Here are some simple, easy ways you can multiply your reach from public speaking, to get the best benefit from your engagement. I think that this comes in two ways. In a future post, we’ll look into how to get benefit from social media, as regards public speaking. But in this post, I’ll focus on how to get more uses from the information in your speech.
To see how this works, let’s imagine that you’ve just now completed a speech to a conference of the kind of people you want as clients. You’ve gratefully accepted the speaker gift and have collected all the business cards you can from people at the event. Now, back in your hotel room, you’re planning how you can get the best benefit from your speech.
In a word, it’s about “leverage.” Like other aspects of content marketing, a big part of success is in multiple uses of the information in the speech, across various platforms to meet your market’s various learning styles.
Spoken word to text
Start by converting your spoken words into text. That’s already done, if you just read your text to your audience (NOT the best way to communicate – just sayin’). But you probably don’t have an as-delivered text for your presentation – if you’re like me, you just talk based on what’s in your slides. Even if you do speak from a written document, there will be ideas you express that aren’t in the text, particularly your answers to questions from the audience.
So, how do you get a “text” version of your spoken words?
It could be that the conference venue prepares audio or video recordings of presentations. These are generally provided free to the speakers. But if they don’t, you can record your own presentation. You can do this easily through a lapel microphone connected to a hand-held audio recorder, or an app such as iTalk, on your smartphone. Just be sure your battery is charged, and there’s enough storage space on the device.
An audio recording is important, because it allows you to have the presentation transcribed (maybe by low-cost transcribers in India or the Philippines) to create a text version. This can be turned into white papers, articles, blog posts and other written content. The transcription may need some editing, as what sounds good verbally doesn’t always work well on the screen or page.
Turning your spoken words into text is particularly important if you’re the kind of person who hates writing, but who thrives on talking. Rather than struggle with a blank screen, go with your strength – talking.
Spoken word to video
Potential clients like to see you in person, to get an idea of your personality. This is particularly important if you do most of your work long-distance, maybe never meeting your clients in person.
Some conferences provide video files on their plenary presentations, but rarely do the cameras venture into the concurrent sessions.
So, have someone with good camera skills and a good camera, take video footage of your presentation. Don’t rely on the microphone on the camera – it will pick up too much background noise. A lavalier microphone, synced to a pickup on the camera, will produce much better sound, and you can then use the recording as a separate audio file.
However, be sure to use that video correctly. While it may be easy to sit still through an hour-long live presentation (by some speakers, anyway), a one-hour video of that speech seems way too long. As with the audio, it is best to take just the highlights, three or four minutes at a time, for a video.
As with an audio file, a transcription posted along with the video will help the content get found by search engines – and also make the information more versatile, as it meets the needs of reading-oriented people.
One speech leads to another
Use your speech to get yourself other opportunities to speak. As the old saying goes, “nothing succeeds like success.” Any conference planner or other venue organizer likes to have confidence that the speakers they’re booking are good and credible. Nothing says that more than having recently done a speech.
Having positive reviews, in writing, helps. Ask for them if need be – and you might even write a draft of the review for the meeting organizer, asking them to use it as a basis for whatever they want to say about your speech.Video or audio clips, as above, help too. Having a “speaker video” that gives some samples of yourself doing presentations, can be posted to a site such as YouTube. You can then send a link to the next person you approach about the speech.
But just get out there and ask for more speaking engagements. Mention the time and date of your most recent presentation. It will help bolster your case for another meeting organizer to book you as a speaker.
You can support your efforts to book your next gig by putting three or four minutes of your presentation into a speaker demo reel. Upload it to YouTube and send the link to other conference organizers to demonstrate that you can be an insightful and engaging presenter.
One of the strengths of video is showing that you’re someone that your clients will want to work with. If you demonstrate that you can explain complex issues clearly and in an interesting way, there is a greater chance that prospective clients will give you preference.
So, as part of planning your next speech (my book, “Your Firm’s Expertise Edge” goes into detail about how to get speaking gigs), ask yourself these questions:
- What can I do to get a video of my next presentation?
- How can I audio-record my next presentation, and then get a transcription prepared?
- How can I use that transcription, in a blog, as an article or the start of a white paper?
- Where’s my next speaking gig, and how will I get it?
Tone-deaf marketing at PGA Tour
It’s a classic case of content that misses the point and defeats its own purpose. Sorry, I just gotta rant about this.“Do millennials wear argyle?” is the lead on an advertorial from the Professional Golfers Association in the 1 November issue of Fortune magazine. The text talks about how the game of golf needs to change to meet the demands of the younger generation. It even mentions the need for diversity. So what pictures of golfers do they choose to illustrate the changing world that the industry faces? White dudes. Nothing but white dudes.
To me, this is an amazingly great example of head-up-the-a** thinking. They want to show that their sport is welcoming to people other than rich old white men. So what do they show? Apparently-rich young white men. That’s tone-deaf beyond belief. I’m a white dude, on the north side of 50, and even I got it. They couldn’t find a picture of a female golfer on Shutterstock? How about anybody in any color other than White?
One reason for the PGA’s “fail” in this area might be the composition of the PGA Board of Directors. Of the current board’s 20 members, all of them are either white or male. The board has two men who are something other than Caucasian, and two white women. All the rest are white men. Those are the people with the responsibility for approving many thousands of dollars needed to buy advertorial space in Fortune, and they just sleep-walked past this bit of marketing miscommunication.
They’ve convinced me that the most sacred ground in the golf world, the PGA, is as outdated as a dinosaur or a coal-fired power plant.
