Marketing For Public Speaking Businesses

How often are you sending press releases when you have a new book, training system or major public speaking event?

Press releases really work. I recommend PRWeb.com for a professional service. Real results come from investing in your online press releases. You're able to measure the success of your release with real-time stats about how many views and opens it got.

Using your website analytics, you can see the immediate stats about how much traffic your site or landing page has received. Press releases help with spreading your name around the web - they are made specifically for search engines to find and index. They come up high in the search results and stay there for a long time. On top of that, most news agencies and reporters subscribe to PRWeb to find the latest happenings in each catagory of industry. You're business could be easily discovered by major media that is looking for the next interesting thing to do a story on.

Good publicity and searchability are the two things that can set you apart from other public speakers. Instead of just building a website and waiting for visitors to find it, be proactive and start using press releases to advertise each new part of your business. It's a tactic that most new public speakers rarely try.

Here's a tip: don't make your press realease sound like a pitch or too salesy. Write it as if what you're doing is newsworthy or could be a story that would interest a news organization and play it from that angle. You'll get a higher response and better chances at being featured for that big story.

Get the best marketing tips from the world's most successful public speakers.

Amazing Public Speaking: Record 'Em

In another article I mentioned recording your grandmother and playing the recording during your presentation. Let's expand on that a little and see how that can work for many of your presentations.


How much do you think the crowd would love it if you did an interview with the CEO and fed him or her funny lines to use as answers? The same would hold true for anybody you record who was well known to the group and generally liked by them.

The opposite of that would work too if you made up a recording of you interviewing the "supposed" CEO of company that competes with the one you are talking to. In this case you would use dumb answers to make the fake CEO look stupid. Make sure it's really obvious that it's a spoof because I'm not taking the responsibility if the other CEO hear's about it and sues you.

You could do the same on video and it would be even funnier. I saw a guy one time asking dumb questions to audience members before his speech and recording the answers on video. The boss had told the participants that the speaker wanted to interview them so they should give him good answers to his questions. The entire thing was a set up and the people being interviewed didn't know it was a joke. They attempted to give serious answers to the ridiculous questions. The recordings were played back at the event and it brought down the house.

More public speaking genius tips...

Anecdotes for Presentations

AmazingPublicSpeaking.com

You don't want to be a low level presenter do you? This video tells you how using anecdotes can make you a winner or a loser on stage. Over 450 public and professional speaking videos.

A Better Public Speaking Website: Should I Have My Own Domain Name?

A very commonly asked question is "Should I have my own domain name?" A domain name, by the way, is like "antion.com." You don't want to get something like "freewebsites.com/ImTooCheapToGetMyOwnDomainName/joeblow.htm" even though it's free.

All your promotional efforts will be wasted if the free website company makes some small change. People won't be able to find your site anymore.

If you have your own domain name, you can move and be hosted anywhere around the world and people will still be able to find you through all your promotional efforts.

In addition, having your own domain name gives you greater credibility. Plus domains and hosting are so cheap now there is no excuse in not having your own. (check out some cheap hosting places at http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com ) Get domains at http://www.KickStartDomains.com

Tip: If you think of a good name, get it now because they're going fast. One man recently sold his for $90,000.00. He had "helpdesk.com." Many have gone for millions of dollars. Toys.com sold for 5.1 million dollars in 2009. Beer.com went for 7 million in 2004 and Business.com went for 7.5 million way back in 1999. The domain name can be a valuable entity for you in the future if you get a good one.

For now, check out domain names using the free tool available at http://www.KickStartDomains.com You can purchase domain names there too. Want to find out who owns a site so you can make an offer to buy it? http://www.whois.sc

Top Level Domains

A top level domain is for instance .com, .org, .net, etc.

Most of the time you want to get a .com but many times it's already taken. We suggest modifying the main part of your domain name so that you can get the .com and don't forget . . . . don't get dashes in your domain name.

Example: You can't get GiftBasket.com so you get BestGiftBasketDeals.com In this case we still have the keyword "GiftBasket" in the domain name, but we added short words on the beginning and end of it so we could get the domain with no dashes and still get the .com version.

Below is a list of Top Level Domains Available
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains

Public Speaking Marketing: List Building with Bonuses

Building an email database / list can be a slow process if traffic has not yet picked up your website due to it being a new site or if you have a highly competitive keyword phrase. You can make a lot of money with an email list, so building it quickly is a priority.

