If you’re building a professional speaking business, you know there are many social media outlets and opportunities for sharing your content. While you don’t have to be on all of them, you do have to be on a few of them for maximum impact for your professional speaking business.  Here’s how to pick the most profitable ones, get started and save time along the way.

I spoke with Jeannie Walters, Global Customer Experience, Patient Experience Keynote Speaker, Trainer & Workshop Leader about how to share your expertise through multiple channels to grow your professional speaking business faster.

You should always have a clear reason for leveraging different channels, this is your “Why.” You DON’T need to be on every social media channel. Jeannie started blogging for intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. It was a way to organize her thoughts and share what she cared about in the customer experience world. When she started her current company in 2009, blogging was the only marketing she did. That has changed dramatically.

How can your blog drive your professional speaking business?

Your blog builds your credibility over time. When people find Jeannie’s professional speaking business on social media outlets, they often check out her blog. When they see that she’s been writing for a long time they see her as an expert and want to work with her. They feel like they already know her when they pick up the phone for that the first-time call after reading her blog.

If you’re in a broad category, like leadership or customer experience, pick niche themes within the industry to write about. This will help you get focused.  Over time you can create a more formal content calendar and stick to big ideas and themes from your niche industry.

Make blog posts conversational! People aren’t there to read academic papers or sift through industry jargon. Here’s what you can do to get started with blogging…

Don’t be afraid to write a crappy first draft! Those can become some of your best work once the ideas are flushed out over time. There’s another advantage: Jeannie has a lot of half-written stuff because she doesn’t want to lose ideas as she thinks of them. If you wait for perfection, you’re leaving a LOT of ideas and content on the table.

You can also blog and write articles for clients, not just for yourself. These can be internal communications and employee newsletters, or external marketing, such as for the resource section for their site.

With all the social media noise you NEED to be on more than one platform for outreach. Let’s look at a few of them.

Podcasting as a Business Driver

Three years ago, on a whim Jeannie said to her friend, Adam Toporek, fellow NSA member in Florida, “let’s start a podcast”. They created the “Crack the Customer Code” podcast. There wasn’t much out there at the time explaining customer service and customer experience the way Jeannie and her friend were looking at it. They found a gap in the market and filled it. They do interview shows, “duo shows” where they talk about trends in the market with each other and “solo shows” where one of them will riff about the latest happenings in their market.

Jeannie told me that she had no idea what she was doing when she started podcasting for her professional speaking business. They started by finding a producer and a studio. As technology became more readily available, they started recording from home.

One big podcasting tip: Know WHY you’re doing it. What is the goal of your podcast? Doing it to get sponsors for your podcast is different than doing it for new business development. If you don’t know what your goal is it’s difficult to make decisions about the podcast and it’s easy for quality and value to get lower.

Many people in the professional speaking world interview people that they want to be future clients. Jeannie had an additional approach. They also focused on education and content to establish themselves as industry experts.

The interview approach comes with an added bonus: Your interviews provide you with additional industry specific stories to share at your speaking gigs.

Talking About Webinars

What else is Jeannie doing to share expertise? Webinars for clients.  They bring in a third-party expert (like you) when they don’t have the experience or credibility to speak on a topic themselves. This can be done for their internal staff or for their customers. This method gives you the opportunity to share your genius with a built-in audience. The client brings the audience, you bring the expertise.

Another variation of the traditional webinar is the Q & A format. The expert does a very short presentation and then the attendees get to ask questions. This creates a personal touch.

What makes a good webinar?

Get rid of the bulleted slides and call it a day. Some people still create webinars by just reading their slides, which makes it boring for everybody watching and listening. For a successful webinar Jeannie recommends being VERY visual. Show a picture and talk over it, by telling a story, just like you would in a live presentation. Use storytelling. Leading people along a storyline with you will help keep their attention.