8 Ways for Authors to Leverage Speaking Engagements

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. Hey there and welcome. I'm Julie the Book Broad Award winning author and founder of Book Launchers, you professional self publishing team that will help you write, publish and promote a money making impact creating nonfiction book. Here are just a few of the fabulous books we've worked on lately. Hey, 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 you're speaking, and two, the organizers of 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, shoutouts and reposts. 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 want to 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 on site 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 where 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 because you'll use them in 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 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. Like getting tips like this for free. Hit that thumbs up button. It feels good. Try it. And of course, subscribe to the channel so you can catch all the videos. New videos every Tuesday and Friday, except in the summer when we're going to take a break. So nobody Also known as me and my brilliant video editor Justin Brown. Hello, Burns out. But seriously, subscribe and turn on the notifications. Ding. So you get notified when a new video comes out. When you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some fabulous book launchers. Swag. 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. Because 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.