Why I Recommend Booking Friends, Connections & Up-and-Coming Stars for Events
[00:00:00] Brenda Meller: I want to talk to you about an upcoming event I'm doing, which inspired this podcast. It's called the WBL Liveathon. And I've been doing these Liveathon events for a while now and just decided, I've got some magic to how I book speakers for my events. And today's episode is going to be all about why I recommend.
Booking friends, connections, and up and coming stars for your event. So let me give you a little bit of the backstory. I love doing virtual events during the pandemic. I probably increased what I was doing with virtual events to get really comfortable with it and started doing more LinkedIn lives and webinars and office hour events, et cetera.
And I started rolling out a series that was. Actually inspired by an event I did pre pandemic. I did a LinkedIn I think I just called it thon event at the time. I was doing a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society and I was reminded when I was in school, we used to do, bowl a thons and walk a thons and all these other things, [00:01:00] and I was doing a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society in memory of my mom, and I chose to do it.
Centered around the topic of LinkedIn, and I brought in different speakers from Metro Detroit to come with me to the event. It was a free event. It was a fundraising event and I it was a lot of fun and I decided during the pandemic to start to do some virtual events, really focusing first on serving job seekers, people who are in career transition and job seeking.
But then starting to roll them out into other types of topics in series as well. And then I converted it, and not just calling it a LinkedIn Liveathon, but I started calling it a Liveathon because we moved it off of LinkedIn, and the event that I'm holding this coming Saturday is actually going to be hosted on StreamYard.
So that's a little bit of the backstory about how the name came to be, and I want to talk a bit about when I'm choosing speakers, the methodology that I go through and why, because I think it might help you as you're booking speakers for your events as well. [00:02:00] And I'm really focusing here and talking about when you are booking events where you have no speaker budget at all.
Now I am one of a fairness in an abundance mentality. I want what I'm getting out of the event. I want to make sure that my attendees and my speakers are getting the same as well. So if I am making money, meaning if I'm charging a ticket price for people to attend the event, my speakers should also be paid.
I'm not going to bring in people for free if I am making money on the event. Now. If you do a lot of events, you have to account for this in budgeting, right? And there's been events where as a speaker, I've been approached and asked to speak for free, but they are charging a ticket price. And depending on my affiliation with the organization my knowledge, if it's a good fit for me I tend to turn these away.
I, because I'm not, I don't get a corporate paycheck anymore, right? You don't get a paycheck if you're a solopreneur. Unless you get paid by your clients. So I've learned to say no. If I do say yes, I always try to negotiate some concessions, getting a copy of the [00:03:00] participant list, or having the ability to sell from the stage or sell my books or things like that.
But going back to this particular event that I'm planning, it's a free event. It's free for people to attend. It's a webinar event. I'm not making any money on it. So I want to make sure that my speakers are being. Acknowledged in a way that can help with that compensation. And for me, I really look at these live a thon events as a way of generating more visibility, which will lead to more people coming into my email list, right?
And that's ultimately hoping to generate leads for me. So if it's generating leads for me. I want this event to generate leads for them. I'm of the abundance mentality. There's more than enough work to go around for all of us. There's more than enough clients to go around for all of us and similar, this abundance mentality.
You may have heard of it talked about in different ways. There's a scarcity mentality that says there's not enough work for all of us. So I've got to fight for everything. And the abundance mentality says that if we work together, we actually will get more together. And as [00:04:00] said in a different way, a rising tide lifts all boats.
You might've heard that analogy before. And some people even refer to this as a restaurant row analogy. So if you think about in your local community, there's probably some places where restaurants are all clustered together, and that's intentional because consumers will know that if they go to that particular block, that area of the street, that intersection, there's a lot of restaurants to choose from, and that helps to drive more customers for everyone.
So that's my approach when I'm thinking about, booking speakers for events. I'm of the fairness and abundance mentality. So when it comes to finding speakers. I've got a pretty large network to draw from. You might be growing your network as well, and you might be doing some similar things as what I did.
I first start to think about who do I have that's a current client that I could book as a non paid speaker for my event. There might be people who are specializing in the topic, I Who might be catering to the same audience, and maybe who haven't spoken at one of my events in the past before, and I might tap them on the [00:05:00] shoulder and invite them first.
