Speaking engagements are a great way for business owners to attract more business. Typically when you do a speaking engagement you’re speaking to an audience of potential customers. So whether you’re business to business, or business to consumer, trying to sell a book, or whatever it is you do, presentations and speaking engagements are great ways to get more business and more exposure.
Here are four tips on how to incorporate social media into your presentation.
1. Get the buzz going
You can announce or promote your event and get the buzz out there through social media. You can use Facebook to set up an event and start inviting people. You can email details to your email list. You can tweet about your upcoming event on Twitter. This way you can reach more people, and the more attendees you have the more prospects you can speak to at your speaking engagement.
2. Use hashtags
Try to develop a hashtag for your event. If I were going to do a talk on social media, I might use something like #socialmediamckinney, #socialmedia2016, or something of that nature. Try to get some creative people in your company to think outside the box and come up with a very specific hashtag, and then encourage your audience to live tweet or live post notes or quotes about the event, and use the hashtag. This will attract more people, and then you can search for that specific hashtag and go in and engage with those people who are at your events. Try to create some kind of fun, customized hashtag that you can also add to some print materials to hand out before the event as well.
3. Share pictures
When you’re at the event, take tons of pictures! Take pictures with your attendees, take pictures of your setup—people love behind the scenes shots. Take pictures of the audience. (Obviously you want to feel out the room, and if there are people there who don’t want to be on camera, don’t put them on it!) You can use these pictures later in your social media posts, to say “Hey! We had a great time at such and such event, and here are some pictures!”
4. Go live
If you feel comfortable, set up a camera and live stream your talk. You can do this on Periscope or Facebook Live, and there are some other alternatives. This way you can “invite” people who can’t physically make it to your speaking engagement—maybe they’re out of town, or just couldn’t make it for whatever reason. If someone can’t travel to you, they can still catch your talk! When you live stream an event you are also recording it, so you can go back and watch it and critique yourself, see what you could have done a better job on, or what you did well. You can use it for your own feedback, as well as increasing your audience reach.
These are some fun things you can do to take your speaking engagements and presentations to the next level by incorporating social media. If you enjoyed these tips, please share it with someone who does speaking engagements, or wants to get into speaking!