One way to build a list on automatic is to offer a bonus ebook or product that other business people give away when their services are purchased. Let's say that Mr. Coach has products for sale on his website or through his webinars. Mr. Coach may have been in business for years, making far more sales than yourself. You offer Mr. Coach your ebook as a free bonus that he can give away when he sells something. Each of his customers have to opt-in to your database to download the ebook, and you get the keep the email address as a part of your email marketing. With this process, you are building a list from someone else's efforts and sales even if you are not yet getting customers or your own.

Mr. Coach would love to have an extra bonus from an expert like yourself that isn't a product of their own that they have to give away. It benefits their customer, gives them extra bonuses to give away and builds your list with highly qualified prospects all at the same time. The ebook itself should contain links to your other products and services so you can make even more money and also build brand awareness for your business to a entirely new set of customers.

Discover other marketing secrets of successful public speakers!

Public Speaking Websites: List Building Sign-ups

I saw a website today from a great public speaker. On the 'home' page, it prompted me to "Sign Up For Free Gifts and Consultations." Awesome. But I didn't feel like signing up just quite yet, so I clicked the 'no thanks, take me to the site' link.

Nice site, professionally done. However, I realized after a few moments of looking around that there was no other place anywhere on the site to sign up for the great freebies that he offered at the beginning.

Big mistake. Most website visitors don't sign up for anything immediately. It takes time for them to get to know you, watch a video or two, or see if your content is even anything that they need or want. Often, signing up for a freebie or newsletter is the last thing they do before they leave the site. If you don't have prominent opt-in forms on every page you'll lose the ability to capture a visitor's email. And they'll probably never be back.

Building a list is more important than you may realize. It's the opportunity to market to and sell to a prospect over and over, year after year. Website visitors rarely buy anything the first time they land on your site. If you don't capture their email address right then, you never will. Take a look at your website right now - are there prominent opt-in forms on every page? Are they easy to read and comprehend? Are they giving away something of value?

Public Speaking Marketing: Websites That Make Sense to Google

Many public speakers are fluent in many disciplines. We often have a number of different presentations on various topics to get the most coverage of an available audience. But while that may seem valuable to a meeting planner or corporate decision maker, having too many various topics on a website can cause trouble with the search engines.

Trying to cram too many topics on a website can make you look like a 'jack-of-all-trades' to Google. Search engines give higher ranking to websites that look like an 'authority' on a single subject, rather than ones that are stuffing too many keywords in their site. We may not be doing this on purpose, public speakers are known for being very diverse. However, it can be hurting your chances for better search positioning.

A website is better suited to optimize a niche. Not only does the jack-of-all-trades thing make you look bad in the search engine's eyes, it's a more powerful strategy to focus on as many various keywords on a single topic than to spread yourself too thin. Think of all the keywords you may not be using to capture traffic because you're using too many 'broad' keywords to fill all the things you teach about.

Sometimes it's better to have two separate websites if your topics are far removed from each other. If you speak about time management and keeping teenagers off of drugs, those should be two different websites. There is no way to cram all the keywords for both of those topics into one website and have it be effective. It may look impressive to your website visitor, but they may never actually find the website in the search results. I know it's more work, but the payoff will be substantial.

There's more search engine techniques where that came from...

Public Speaking Business: Curiosity Building Tweets

Public speakers can use Twitter effectively to send their target market to their websites. That website may have interesting news, beneficial training or complimentary products to help build a following for your speaking or seminar business. But it won't work if your tweets are so boring that no one is clicking on them.

The whole idea behind sending tweets is to get readers to click on the link. Whether your educating people or just providing an important resource for your followers, the conversion is the click. It's the measure of how effective your tweets are and whether people are responding to what your have to say.

To help get more readers clicking, your tweets should build curiosity. Don't tell them too soon what the link is for: "Read my new blog post about leadership skills", try and entice them to learn more after the click: "The 7 qualities great leaders have and how you can find them in yourself."

You can even make your tweets even more suspenseful:

"I wish I had know this before getting into business... *link*"
"You'll never believe what I just figured out about online videos. *link*
"Are you kidding me? It doesn't get any easier than this... *link*"

The answers and benefits to these statements are in the click. Your followers get the information they need and you are rewarded with a visitor to your website. You look like the expert in your field and you become a trusted resource to the people who follow you.

It's hard to sell from a tweet (and it's actually bad etiquette), but once they're on your website, it's a different story. Getting as many unique visits to your website as you can is the goal, and Twitter can be a great tool in driving qualified traffic to your site.