And they did have a couple people in the wings, so to speak, that I wanted to book as speakers for this upcoming event. The next thing I did is I announced the event in a LinkedIn post. And I think this is a really great technique to do. I will include the link in show notes so you can see my original post about this.
And I, what I did is I said, here's what the event is about. And I was very clear and upfront. It's a free event. I'm not going to have a speaker budget, but I am looking for speakers. So who would you recommend? And here are the criteria. So I was very clear on that. And I said, tag them in below. Self nominations are also being accepted.
I'm going to use this post to find and book speakers for my event. So this was very clear, and I even used the hashtag call for speakers, because speakers will look for this. But I also wanted to be clear that it is not paid. And I also wanted it to be clear. What do they get in exchange for being a speaker at my event?
And then I invited my network to tag in speaker that they suggested. And why do I do this? First [00:06:00] of all this really does help to expand reach for individuals who are seeking speaking gigs, and especially for those that are up and coming, or even for those that are established speakers, because when you're tagged into a post and multiple people tag you in on a LinkedIn post, it helps you to get visibility that you are a speaker.
The other thing for me, selfishly, it helps to keep all of those suggestions in one place. And I would even have sometimes people that would direct message me or email me or text me saying, Hey, I see you're looking for speakers. I'd love it if you could consider me. And I would just route them back to the post.
I would say, Hey, it'd be great if you could just go and comment on the post. Here's the link because I'm trying to keep all the suggestions in one place. Over the next week, I'll be looking at all the suggestions and then starting to go through and make changes. Some asks out to the group. So it kept them all in one place.
At the time, I had an intern helping me to collect the names and put them in a Google sheet so we can look at everything together. And I even had her at the time put in the name, the topic that they suggested they could speak about, their LinkedIn URL, so I could look [00:07:00] them up quickly. And I also had her put in the follower count, and we're going to get to that in a little bit.
So that really helped me out to keep them all in one place. And also by people tagging in and in getting into the conversation, it helps to expand the reach of the post. So every time someone touches or interacts with the post, it pushes it out to more and more people. So that was a nice thing to do.
Okay. All right. So now I've got all my speaker suggestions, and I'm starting to look through the individuals who were either nominated or. Self nominated, and I'm trying to think about, first of all, if I've done an event like this in the past, I'm trying to get some new speakers. I don't want to just repeat the same speakers in the same topic every time.
For this particular event, I think when I tallied it up, I was going to have a total of 19 people speaking. Now, one was me, as serving as the emcee and host, and then I had some solo talks and some panel discussions as well. So I totaled up how many speakers I needed in total, and I looked at the number of solo spots and panel discussions, and then I started going through and [00:08:00] figuring out if there were going to be people who had spoken at my events in the past, who were those?
So I got those locked in 1st. And then the people that I'd spoken at events in the past and said, can you book me again? I'd love to come back. I let them know I'm trying to get some different speakers. I'll keep you in mind for future events. So I wanted to let them know pretty early on in the process.
So they didn't feel snubbed that I was ignoring them, right? That's just really important. And then I was also trying to reach some new audiences. And I think that's really important as you're bringing in new speakers. This is key. If you're bringing in new speakers, people that maybe you don't even know, they have networks of people that you don't know that don't know you.
And also you're exposing them to your network, which are people that do not know of them yet. So it's helping me and it's helping them. And I think it's an important consideration that we're not just trying to market to the same audiences over and over. We're trying to reach more people.
Okay. I would also, when I was looking through my speakers, I was, candidly, I'll just share this. I would give preference to women. I [00:09:00] wanted to make sure that, I had a good amount of diversity in my panel, but I looked at one point, I think I had one man on my panel and I was okay with that because I think there's been a lot of events in the past that have been male heavy and sometimes entirely male.
They're called manels. Did you know that? Male panels. Or even worse, all white male panels, and there's no I've heard Bobby Carlton refer to this as all male and all, all panel, right? There's no diversity in the speaker lineup at all. I wanted to make sure that, there was a preference to having more women speakers on the panel, but I also wanted to make sure that I had some diversity different people of color, different age ranges, different topics that were being included as well.
And I've even had some friends that. Connections that have reached out to me, for example, and one person said there's some Asian individuals I would recommend for your events in the future. And at the time, I think I had already closed off that past event, but I went back through my notes and I reached out to that person.
