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – to ensure you get the most out of the opportunity.

When is your next event? How do you prepare your social media interactions for your speaking engagements?

• About the Author
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About Will Blunt

Will Blunt is the founder of Blogger Sidekick, a company that helps digital marketers build authority with one-of-a-kind content. He is the creator of the SEO Spider’s Web, a unique interpretation of the content strategy used by some of the world’s savviest online marketers, and is privileged to be the content editor for several leading digital marketing publications, including Bluewire Media and JeffBullas.com.

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