How do speaking engagements raise your profile?
Get known
It’s great for PR and a way to demonstrate your expertise and get known within your industry. Speaking engagements give you more exposure, build your credibility and position you as a thought leader. In turn, this will establish you as a person to be trusted.
Build connections
They’re a great way to build connections and connect with your audience. It’s much easier to build a relationship with people in real life. You’ll also meet other speakers, which could lead to exciting opportunities that you may not have had access to previously.
Lead generation and referrals
The audience will listen to what you have to say as you’ve established yourself as a thought leader, making you stand out from the average professional within your field. Clients will think of you as an expert and the go-to person, leading to referrals and future lead generation. It can also help close deals by inviting prospective clients to see you in action.
Make a difference
Speaking engagements can help move industries forward to make a difference. It’s an opportunity to drive change and get people thinking about how they can make positive changes.
Creating your speaker kit
Many of our new clients tell me speaking is the most important area for them to see results in. Often, they don’t have a lot of experience in this area, and they almost never have all their collateral ready to go.
The quickest way you can establish yourself as a professional speaker is to have your speaker kit looking slick. A speaker kit is made up of some or all of the following: a speaker pack, bios, photos, testimonials, speaker reel, and a personal website.
Speaker packs
A speaker pack is comprehensive PDF that includes your bio, speaker topics, action shots, testimonials, contact details and possibly pricing. It can be sent out to event organisers when pitching for speaking gigs, hosted as a download on your website and pinned as a featured post on your LinkedIn.
Bios
Ideally create short and long options. These can go into your speaker pack and/or as a standalone document to event organisers.
Photos
You’ll need a headshot to go alongside your bio and for any event guide or listing. It’s a good idea to get some action shots from event organisers too. Many events will have a professional photographer on hand and will be happy to share these snaps with you.
Testimonials
Get into the habit of asking for testimonials from any event you speak at. Include these wherever relevant, but as a minimum use them within your speaker pack. A few lines plus the name, job title and company/organisation is ideal. You could be crafty and ask the person giving this to do it as a LinkedIn recommendation, making clear you also plan to use in other places.
Speaker reel
A speaker reel is a short video of clips showing you speaking at a variety of events. This is topped and tailed with some snazzy graphics showing your name and contact details. You can host this on YouTube, as you then have the added benefit of being able to include a longer piece of text underneath with a clear call to action.
Personal website
I would also urge you to create a personal website A personal website brings everything together and positions you as a serious speaker. I have some suggested topics on my website which gives event organisers easy options to pick from, they can also request a new topic.
You can include all the above detail and create an enquiry form that goes through to you or a member of your team. We get regular enquiries for me to speak through my personal website. It’s great as the form captures all the useful info I need to decide if I want to take the opportunity including:
- Date
- Location
- Audience size
- Talk length
- Topic
- Aims and outcomes of the talk
- Budget
This is just one of my strategies to solidifying a personal brand that makes an impact in your industry. For more of my tried and tested techniques, my book From Unknown to Unforgettable :How to build a personal brand that goes beyond the bio is out on 31st May 2024 available for pre order Click here for more information.
