Your Five-Step Plan to Leveraging Social Media Into Speaking Gigs

Better still, for the most part, it’s free! All that stands between you and using this potent arm of your outbound marketing to land speaking gigs is hard work.

That said, you don’t want to throw yourself into social media head-first without a clear strategy. You need a plan so that your efforts are focused on the activities that are likely to help you move your speaking business in the right direction.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at a brief five-step plan that will ensure you stay on the right track with your social media marketing. 

#1: Set Up Brand-Consistent Profiles On One or Two Platforms 

Social media profiles should form an extension of your speaker website. They should provide another touchpoint to your speaking business and, therefore, reflect your brand in every way possible so that planners and event organizers become familiar with your style. These free speaker marketing templates can help you stay on brand.

Fonts, colors, tone of voice, and look and feel should all mirror your website and other social channels. Doing something different for each social channel will only confuse people. The idea is for someone to come across your social media profile and immediately know it’s you before they’ve even read your tweets or posts.  

Lastly, only set up a presence on a couple of platforms. Social media done right takes time, and the more channels you have, the less time you have for the rest of your marketing strategies. So pick a couple where your target audience hangs out and stick to them. 

#2: Stay Consistent with Your Posting Schedule 

There’s nothing more frustrating than a speaker who dumps a ton of helpful and interesting content only to then disappear for weeks or even months before returning. Love it or hate it, the social media game is an endless cycle. When you stop posting, you and your message tend to drift from people’s minds. Thus, you need to post consistently to remain relevant and present. 

That’s not to say you need to be posting several times a day, every day. You will wear people out, and they’ll tune out from your message. Instead, the aim is to post just enough to keep occupying the minds of people that are vital to your business, such as event planners. 

A posting schedule of three to fives times a week will keep you in the minds of your audience and help you build credibility as a thought leader and subject matter expert, which both assist with speaking opportunities.

#3: Don’t Forget About Your Profile

Many emerging speakers forget the importance of a profile, especially on more professional networks such as LinkedIn. Planners aren’t going to have time to trawl through all of your posts and articles when they’re just initially checking you out. Instead, they’ll only have time to read your profile.

This is your opportunity to summarize what you’re all about in a clear, concise manner. It’s also your chance to let them know a little about your expertise, experiences, and credibility as a speaker. Ensure you eliminate the fluff here. Conciseness is key. 

Lastly, make sure to send them somewhere. Be it the top of your funnel (email list) or your speaker video, whatever the link you choose, make it count. 

#4: Be Social on Social 

Many speakers I work with are fantastic with their posting schedule, using tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite to ensure they stay consistent. However, they make the crucial mistake of never being present on social media. They don’t respond to comments on their posts, and they never share or comment on other people’s business pages or profiles. 

If you’re going to leverage social media into bookings, I would encourage you to make people feel like they can talk to you. That means committing time to being social on your socials. You need to put in the time to comment, share, and interact with the key movers and shakers in your industry. 

By putting in this kind of work across your social channels, you will be able to build relationships with event planners and other businesses that are vital to your speaking career. In other words, you allow yourself to stay relevant, establish and maintain credibility, and put yourself in the right place at the right time when it comes to speaking opportunities.#5: Reach Out to Planners and Organizations 

The final stage (closely tied to stage four) is reaching out to the people that matter in your industry. You already know the events and organizations you would like to work with, and the chances are they all have social media profiles. Thus, use your channels to connect with these people and get acquainted. 

Reaching out in this way can often have higher conversion rates than other methods that planners are becoming tired of, such as email campaigns. Rather than sending a DM right off the bat, start by commenting in one of their posts. You could also share an article or a blog post they’ve published or ask them an insightful question in the comments that provides value to the others reading their content. 

Once you’ve caught their eye, then you can move the conversation forward to see whether or not there’s a mutual fit.

Planning Your Social Media Marketing Strategy Makes All the Difference

These five steps form a comprehensive strategy for using social media as a tool to market yourself as a speaker. By keeping the steps outlined above at the front of your strategy, you can begin to leverage your social channels into paid speaking opportunities. They each take a lot of manual work (you can’t put this on autopilot), but the potential rewards make it worth your time. 

I put together a short course on how you can easily find the right speaking gigs.

There are thousands of speaking opportunities every day; some are paid, and some are free, but there are a TON of them. Knowing what you’re going after and staying consistent is KEY.

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So, sit back, and watch Wendi’s training. Make sure you have a pen and paper handy. Better yet download the How to Find Speaking Gigs workbook to complement this masterclass. You will also find a bonus, the Gig Tracker to help you stay focused and on track.