How To Get Speaking Gigs To Promote Your Personal Brand
A businessman reached out to me after attending my recent speech on “The Seven Deadly Fails Of Selling In Japan”, which I gave to the American Chamber of Commerce here in Tokyo. He wasn’t interested in hearing about how to sell in Japan, but he was frustrated that he was too low profile in his industry. The consequence of being invisible in your industry sector is that people don’t look for you or find you very easily. Having people call you up to help them in their business is the preferred way to get new business. It is vastly superior to spending time and money running around trying to find buyers yourself. Great! How do you do that?
This gentleman’s business was in a very defined niche and there were rivals who were dominating that niche. They were getting the lion’s share of the business as a result. He was sick of getting the crumbs and wanted to raise his profile so that his phone would start to ring. His enquiry to me was about doing our High Impact Presentations Course, so that he would be a more skilled presenter. However, he mentioned he also needed to engineer the speaking spots as an expert authority, to use these speaking skills we are going to impart to him.
This “get found by buyers” aspiration is all part of our personal branding efforts. One mental shift we have to make though, in this world of content marketing, is to understand that we are all publishing companies now, as well as being in our mainstream businesses. By this I mean, we have the ability today, to project our ideas around the world and very inexpensively, to an extent never imagined before. We can start by writing or talking if we can’t write. Writing blogs or recording blogs and then transcribing them into text is a good starting point. Great Greg, but what do I write or talk about?
In your area of speciality, there will be problems facing your buyers. You already know what they are, because when you meet your clients, this is what they talk about. Just give yourself fifteen uninterrupted minutes sitting there with a pen and some paper. You will soon be able to come up with the most important issues in your industry. These points can be fleshed out further into blogs. As I mentioned, you may prefer to talk about the issues and then transcribe them. It doesn’t matter. Get the IP (Intellectual Property) out of your head and on to paper. You could weld all of these issues together into a longer article. This would be suitable for publication in an industry magazine. The various Chambers of Commerce also usually have their own magazines and are always looking for good content.
Submit your article for publication and expect that they will edit it for you. This activity gets you in front of the readers, both those who actually read what you have written and those who only noted the headline and your name. The latter outcome is also fine because you are building an association of a topic and your personal brand. Often these organizations have an on-line version of their magazine and you will appear in that too. This is handy for getting picked up by search engines.
Take that same article now and go back and break it up into single issue blocks. Each of these is a blog post in itself and so add an intro and a conclusion. Load them up to your website, blast them out in your email newsletter, post them on all of your social media.
Contact event organisers who run conferences in your industry and suggest yourself as a speaker. Send them a copy of your long article, preferably once it has been published in a magazine, for extra credibility. They will be very happy to hear from you, because they are always looking for presenters. In some cases, they might want you to pay to appear. This might be doable or prohibitive, depending on the event.
When potential clients or event organisers want to check you out, they will do a search on your name. These blogs and articles you have written, which are pieces of evidence of expertise on this subject, will pop up. It looks better to have a number of relevant posts, than just one long article, so try and populate your feed with multiple examples of good content. You don’t have to go crazy and post hundreds but more is better than less.
If you find there are podcasts on your subject, contact the podcast hosts and suggest you do a guest spot. If you have a lot of material or can consistently source great guests, then start your own podcast. You may not broadcast it every day or every week, but you will need some degree of frequency and regularity to get any traction. You can use social media to publicise your podcast episodes. Again, this activity can be referred to buyers or conference organisers, as proof of your expertise. The search engines start to attach all of this activity to your name and when people search for you, up comes all of this expert authority.
These days shooting video is super easy. Facebook live videos take away all editing and you can send them out later through social media. Or you can shoot video on your iPhone or Ipad. The camera quality today is excellent. Just buy a frame to hold your device, screw the holder into a tripod, attach a separate microphone, stand about a meter away and you are off to the races. In iMovie you can edit the content and then upload it to your YouTube channel. You can take the transcript of the video and use it for articles and blogs. You can imbed the video itself into social media posts and add the text back in as well. The audio can be stripped out and used in your podcasts or posted in social media with a link.
All of this is multi-purposing. It creates more chances for you to be found. When you are found, people can gauge the level of expertise you have on a subject and then make a judgment about whether they want you to speak at their event or not. Even if you don’t make it to the stage at the event, your chances of getting found by potential clients goes right up. What does it require? Not much money but it does take time and effort. The best time to start all of this was yesterday and the second best time is now!
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
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About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
