Video Transcription:

If you’re reading this, chances are your either a business owner or you are part of a business that you’ve got an active role in growing said business. The nugget I want to give you today is how to take an opportunity to leverage your brand and get your message out there in front of the people that are meant to hear it and then find a way to take that one thing that you’re doing and splice it into a lot of other areas. So you almost look like you’re omnipresent.

There are free advertising and there are paid advertising strategies. I’m not going to have time to get into the depths of what those strategies are but I do want to share with you a strategy that I have been doing for many years to leverage or to advertise my business and I’ve been able to do it mostly for free.

The things that I utilize and I help my clients really wrap their arms around and get their head in the game as it relates to this one branding strategy is sponsorship and speaking opportunities. If you’ve ever gotten an invitation to sponsor an event and if that event is going to attract your ideal client, that is going to be an opportunity you want to explore. This is generally going to be a paid opportunity. You’re going to have to make some sort of investment to be a sponsor of an event.

Sponsorships

If you are looking at investing a sponsorship opportunity that’s going to elevate your brand, keep in mind that while it’s important to have your logo on stuff as well as having an ad in a program, you want to be mindful of if this opportunity going to give you stage time. Is it going to give you a chance to talk about your business and allow you to provide value? I’ve been to a ton of events and usually the ‘title sponsor’ or the ‘premium sponsor’ is going to have the floor.

Speaking Opportunities

Now, the other piece of this is speaking. I’ve had paid speaking opportunities but the most leveraged way for you to utilize speaking events is not to be paid for it, but it’s for you to literally do it for free. Now, I don’t want you to go out there and do freebies just for the sake of doing freebies unless you’re brand new to speaking gigs and you’re really wanting to practice your speaking chops. I generally like to say that if you’re going to be speaking, the best places are going to be civic organizations, trade associations, business-focused groups, etc. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the Chamber of Commerce.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you get a speaking gig, You’re gifting, your knowledge, your expertise to an audience that’s meant to hear your message. One of the things that you’ll want to do before you even step foot on that platform is to talk about the event on social media. I’m usually saying, “Hey, I’m so excited that so and so thought of me to come in and talk about x, y, z. Looking forward to it”. You want to promote the event if it’s applicable. Chamber events, civic organizations or trade associations thrive on bringing more people to that room. So if there’s a way that you can draw people to their sign up link to go to their event and introduce them to more people that could potentially be members, that is a win for you. It makes you look like you’re the go-to person.

On the event day itself one of the things that I do is I say, “Hey guys, you know, I’m so excited we’re going to be talking about x, y, z. But before we get into what I want to share with you all today, I just want everybody to take a social media moment and if you’re not already connected with me, follow me on Facebook at Erica Castner. I would love for you to take a picture of where you’re at, upload it and tag me.” This helps you position your brand in front of other audiences in a fun and engaging way.

Other things that you might want to consider as you’re presenting, is to have somebody use your phone to video you or bring an assistant along to videotape you. You could also put your phone in voice recorder mode. So then what you can do is slice that up into smaller bits and pieces, share that on social media, share that on Youtube. Create a blog around that content. There’s a lot of ways that you can leverage video and audio and you don’t have to give your entire presentation away.

You can blog about your experience at that event. So let’s say you met somebody really fascinating at the event and you had a pre-chat prior to you speaking. You can talk about that along with anything else you experienced. One of the coolest aspects of creating content is when you edify other people when you put a spotlight on all the Austinites that they’re doing and you align yourself with that, it’s so powerful. So if you can create a blog post that’s featuring somebody else other than yourself, it adds a little extra credibility of what you’re doing because it’ll, it aligns you with somebody else. Like if you’re paired up with somebody else or you’re paired up with a group of people, and if that perception of that group of people or that person is, is good to everybody else, then you are automatically by default on some level associated with that person. And that’s a good thing.

Getting Booked

The last thing I want to say about speaking is to make sure you give people an opportunity to book you. If you are speaking and if you’re doing a phenomenal job by addressing the audience, you’re enticing people to book you for their events. Use a booking form or a feedback form and on that form and something like “Hey, who do you know that could use this information? Who could benefit from a complimentary 20 minute chat about the stuff that I’m talking about today? Put their name and their contact information right here and I reach out.”

If you have a specific question or comment on this or if there are other topics you’d like for me to cover, I definitely want to hear from you and learn about your areas of focus and how I can support you and those initiatives.