‘Cause at some point, people expect you to talk and write!
This is another blog post inspired by Lulu’s Publish and Prosper podcast on how to hit your perfect pitch for speaking engagements.
I’ll admit it. I don’t enjoy speaking. It’s not my zone of genius. I’d much rather be editing someone else’s content or writing my own. But as an introvert, I have a rule, which is if I’m asked to speak, I say yes.
That rule brought me far when I published Vegan Marketing Success Stories, not just because I got to meet other VIPs in the vegan world who I shared the stage with, but also because I got paid C$1300 across three events.
As an author, you may have different goals with your book, and maybe that includes speaking. But if you’re one of those that feel you never have to speak, you’re wrong. Because whether it’s to 10 people in a bookstore or as a guest on a podcast, you must promote your book if you want to have readers.
1. Research events
The event’s audience must be interested in what you’re going to talk about, whether you’re a consultant or an authority on a particular topic, or if you want to talk about your latest book you released. Don’t just find any event you can think of in your immediate area and apply to all of them because you don’t want to travel.
You must understand who the target audience for the event is, who attends, what kind of speakers have they had in the past, and what topics those speakers have covered. If you’ve never been to the event, see if anybody you know has actually attended the event and you can get some first hand feedback about it.
You must convince the event organizers why you can add value to their event. If you’re pitching to an event that is adjacent or parallel to something that you’re an expert in, make a very clear pitch about why what you do can bring value to that parallel audience.
Align what you have to say to the audience and make sure you’re relevant and niching down as best as you can to show differentiating value. Talk about your ability to potentially bring attendees to the event too, especially if you have a large following. Event organizers are looking for ticket sales, so if you can bring in attendees and revenue, it might push you higher up that priority scale.
The point of knowing the conference audience is to make sure that you’re keeping your pitch relevant to this audience. The ultimate goal is making it clear to whomever is reading your pitch that your topic, session, or workshop will add value to the attendees that are there. Give them the most possible value so that you’ve proven you’ve added value to their experience and that it was worth the cost of admission and choosing your session.
If you’re an author, you want them to seek out your books and anything else that you offer.
2. Craft a session to pitch
When you have a list of events that you want to pitch to, you’ll craft pitches for each event. You’ll craft a session, including the session title, description, details you need to include, and a few other things.
Title: This is a first impression. You don’t want to be too click-baity, but you want to grab attention and convey the value that you plan to bring to whatever audience happens to be in that session. It should be immediately recognizable to your target audience as something that would make sense for them to, at the very least, click to see if they want to attend it, and at most, hopefully attend the session.
When organizers see your title in your pitch, they’re going to think, is this something that we think our audience would be interested in from the title alone? Do your best to craft a title that is very clear and concise on the value that you’ll bring, but has some clever or wit about it. Humour is always great. In an effort to convey value, people strip out all the human elements, the humour and other things.
Test out a couple of different title choices with friends, family, and colleagues. If you have an online audience that you trust, maybe throw a few out there. If you’re struggling, throw your session description into ChatGPT and ask it for ten potential titles for the session and see if you have any you like. For an in-person event, SEO is not relevant. SEO value is important, but don’t overdo it.
Description: Your description is your elevator pitch. Try to find that balance with your description between transparency and intrigue. You don’t want to give the whole game away, especially if you have not yet finalized the details of your presentation. You don’t want to promise that you’re going to talk about something and then that doesn’t make its way into the final presentation. You’ve backed yourself into a corner by saying you were going to do it.
You want to set expectations for what you’ll talk about. By the end of the session, attendees will do something, know how to do something, or know more about something. Don’t over promise, but make some promises and finish what the title started in trying to lure people to come to your event.
Identify two, three, or five things people will take away with. Remember, we’re trying to keep the description short. If you can convey the value in a couple sentences with a quick numbered list of 3 things that they’re going to walk away with, boom—that’s a great description.
