- For years, I did a lot of speaking engagements
that didn't pay me speaking fees.
Hello real estate industry.
A lot of speaking engagements,
but very few that pay you to speak.
But I was able to leverage those engagements
to sell a lot of books easily,
thousands of books,
and generate a lot of leads and clients for my businesses.
Stick around and I'm gonna share
my eight best tips with you.
(upbeat music)
Hey there, and welcome.
I'm Julie the Book Broad,
award winning author and founder of Book Launchers,
your professional self-publishing team
that will help you write, publish,
and promote a money making,
impact creating, non-fiction book.
Here are just a few of the fabulous
books we've worked on lately.
Yay, they're so pretty.
At Book Launchers, our goal isn't just
that you have a great book.
We want you to achieve your most
important goal from that book.
That means we also have a killer team
of professionals to help you create
a book that is as good or better
than a traditionally published book,
and we help you market that book, too.
Part of what we do is look
for speaking opportunities for authors.
Now, whether we're booking you for speaking engagements
or you're doing it yourself,
you need to plan ahead so you can
make the most of every gig,
especially if you're not getting paid for those gigs,
which is very common in many industries
and when you're just starting out.
In fact, I don't think a lot of people realize
how many speaking engagements are unpaid
these days or even how many are pay-to-play,
in other words, there's a crazy number of events
where they charge the speaker to be on the stage.
I've never paid to speak,
but knowing how valuable it can be to be on the right stage,
I do understand why some speakers will do it.
But before you get to that point,
let's make sure whatever speaking opportunities
you're getting are selling books or growing your platform.
Here's the eight ways I suggest you leverage each speaking
opportunity where you're not getting paid to be there.
Number one, promote your participation in newsletters,
social media, and on your website.
You're doing this for two reasons.
One is it boosts your credibility
for others to know your speaking,
and two, the organizers at the event
will appreciate you helping them
get the word out about their event,
and often refer you to other events
or give you other opportunities around their platform,
like video interviews, blog posts,
shout outs, and re-posts.
Number two, research, plan
and leverage media coverage of the event.
Smart event planners, especially
of larger 100 plus person events,
typically are arranging some sort
of media coverage around their event.
There are always opportunities for that human
interest story around this promotion
because the media doesn't really
wanna run a promotional story about an event.
So if you have a human interest angle
that is around what this event is all about,
you could offer yourself up
to the organizers for a media interview,
and you could get coverage for the event and for yourself.
I also typically like to know who's on site
and introduce myself or get introduced
to onsite bloggers or media doing coverage of the event.
This often led to me being mentioned
in follow up posts or articles that
went out after the event was over.
But if you aren't prepared with an angle
or you don't know who you're looking for,
you'll miss out, so do your research in advance.
Number three, if the event is a decent sized one,
it can be worth it to hire a professional photographer.
Get photos of you speaking 'cause
you'll use them on your media kit,
on your website, and even on social media.
This is a great credibility booster,
so it can be worth it to get a pro
in the audience shooting pictures of you.
Number four, film the talk or ask for video coverage.
Ask the organizers if they're recording
the event and if you can get that video.
I've never been turned down.
Sometimes they ask that I don't use it for public purposes,
but they understand that as a speaker,
you need video footage to book other gigs
and will almost always help you out for this,
especially when you're unpaid.
Number five, if you're unpaid,
collect email addresses with a feedback form.
I gotta give a huge shout out to a great speaking coach,
Carol Cox.
She caught me speaking at Podfest in 2018,
and gave me this suggestion, and it was brilliant.
Put a simple offer to join your newsletter list,
like this one, and let them know at the end
of the talk to turn in the feedback form.
You'll find that 30 to 60% of the room
has now signed up for your newsletter.
Platform growth, baby.
Number six, if they didn't buy books or you're unpaid,
ask if you can set a table up at the back to sell books.
Number seven, let the audience and the organizer
know you're looking for more speaking
engagements and ask for referrals.
For the audience, this is a little trickier,
but as people come up to you afterwards
and say how great it was,
let them know you'd love to do more.
So if they know of any events you'd be a good fit for,
you'd appreciate a connection.
Do the same thing with the organizers.
Number eight, get testimonials from the organizer.
Letters of reference are ideal,
but a great testimonial can really help too.
Just because a speaking engagement
doesn't put cash in your pocket directly
doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
In many cases, they will buy books
in exchange for you speaking,
but in other cases, they will be more
than willing to help you get something out of it.
So think about what you need and ask.
And the larger the audience
and the more experience you gain,
the more value you can expect in exchange for your talk.
And pretty soon you'll be getting
paid to speak to most audiences.
And when you're not paid,
you'll have the ability to generate
a lot of income and book sales from every opportunity.
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If you haven't watched the video on how to book
speaking engagements when you're just starting out,
go here.
If you've seen that one,
check out this fabulous video on how to help you
with book launch day 'cause a lot of authors
don't know what to do on their big day.
I'm waiting for you.
Go ahead, click one of these videos.