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Every influencer wants to expand their audience. But you can only rely so much on your speaking, especially in the early stages of your career. If you get to show your story to a hundred people at a time, you\u2019re doing well.<\/p>\n
Still, that\u2019s not a huge number of people. You want to speak to more people, which means you need to broaden your horizons.<\/p>\n
Using social media is the key.<\/p>\n
Why? Just think about this:<\/p>\n
Facebook has over 1 billion active users from around the world.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
100 million people use Instagram every single month.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
LinkedIn has 500 million users.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
That all amounts to an enormous audience that you\u2019re not reaching out to if you don\u2019t have an effective social media strategy.<\/p>\n
As an influencer, you can use social media to build your reputation and reach new people. Ultimately, that leads to more speaking engagements and greater success.<\/p>\n
You just need to know how.<\/p>\n
Here are four tips for leveraging social media to benefit your speaking career.<\/p>\n
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Here\u2019s a simple fact that every influencer has to accept.<\/p>\n
Your message isn\u2019t going to appeal to everyone. Your job is to figure out what types of people want to hear your story. From there, you can start marketing towards those people.<\/p>\n
Your social media accounts offer plenty of metrics to help you with this. For example, Facebook users can check who likes and shares their posts to get a basic idea about their target audience. Running ads on the platform provides even more details about who engages with your messages.<\/p>\n
Facebook also allows you to build custom audiences, from which you can build lookalike audiences.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s an example of how this works. A company called Camp and Furnace wanted to use Facebook to get more people to visit their events. They\u2019d used social media ads before. But they hadn\u2019t really targeted them towards a specific audience.<\/p>\n
Then, they started using Facebook\u2019s Custom Audiences tool. <\/p>\n
Facebook allows you to create a custom audience when somebody shares their information with you. This sharing includes visits to your website and engaging with your social content. You can then directly appeal to these people with ads.<\/p>\n
Camp and Furnace took it a step further. They also used the Lookalike tool to extract key data from their custom ad campaigns. This tool helps you identify the traits and interests that people who are most likely to engage with your content tend to share.<\/p>\n
From there, you can identify your target audience.<\/p>\n
Upon identifying their target audience, Camp and Furnace increased their ticket sales 27 times over. This resulted in a 20 times improvement in revenue.<\/p>\n
All of that came from using social media to figure out who their marketing efforts should target. Best of all, you can carry this information through to your other social media and marketing campaigns <\/p>\n
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Social media offers you the chance to interact with your audience directly. There are so many ways that you can take advantage of this.<\/p>\n
From a customer service perspective, you can use social media to answer direct queries from clients. For example, people may have questions about one of your upcoming speaking engagements. Providing a direct response shows that you care about having that audience member at the engagement.<\/p>\n
Better yet, these queries may even provide you with ideas for other content to share. You can use these ideas to become a stronger authority in your niche.<\/p>\n
You can also use social media to quiz your audience and encourage them to interact with you. Kellogg\u2019s did this with their \u201cTweet What You Eat\u201d campaign. This initiative challenged Kellogg\u2019s customers to share pictures of the foods that they eat.<\/p>\n
This encouraged the brand\u2019s audience to share content and interact with them. Plus, it provided a ton of useful data that Kellogg could use to inform future marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n
You could do something similar. Encourage past audience members to share pictures and takeaways from your speaking engagements. Hold contests and surveys to keep your followers engaged. Anything that makes your followers feel like part of your story keeps people interested.<\/p>\n
Using social media to interact with followers allows you to answer key questions and strengthen engagement. It\u2019s a crucial element of any personal branding strategy. Plus, this heightened engagement shows others that you\u2019re an influencer. This makes them more likely to follow you, which means you can show your story to a larger audience.<\/p>\n
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Social media is a great tool for publicising your engagements. This stretches beyond sending out ads. You should talk about the event almost up to the moment that you go on stage. Plus, you should share your own feedback and takeaways from your speech once it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n
This is a technique that influencer and corporate expert Jeffrey Hayzlett uses to great effect. As a radio and television host, he\u2019s amassed a large following on social media. He\u2019s constantly keeping those followers up to date on his work as a speaker.<\/p>\n
Jeffrey tweets before taking the stage. And after he\u2019s done, he\u2019ll share photos and talk about his favourite parts of his speech. Often, he\u2019ll mix in a little bit about one of his key threads to influence people into checking him out.<\/p>\n
There are several reasons why this is a good technique. First, you\u2019re offering constant reminders to your audience that you\u2019re still active. That can encourage followers to research your other speaking engagements. Plus, it\u2019s an easy way to show bookers that you\u2019re available without having to contact them directly.<\/p>\n
Secondly, posting right after speaking gives you the chance to continue the conversation while your speech is still fresh. You can encourage attendees to share their own experiences while they\u2019re still excited about having seen you. This enthusiasm bleeds into their posts and gets others excited about coming to see you speak.<\/p>\n
Thirdly, you\u2019re giving your followers just the slightest taste of what you have to offer. That little bit of intrigue that you create may be all that you need to convince someone to come to your next event.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the best part.<\/p>\n
This is all shareable content. As well as appealing to your followers, you\u2019re providing them with things to share with their own followers. Again, that means you can broaden your horizons and appeal to a new audience.<\/p>\n
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You may have an awesome social media strategy that you focus on when you\u2019re off stage. But you\u2019re still missing a few clever tricks that can help you along. Your focus on social doesn\u2019t stop once you head out on stage. In fact, your speaking allows you to build an even more powerful social media presence.<\/p>\n
Marketer and speaker Bob Cargill goes into more detail in an article published by the American Marketing Association. He says that you can do the following to give your social campaigns a boost while on stage:<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t discourage people from whipping their phones out and taking photos while you\u2019re speaking. Yes, it can feel a little rude to have people looking at their phones rather than you. But people also want to share what they\u2019re doing at all times. Letting people do that as you speak means they\u2019re sharing their impressions of you with their followers. That\u2019s going to get you in front of even more people.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Make it easy to find you. If you\u2019re using slides, make sure you incorporate your social media profiles into them. You may also have banners, business cards, and handouts. All of these should tell people about your social media profiles.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
You want to build a buzz around what you\u2019re doing. Create a catchy and shareable hashtag for the event that gives people something quick and easy to share. Again, put this hashtag on marketing material and make it a prominent part of your speech.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Move around onstage. People love to take photos and share them. By moving around, you\u2019re ensuring that people can get some good shots to share. Plus, you\u2019re more engaging when you use your body as you speak.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The key point here is that social media is ever-present in most people\u2019s lives. Cargill shows us that you can\u2019t ignore it when you\u2019re on stage.<\/p>\n
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A good social media strategy helps you to reinforce your personal brand and build your influence. Use it to figure out your target audience so you know who your message resonates with.<\/p>\n
Communicate with people directly and ask questions. Keep people engaged by posting a good mix of useful content and personal interactions.<\/p>\n
Finally, use social media to create a buzz around your speaking. Post before and after your engagements to keep people talking about them. And try to make social media a key part of your presentation. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s all about building your reputation and creating a business around your storyshowing.<\/p>\n
Speakers Institute can help you do just that. Now that you have this advice, try doing the following:<\/p>\n
Head to the GREENROOM<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. The #1OnlineHub connecting you to the world\u2019s leading Influencers, Training and Curriculum.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n