Speaking Plan for 2011

Photo by Lululemon

Yesterday on my Use Your Words BlogTalkRadio show, we talked how to prepare a speaking marketing plan for 2011.

It was a very detailed show, and I’d encourage you to listen to it! You’ll get all kinds of ideas and I know the wheels will start turning!

Let me give you a synopsis, though, and a breakdown of a few thoughts:

January

Spend time in prayer with God. Ask Him for a vision for your ministry. Dedicate the year to Him. Ask Him for some new revelation or insight that you can share in a talk.

Get some training! A great place to begin is my ecourse on How to Launch Your Speaking Ministry, or my audio download, “Craft Your Signature Talk“. Listen to the download, or take the course, and you’ll have lots more specific things to take to God in prayer!

February

Research possible engagements. If you haven’t spoken much before, look for churches where you could potentially do free engagements in the spring. Even if  you don’t want to speak for free, it does have benefits when you’re starting! You get practice, you get your name out there, you collect email addresses for your contact list, and you can get a recording of yourself before  a live audience to use in your marketing!

Also research conferences where you could potentially do breakout sessions. They usually start planning right after this year’s conference, so look for women’s conferences, parenting conferences, or homeschooling conferences, and then send an email proposing three possible seminars you can do. Wait to send the email until the appropriate time (right after this year’s conference), but you can research them now anyway!

March

Get your website up and running! If you don’t have a lot of money, just start a blog where you can write your thoughts with God, set up a page for your speaking topics, and a page for “About Me” or “Testimonials”. WordPress allows this easily.

April

Continue to work on your website, adding pictures and potentially video.

May & June

Do some free engagements! Record yourself each time, and collect email addresses of those who are there (have them sign up for your newsletter as a way to enter a draw), so that you have a contact list.

July & August

Vacation & Training! Take some downtime. Evaluate where you’ve come. Pray a bunch more.

And take some more training!  Now that you’ve done some things, the next step would be my audio downloads “Treating Speaking as a Business” and “How to Get Better Bookings“. Listen, do the work, brainstorm, and pray!

September

Do more free engagements, and even some paid ones!

October

Continue speaking for free, but by this time you may have some audio recordings of yourself. Make some videos of them by putting pictures with the audio, and post to YouTube. Put the embedded video in your blog/website.

November

Send out your newsletter. By now you’ve collected email addresses. It’s time to send out a newsletter to all your contacts so you can keep in touch, and then they will remember you and they’re more likely to recommend you! Include in your newsletter things that are interesting to the reader and that help them. If you speak about organization, for instance, include links to interesting articles/videos about organization (even if they’re not from you).

Make sure to include where you’re speaking and any new topics you’ve developed!

December

Take stock, and update your website with any new videos and speaking topics so you’re all set for the new year! Now paying engagements should be flowing your way!

Advertisement