Yesterday I had the pleasure of delivering a social media seminar to The Trade Association Forum, part of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) in London. We were supposed to do it at our offices but due to a big demand it was moved to Centre Point which is a skyscraper (kind of) in central London. This made the whole experience more interesting for me as my presentation had to compete with a nice view of the royal capital as per my iPhone image above.

This is the first time I have ever trained trade associations and their management teams. Their marketing efforts on social media and online in general aren't that straightforward as you would think. Yes they have to recruit new members and tell existing member about how useful the association is, basically what value they can add to the member companies' business. Then they also want to communicate with the press, basically putting out stories about the industry and hopefully getting some good write-ups in traditional media (which is where most of the end-customers consume news still). Finally, they want to use social media as a lead generation tool for their member companies. This means they can pick up leads and enquiries from social media and distribute to relevant companies perhaps based on location. To sum up, trade associations have a three-pronged approach to social networking and we addressed a number of their challenges and how to overcome these.

Last week I gave a personal branding presentation at Edelman in London, for IgnitePR which is an association that promotes diversity in the PR industry. I only had twenty minutes so had to pack in a lot of content and thought I would share not only the slide deck but also the Audioboo clip (there's a first for everything).

Let me take a wild guess. You are full of great ideas that you want to unleash on the world but not quite sure how to reach out? Well in the weird and wonderful world of personal branding we have a number of channels at our disposal such as blogging, social media, networking and yes - public speaking.

Before an important business meeting, most people will spend time to prepare answers for likely scenarios and questions. This is useful and can get you prepared for the basics. The trouble is that your counterpart (the buyer) is not looking for answers that are already in your brochure, they want to hear something that adds to it.

You have to realize that a successful sales meeting isn’t a cross examination, it’s a conversation. If you want to break out of the question/answer ping pong match, you should aim to sprinkle in some interesting information about yourself in the shape of stories. People buy from people, and the more you can get the other person to buy into you – the easier it will be to close the deal.

The case for telling stories

If you have ever sat through a competency based job interview, you know how important stories are to convey your message. I say that stories work really well in any sales meeting as they are memorable. Facts can easily be forgotten and mixed up but people tend to remember stories and who told them. The human brain is hard wired to remember stories, not just the words but the visuals that went through the listeners head as well. Marketers make very clever use of stories to sell products and services and so should you.

If you think about it, your whole life you have been told stories in one form or another. Whether it was bed time stories or fairy tales adapted by Disney, whether it’s a French art house film or a detective novel– there is a story there that you will remember. By using stories you will appeal to the human mind, you will create a strong connection with the listener, you will demonstrate your communication skills and finally you will be remembered.

Anyone in London this coming Saturday (22nd of May) that has the slightest interest in personal branding and online marketing – come along to the Smart Marketing meetup!

Event

I am delivering a 1hr presentation on the benefits of personal branding for marketers. It will be an interactive talk looking at the 5 most important action steps for you to take to build your personal brand.

One of the best free ways to market yourself to your target audience is to take on speaking engagements in your field. I do this quite a lot in the London meetup circuit and I would like to share some tips on how to get booked to talk.

When you speak before a group of people, you generate lots of interest and you will have plenty of opportunities to chat with potential customers. Compare this to a normal meeting where you do your pitch to one or two people, it’s obviously more efficient to do it to ten or twenty prospects in one go.

Expert status

By giving talks on specific topics you establish yourself as an expert or even a thought leader. Being seen as someone that really knows their stuff will lead to increased interest from peers and customers. The more you are seen, the more you are likely to be mentioned and interviewed in the media, both online and offline. If you have a site or a blog, you will notice that your visitor stats can skyrocket after a good speech. Your increased exposure will in turn lead to more enquiries, business and hopefully allow you to increase your rates.

How to get speaking engagements

How do you pitch yourself and your speaking prowess to meetups, seminars and conferences? You obviously have to find out who does the bookings of speakers. The best way to convince this person to book you is by sending over a speaker one-sheet, basically a one pager outlining what you talk about and why they should book you.