Don’t fill your description with a bunch of industry specific jargon that doesn’t actually mean anything. Be clear about what kind of session you’re putting on. Will it be an interactive workshop, or is it more lecture style? If you have any kind of interactive or workshop element to it, make sure you include that in the description so that the organizers and attendees know that.
Speaker details: You should be confident in sharing your qualifications as to who you are and why you bring relevance to the topic and the event, as well as any speaking experience you might already have. Don’t over inflate that; be as honest as possible. The emphasis should be on your experience with the topic and why you’re qualified to lend value.
If you have tangible proof to back up your claim that you are an expert in the subject matter that you want to present on, share that. If you have an opportunity to share social proof, share that. Same goes if you wrote a book on the subject.
Even if it’s something like: I’ve attended CEX every year. From the first year, I was just getting started and I really didn’t know what I was doing. I went to this conference because I wanted help getting started with my content entrepreneurial efforts. And now here I am at a point in my career where I’ve taken all that advice that I’ve learned from every year of going to this conference and now I’m applying to be a speaker here.
If you have any past speaking experience, be sure to highlight that and provide speaking examples. It doesn’t matter what they were, whether it was a small book reading at your local library or anything else, just highlight what some of those are and that you’ve had experience. And in most cases, if not all of them, you’re going to need to provide a speaking sample.
If you’ve never spoken before, make sure you don’t go in and apply for a keynote, not understanding what you’re doing. Keynote sessions and keynote speakers are the big ones that you see that typically open conferences and close them. It’ll be the celebrity speakers or the business speaker that everybody’s heard of.
You’re not going to do a keynote on your first ten, twenty, thirty, probably speaking gigs. Especially if you’re not getting coached by one of the great speaker coaches. Understand what you’re applying for is a breakout session, workshop, or an educational session. And make that clear.
3. Prepare your speaking reel/sample
Organizers want to see a sample of how somebody is going to speak publicly, regardless of whether they’ve ever done so before. If you are a first time speaker or you’ve only spoken one or two other times, organizers will still want a sample.
If you don’t have anything, make something. If you’ve spoken a few times, but you don’t technically have the sessions on hand, go find them. They’re somewhere online or reach out to the organizer, even if you can just get a small clip of yourself.
For those of you that do get the opportunity to speak, sometimes and they’re not always recorded, which is common. Find out if you can set a tripod up in your session with your smartphone on it and record some, if not all of it. Or have somebody in there to record a few clips for you.
You could ask the audience if anybody took any video clips that you’d love to have one or two of them to send them to you.
Get your hands on this or make it. Send it through with your submission because the last thing you want to do is commit conference negligence and not give the sample that organizers need to gauge whether or not you’re going to be a good speaker. If you’ve got a clip from you on a webinar or podcast, those will work too. Just give them something to go on. You can’t give them nothing.
4. Speaker bio
Treat your speaker bio as the cherry on top of your submission packet. If needed, have somebody else write it for you. Ask a friend or colleague, if you had to write a bio about me, what would you write? It’s got to be concise. It needs to be engaging again. Humour is your friend. Take the time to tailor it to the audience or the event itself.
You might have a standard bio that you use, but every time you submit to a particular event or audience, review it quickly. If there’s one little thing you could change that would make it more relevant, do that.
More information on speaking at events
A lot of these events don’t pay speakers. Keynotes are often paid. Sometimes small, sometimes a large amount; it just depends on the size of the event. For most small to medium size events, you won’t get paid.
This is an opportunity for you to get yourself out there. It’s awareness, your name on the agenda, which is then broadcast to however many people they’re advertising it to. It’s your ability to add that to your resume. But just because you may not be getting paid for this, please don’t treat the submission process like it’s not super important.
Any opportunity you can get to get in front of people who are potentially hyper relevant to what you do, your message, or even if you’re an author looking for more readers, submit and treat it as if it’s a paid speaking gig. If you have questions, reach out to the organizers before you submit a pitch.
Need a book coach, ghostwriter, editor, or formatter to help you write or publish your book so you can get it in the hands of readers? Read more about my services here and contact me if you’re ready to begin!
