How To Turn One Presentation Into A Million Connections - globaladvisors.biz/inc-feed/20141128/how-to-turn-one-presentation-into-a-million-connections/ By William Arruda Working with my clients on their personal branding, I’ve noticed one common misconception. Too many executives believe their real-world personal branding activities are unrelated to the virtual world of digital branding. This mentality is not only extremely inefficient; it can also lead to mixed messages about your brand. To maximize the value of your personal branding efforts, your real-world activities should be synced with your social media actions. This creates powerful synergies and can amplify your message for an audience of millions. If you apply this exercise to just one real-world activity each year, you can turn it into an entire year of personal branding exposure on the web with minimal effort. Here’s how. First, commit to one new real-world communications activity. For this example, let’s say you’ve offered to deliver a presentation to your local professional association. Next, follow my three-stage plan for turning that small, local event into an entire year’s communications activities that will expand your reach and visibility. Stage 1: Before the presentation Publicize the event: Tweet about your presentation. Once the event is up on the association’s web site, tweet a link to it, inviting your followers to attend. Even if they don’t attend, you’re letting people know about your presentation and topic. Do the same with your LinkedIn activity feed and relevant LinkedIn groups. Tweet and update your LinkedIn activity feed just before you are leaving for the event, letting your followers know you are about to deliver a presentation. Express your enthusiasm for the topic. Engage your network: Ask members of your network through Twitter and LinkedIn what they would like to see in the presentation. What are their hot buttons related to your topic? Research Twitter and LinkedIn groups for content to include in your presentation, and reach out to the creators of that content asking for permission to reference their work – building your network. Stage 2: During the presentation Think of your presentation as more than just a public speaking opportunity. Make a plan to maximize that event so you can increase your visibility and credibility with your target audience. Here are some ways to achieve that. Create new content: Get video clips. Ask the event organizer to videotape your presentation, or bring someone in to do this. You will use this video in the post-event activities. Video is among the best personal branding tools available. Have someone in the audience take photos of you presenting. Later on, you can post these to Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter. Involve the audience: Encourage audience members to tweet during your presentation. Create a hashtag so that after the event you can track the discussion, connect with audience members, and respond to tweets. You can also retweet their tweets. Poll the audience. You can use tools like PollEverywhere, or just create some informal polls using paper surveys. You’ll use the results in the next stage. Make it easy for them to contact you: Give them info. Leave a one-page handout with valuable content and resources and include your contact information. Think about how you want them to connect with you – connect on LinkedIn, subscribe to your YouTube Channel, follow you on Twitter, etc. You can even include a QR code that they can scan to directly access your profile, page, channel, etc. Keep the conversation going. End the presentation with a Thank You slide that includes your contact info. This will help you grow your network. Stage 3: After the presentation The real value comes after the applause fades, when you return to work. You have done everything necessary to build a year’s worth of visibility activities. Here’s what you can do to maximize the value of your presentation. Expand your network: Reach out to those who tweeted during the event. Search the hashtags to find them. Follow them and thank them for being a part of the presentation. Re-purpose content: Share your poll results. LinkedIn is one of the best venues for publishing the results of your polls. Obviously, the sample population is skewed, but the results will provide fodder for posts like: “90% of audience members at my recent presentation agreed that….” Create an article. Turn your presentation into an article or Blog post for your LinkedIn profile. With LinkedIn’s new Blogging platform, it is simple to share long-form content. It should be easy to write an article using your presentation as the outline. Perhaps you’ll be able to write several articles from the one presentation. Share it. Direct people to your Blog with your activity feed and LinkedIn groups, point to it with Twitter, etc. Expand visibility: Convert your slides into a PDF and post the presentation at SlideShare. Publish the SlideShare to your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn owns SlideShare and has made it easy to share your slides through your activity feed and to add them to the summary or experience sections of your profile. Convert the video of the presentation into a series of 2-to-4-minute clips. Each one should stand alone and provide value for your target audience. Then publish them to your YouTube channel throughout the year (at regular intervals if possible). In each video, include a teaser annotation to your next. Direct people to your slides and video. Tweet with links to SlideShare and YouTube. Upload the photos of you presenting to Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter, and include them in your LinkedIn profile’s summary or experience sections. Sound exhausting? Actually, it’s not. Creating the primary content for the presentation is the most intensive part of the process. The follow-up activities are spread throughout the year and don’t require you to generate new concepts. You can actually accomplish all of this in just 9 minutes a day if you commit to doing it daily.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 06:01:13 +0000
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