Darlene Milligan: How to Enhance Your Speaking Engagements Through Social Media

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Whether you’re a professional speaker for a living or speak as a way to grow other areas of your business, social media is powerful tool when it comes to enhancing your speaking engagements. Social Media can drive attendance, create buzz, build trust and strengthen relationships with your audience even before you take the stage. In this post, you’ll learn what I do on social media before, during and after a speaking engagement. These tips have helped me optimize my experience as a speaker for the audience, the event producers and my own business.

BEFORE THE EVENT- A great way to demonstrate your value to the event producer or organization who invited you to speak is to help promote both your own session and the entire event. With social media, there are many authentic ways to do this.

Offer a promotional code: If the event you’re speaking at is a paid ticketed event, they may offer promotional codes for different groups and organizations. Ask to get a custom code to pass on to your network. This allows you to offer value to your followers when inviting them to your event. This also increases the chances that your network may share the code with their friends so the event gains publicity to new audiences.
Create buzz through a ticket giveaway contest: Ask if you can get a complimentary entry to give away. I have done this in the past for high value ticketed events and the event organizers have been more than happy to provide me with tickets when I explain the benefits of hosting a contest. You will supply a demand to those who want to attend, increase the value of your business by creating a relevant promotion and showcase benefits of attending your speaking engagement. You can host the contest on your own website or one of your social networks.
Post tips as teasers for your presentation: Choose some main points in your presentation and turn these into short “Tip of the Day” posts. You can create short videos, images, or write the tips in 140 characters or less for Twitter. Start posting these around 2 weeks before your speaking engagement. The tips are designed to educate your audience and also serve as teasers to hook them into wanting more information at your actual presentation.
Write your own blog post about your speaking engagement: This doesn’t need to be a long post, but it’s an opportunity to direct people to your own website when posting about your speaking engagement on your social networks. Give a brief background about the event and organization. Link back to the event website where people can register to attend. If you’re offering a promotional code include this in your post. You can even host your contest here.
Use the event hashtag early and often: Find out what the official event hashtag is and start including it in all of your content. This way when people search the hashtag before the event, they’ll get directed to the content you have been posting. This also increases the chances of you showing up as a top result through hashtag searches on Twitter.

DURING THE EVENT- When you’re on stage speaking, you have some control of the content your audience will be posting. Take advantage of this unique opportunity by allowing the audience to easily engage and interact with you.

Promote your Twitter handle during your presentation: I have been to many presentations where I want to Tweet a quote or fact I just learned and cite it back to the speaker but I have no idea what the speaker’s Twitter handle is. During your introduction, let people know they can follow you on Twitter, or better yet have your Twitter handle visible during the presentation. One way to do this is by having it on all of your slides. By providing the audience with your Twitter handle, you’re empowering them to cite you in their Tweets about your presentation which provides more credibility to those reading the Tweets and may prompt others to follow you. Another clever opportunity to promote your Twitter handle during a presentation is to have it on the laptop you’re using for your presentation.

Social Media Tools for Speakers- @ChelseaRhane

Create a specific hashtag for your session- You have already been promoting the actual event hashtag so people are familiar with it. Add on to the hashtag so it’s specific to your session. For example, when attending SXSW, the main hashtag is #SXSW. However, individual sessions have their own hashtags such as #SXSWSports, #SXSWBranding, etc. Promote your specific hashtag during the event along with your Twitter handle. This allows you to track buzz, tone and sentiment during your talk. If you’re speaking at a large conference with many other speakers, this also allows the updates from your specific session to stand out to people following the general conference hashtag and it’s a lot easier for you search for the Tweets related to your talk to reply back directly.
Encourage the audience to Tweet questions: Now that you have a specific hashtag for your session, encourage users to Tweet questions with the hashtag during your presentation. This allows your audience to ask questions as they come to mind. Q & A is sometimes reserved at the end of presentations. Many times, people have questions but forget to ask by the time Q & A comes up. By allowing them to Tweet questions through your talk, you understand patterns of interest and areas where your audiences would like more explanation. Some conferences have people monitoring Twitter questions and then use them for the Q & A. Whether this is done for your speaking engagement or not, I encourage you to take some time after your presentation to review and reply to the Tweets directed to you.

AFTER THE EVENT- A proper follow up to event attendees is a great way to grow your network and business.

Offer incentives to connect on social media: Provide incentives for people to join you on social media. Perhaps they can continue getting more tips through your Facebook page or ask you additional questions on Twitter to continue the conversation. Be genuine when letting people know how they can connect with you. Only ask people to Tweet you if you intend to reply. Only ask people to join you on Facebook if you plan to post relevant content.
Make your presentation available for download online: I personally make my slides available online through SlideShare. Some people disagree with giving away your content, but your slides are a guideline of what you discussed during the talk, they don’t give away all of your secrets. SlideShare allows people to easily share your presentation on social media or download it and use it for their own reference.
Collect social media testimonials: Review the online conversations that occurred during your presentation (which can be easily tracked by your hashtag) and take screen shots of posts that can serve as positive testimonials. This includes people thanking you, quoting you and praising your work. They can even be short and sweet. Testimonials are a great tool to help you get hired for future speaking engagements.