If you are speaking to thousands or the local Rotary club, there are now some excellent ways to publicize it.
Bill Leake, the chief executive officer at
Apogee Search, and the program chair for the upcoming
Austin Innotech eMarketing Summit, suggested that all speakers consider these suggestions for creating "buzz" for their program.
So, here's the start of the Scherer Communication checklist for all speakers who want to maximize their publicity for their speech:
1) If you have a
Twitter account, be sure to mention the speech about a week before the event. And, the day of the event, you should make sure to use this social marketing tool to publicize it. And, of course, after the end of the talk, a short comment about it would also help.
2) Don't forget the
LinkedIn profile update option. If you have a blog or another online press release, you can link to this by saying: Matt Scherer is speaking to the St. Louis Cardinals fan club on why the Cubs will lose the World Series this year.
3) If you blog, make sure to add some background on the talk for your readers. Then, link that blog to your Twitter and LinkedIn account.
4) There are three
online calendar programs. By using
Zvent,
Eventful and the
Yahoo calendar, you can increase your visilibility.
And of course, there are traditional public relations programs such as sending a news release to your local business editor. Most have calendars that publish events, especially if the program has value and there is not an excessive cost to hear your speak.
Finally, if you are too busy to handle most of this, ask a trusted administrative assistant or your public relations/communications department to help with this. And, if they need help, they can always call me.