Discover more website traffic driving techniques successful public speakers are using.

Presentation Skills: Finding Humor for Specific Industries

If you are looking for stories and humor in a specific industry, you must work a little harder than you would have to find general humor. Certain professions like medicine and law have many individual books, newsletters, and articles written about them. But if you are a plumbing executive, or you are speaking to the plumbing industry it is unlikely you could go down to your local public bookstore and find a plumbing joke book.  

Start a file right away for industry-specific information you find. A good place to start looking for information to fill this file would be in a trade journal for the specific industry. Almost every industry you can imagine has one or more associated trade journals. If you're looking for humor, sift through back issues to find humor you can use now. Virtually no one remembers cartoons and jokes more than a month or so. Watch for industry newsletters so you can extract usable material. Check company bulletin boards regularly for funny signs and postings.  

Call others in the industry to look for stories or incidents that would be of interest to your audience (remember to give credit). Collect everything you can collect that is interesting and industry specific and soon you will have the best collection around. Don't forget our friend the Internet. Anytime I need humor on something really specific, I simply type the keywords (ex. plumbing humor, or water humor) into one or more of the major search engines. Something is bound to come up. You must be ready to do some sifting though before you find some usable material. Here are just some of the lines I came up with for the plumbing engineer group I was speaking to. Note: these are the people who figure out how much water it takes to flush a toilet hahaha  

My wife's an earth sign. I'm a water sign. Together we make mud.



-- Rodney Dangerfield

The shower is the greatest invention. I don't like to take a bath. I don't like to wash my face in the water I've been sitting in.
-- Lewis Grizzard

How come when you mix water and flour together you get glue ... and then you add eggs and sugar and you get cake? Where does the glue go?
-- Rita Rudner

Getting married is a lot like getting into a tub of hot water. After you get used to it, it ain't so hot.
-- Minnie Pearl

Get more humor tips!

The Business of Speaking: Online Videos

I created a ton of online videos that are highly searchable on Google and drive prospects to my websites all for free. All you need is a digital video camera, a microphone that will plug in to the camera and an account on Youtube.

People are searching everyday for information that you have to offer. As a public speaker, you have valuable advice on time management, weight loss, motivation, positive thinking, changing careers and literally thousands of other topics. Online videos give you the chance to grab a slice of those search results and more importantly, give real advice in a compelling manner via the dynamics of video.

The video is a convincing piece of real connection with your viewer. They can see instantly that you know what you're talking about and how to help the viewer with their problems. After offering up some real eye-opening content, you now have a chance to send them to your website for more information or resources that can quickly turn a curiosity seeker into a paying customer.

If you just have your website alone with a few articles on it, you're missing out. Youtube videos have higher search engine results than plain text alone. Also, very few people can write so well as to convey the emotions and conviction that a simple video can tell about your business. A smile and some great advice is worth a million words.

If you believe that online videos can help your business, and I know they will, discover everything you'll need to get started right here.  

Motivational Speaker

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Public Speaking Business Marketing: Broken Websites

Building a public speaking website can be exciting and daunting at the same time. In our zest to make the coolest website possible, we can easily forget to update our website by checking for broken parts. Just like a car, proper tune-ups are a must in this industry.

How can a website have broken parts? Don’t forget that a website has a fluid motion: navigation that takes the visitor to the other pages of the site, links embedded in anchor text and links to resources on other websites. If a search engine such as Google sees that your website has broken links, it can cost you valuable ranking in the search results. It also can quickly confuse or irritate your visitor and make them leave.

A broken link is simply a clickable link on your website that no longer goes anywhere, (page not found) or goes someplace else than it originally intended. You have to keep a constant vigil as to where your links are going to make sure that the original site has not been banned, been taken down or changed to some other site or service. The Internet is constantly changing so it’s important to check for broken links often. Sometimes, when updating to new versions of WordPress, the linking code can be compromised, causing a broken link. Sometimes code just gets messed up for no reason at all. The only way to stay on top of this and not have it affect your search results is to spend time every couple of months going through your site and clicking on the links to make sure they are going to where they are supposed to.

Aside from search results, what would a meeting planner think about your professionalism if the site doesn't function properly or looks outdated? You deserve to have the best website possible when all important decision makers are scouring the web looking for public speakers.

All of these things are an easy fix, even though checking on every link can be time consuming. It’s worth it in the long run to make sure your website is professional looking as possible, and that you are not losing money or sign-ups with broken links to important resources.

Learn more about the latest website updates.