6 Ways to Legitimately Grow Your Speaking Engagements

 

Speaking engagements have a lot of benefits! They help you get your name out there, build up your reputation, and make you look like the go-to person in your industry. The networking and relationship building gained from speaking engagements is unmatched to any type of advertising. The problem for most people though is actually finding and booking speaking engagements. Here are some ways I have done it and some ways other people have done it!

Local Service Clubs – To find opportunities, join organizations like Kiwanis, Chamber of Commerce, Lions Club, Rotary, and others that might be in your individual communities. If you haven’t tried any of those then hopefully the light bulb just went off in your head. Most of these organizations are always looking for guest speakers and content to fill up their meetings.

Universities – Go take a look at Google Maps and you’ll probably see a local community college or university near you. Team up with a professor a department and a forum or subject relevant to you and invite those students and community members.

Online References – http://www.oreilly.com/conferences/, http://events.mashable.com, http://www.inc.com/events/, http://www.fortuneconferences.com/,

Google – Maybe you found this blog using Google? Well, you can also use it to find speaking engagements! For example, search for events in your industry. Try a search like, “Call for Speakers” AND “[Your topic].” Or, “Call for Presenters” AND “[Your topic],” and, “Call for Speakers” AND “[Industry]”

Speaking Directories – Yes, it really is that easy, however there is a potential fee, so if you are looking to keep cost down, directories might not be an option. But here are two to check out:

Speaker Services – speakerservices.com
Speaker Zone – speakerzone.com

Business Networking Organizations – On my last blog How to Grow Your Business Without Wasting Your Time, I mentioned BNI. Well, I am mentioning it again in this blog. If your local community doesn’t have BNI check for other groups that you can join, or create your own group!

Bonus – Speaking engagements can be both a lot of fun and rewarding … but they can also take up a lot of time and may not show a direct return on investment. Believe it or not you shouldn’t take every speaking engagement that comes your way. You shouldn’t always take the free engagement either. If you are good at what you do, you have the valuable content, the last thing you should do is give it all away for free.

Take 2 or 3 of these action items and see how many new speaking engagements you get!