Today’s topic is about reaching an audience offline –and audiences you do reach offline are often local– and promoting those offline efforts online. Got that?
We recently read a great article that described how you can use your online presence to promote your expertise both locally and afar. Many of us do have an expertise, and offer that to the public as our business.
The article, “I Want to Speak at your Conference, Now What?” by Erica McGillivrary, details steps you can take to earn speaking slots, and then how to promote your speaking engagements on your website, cementing your credentials as an expert in your field. Erica recommends that you:
- Establish your speaking goals. You first need to identify why you want to speak publicly. Getting in front of potential clients or sharing your knowledge with colleagues are great reasons.
- Come up with pitches. You need to convince event organizers that you’d be a good fit. Make sure you know the audience!
- Build your portfolio online. This is where your website comes in. Have a page dedicated to your speaking engagements and availability. Describe your experience. Provide a bio. Have a professional looking head shot. Keep a calendar of future and past engagements. Share your content (presentations, audio, video). Our speaking portfolio page is here. (We need to work on it!) One thing we do is keep a public calendar of our engagements on the very searchable Google Calendars.
And speaking of speaking, we’ve been, and continue to be, busy over the last few weeks.
- On Friday at noon eastern, we’ll be explaining how to advertise using Google Adwords and Facebook. The webinar is here. We hope you can join us.
- On Saturday we’ll be addressing the same issue at the annual conference of the Academy of Professional Mediators in Reston, Virginia.
- Yesterday we presented to the Saratoga Springs WordPress Meetup group on how to start and run a WordPress-focused business, with tips on small business startup generally.
- Earlier this month we presented on how to have a successful online presence at the ADFP/Center for Mediation & Training Catalyst Conference in New York City.
So get out there, expert, and let people know you’re available!
