speaking – Page 2 – WordServe Water Cooler

Here is a terrifying sentence: If you want to be a writer, you probably need to be a speaker as well.

Gulp.

I know that most writers would rather hang out a coffee shop or with their cat writing the day away than speak. I know a few writers who would rather stab themselves in the eye with a sharpened yellow #2 pencil than speak. But if you are working on building a platform, speaking is your quickest way of doing that.

Just today, I had a woman from Texas call me up and say, “I’m ready to speak, but I don’t know how to launch that part of my business/ministry.” Since a good part of each of my work days are spent finding speaking gigs, I thought it would be helpful to share some of my strategies each time I blog here.

Tip #1

Speak for Free

It is the bane of every speaker’s existence. That moment when your event coordinator says, “We don’t really have a budget for speakers, but we would love to have you come.”

In my opinion, unless you are already booked to capacity, take the gig.

Yes, you are worth more than that, and your time is valuable. However, the best way to get more speaking engagements is by speaking. It is a false economy to sit at home all day creating flyers and making phone calls looking for paid speaking engagements, when you have passed up the opportunity to speak for free.

Speaking is your best form of advertisement. When someone is sitting in the audience listening to you, chances are she belongs to at least one or two other groups or organizations that use speakers on a fairly regular basis. Multiply that by the number of people sitting in the audience, and that is the best form of marketing.

Recently, a large church asked me to speak for free to a group of over 150 women. At first I was put off because surly they could afford to pay me. I thought better of it and accepted the gig.

From that one engagement, I have had three paid bookings, and another spin-off booking. Plus, I got a great recording from that one engagement.

If you are going to speak for free, make sure you get something out of it besides free advertising:

I always ask for my expenses to be reimbursed, (food, travel etc,) Don’t ever let your speaking cost you money.
Ask your venue if they can record you. Having that recording is essential when you are booking other gigs and they want to hear what you can do.
Build a great book table so even if you are not getting paid to speak, you can make money by selling your products.
Ask if the event coordinator will be a reference for you.

Action Plan:

Let the world know your are available. Tell friends, coworker fellow church members that you are open for business and willing to speak no matter the fee

Search our religious, community, and industry groups who are looking for free speakers

Even if it is not a subject that you are an expert on or passionate about, see if there is a way you can make it work for the group. This is especially important if you are fiction author. Your local MOPS group probably isn’t going to book you to talk about your latest historical novel, but they might just love your talk on Pursuing Your Passions as you talk about what it took to get published. Or how about a talk on making history come alive to kids? Just figure out how to become a niche expert for any group by bringing in your specific expertise.

Question for You – If you speak, how are you getting your speaking engagements. If you don’t speak, why not?

Writers pursuing publication should learn how to speak well.

I know what some of you are thinking.

Hey lady, I’m a writer. Not a speaker.

Here’s the thing. If you are pursuing publication and your goal is to be a successful author, chances are, at some point, you’ll need to use your voice. And I mean your actual voice, not your writing one.

Radio interviews. Workshop presentations. Speaking to your platform. Pitching to editors and agents. I’m sure the list doesn’t end there.

My debut novel will release in May, 2012 with Waterbrook Multnomah (a division of Random House) and although it’s still ten months away, the marketing department is already discussing ways to promote my book.

Recently, I did an audio recording, or an interview conducted over the phone which will be shared with sales reps and retailers. It also might be used for promotional purposes later down the road.

The questions were deep. And I was nervous. I’d never done anything like this before and usually, when I get nervous, my voice gets shaky. And the shakier my voice gets, the more nervous I get. It turns into this whole vicious cycle.

But you know what?

It ended up being a really cool experience.

Here are some tips that helped me prepare, relax, and have fun:

Find out what you have to talk about and let the topic soak. I had to answer some pretty deep questions. Questions I didn’t know how to answer at first. Letting them percolate for a while helped when it came time to brainstorm.

Type your answers in a bullet point format instead of paragraph format. I wanted to sound conversational, not like I was reading. But the idea of answering from memory terrified me. I needed something to help me stay focused and avoid rabbit trails. So for each answer, I had a short list of bullets to reference.

Practice. This is key. Practice alone. But even more important, practice with an actual person. My husband was kind enough to ask me the questions, listen and offer feedback.

Time yourself. Attention spans only last for so long. The more concise we can be, the better.

The day of the interview, don’t obsess about it. Practice one more time. Then do something to distract yourself. For me, playing some good old-fashioned spider solitaire helped keep the nerves at bay.

When the time comes, take a deep breath, smile, and do your best!

You can use these same tips for almost any speaking engagement. I know I went through a similar process when I prepared to pitch to Rachelle, my agent, and Shannon, my editor, at the 2009 ACFW conference.

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How do you feel about this kind of stuff? Do you enjoy speaking, doing interviews, pitching to agents and editors? Have you ever had to do it? If so, how did you prepare?