And I said, Hey you mentioned that you had some folks [00:10:00] that were Asian top voices on LinkedIn or other individuals that you would recommend. Who are they? Because I'd like to book them for my event. So if I have people raising their hand from different backgrounds and whatnot, I would definitely reach out to them and take them up on their offer to volunteer for suggestions.
What else? I would then look at, this follower accounts that these individuals have, and I would look at their follower accounts on LinkedIn. Sometimes if I knew. that they had larger presence in other networks. So for example, they might have a large presence on Tok or other places. Maybe LinkedIn wasn't their top network.
I would take that into consideration because maybe their audience was more of a Instagram audience or more of a Tik Tok audience. So if I knew of their presence in other platforms, I would take that into consideration. Now, here's a real big key. You walk away with nothing else from this.
Hopefully this helps you. If you're booking people who are not going to be paid as speakers for your events, these are unpaid speakers, avoid booking speakers who have more than 100, 000 followers [00:11:00] on LinkedIn, unless they are a client or a friend or someone that knows you very well that is likely to promote the event.
Okay, and I want you to think about the fact that a lot of speakers, once they reach a certain point in their career, they realize that they are offering a lot to their network to be booked as a speaker, because you get that cache when you book a large household name speaker, right? And. They don't really need to work that hard to promote the event because you're working to promote the event and they've got probably other events in the queue and other things that they're working on.
This is not a top priority for them. So I found over 100, 000. They're really already on their way. They're, established on their way. And I will make exceptions for people that do know me well, that I have a lot of social media karma built up with where maybe I've been helping and promoting them all along and their rise up, they might be more inclined, but a lot of times those people, if I were to reach out to ask them [00:12:00] to speak unpaid, they would.
politely decline. So I just avoid booking those people because I know that they're so busy, their business is doing well, their career's a success already. They don't need this event as an unpaid speaker. So I would tend to look at people who are really more up and coming. And typically you can look at the follower count on their profile and see, and I would look at people who are like maybe under 25, 000 followers on LinkedIn.
Even better would be. Under 10, 000 followers. I'm going to try to make sure that they had at least 2, 000 followers, because at least that told me that they were well established and active on LinkedIn. These people I found, from my personal experience, the ones that are under 25, 000 followers, but at least 2, 000 followers on LinkedIn are more likely to speak If it would be unpaid, they are more likely to be appreciative to be asked to speak at your event and therefore to help you to market it.
They're going to market themselves. They're going to announce that they were named as a speaker. They're going to promote the heck out of it. They might even do an email to their email list. They may do [00:13:00] multiple social media posts in different places, but I find that you're more likely to get their support because they're more likely to be appreciative if they're still up and coming.
And, from their perspective, they're more likely to benefit from the visibility that's created from this event, because I've got a pretty large network, and since we're all collaborating and tagging each other in on posts, they're going to get the ripple effect of all of this happening, and that's really going to help them.
So they're more likely to benefit than people who have those larger follower counts. Okay. Hopefully that makes sense. I'm going to give you some additional bonus tips in here as well. Even though I'm talking in today's podcast about why I recommend booking friends and people that you know, and people with lower follower counts for your events.
I also want to talk about how you can get a more successful event and give you some of my tips for promoting the event. One thing is to update your landing page with your speaker photos and topics as they are being confirmed. I know some people will wait until everybody's locked in and then they will announce it.
I'm perfectly fine with setting up the landing page, [00:14:00] the registration, even the waitlist page, and then starting to get speakers locked in, and then opening the registration up as soon as I'm comfortable doing so. And then once I have everybody locked in, then I do an announcement post on LinkedIn. And I don't just do one, but I do periodic announcement posts, reminder posts.
If I still have a couple of speaker spots that are open, I will put a TBD in one of the photo frames. So it helps to tease and get some additional interest. And again, if people are coming back and saying, are you still looking for speakers? I route them back to that original post, because I keep them all in one place.
Okay. Now, once all the spots are filled, then I'll create a document slider post on LinkedIn with all the speakers on the first page. And then I create individual speaker graphics on subsequent pages. And I do this because I know that some people, will promote the entire event using that graphic with everyone's photos.
But some people are more likely just to promote their own talk. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's perfectly fine. It's human nature, especially if you're not getting paid for it, right? [00:15:00] You want to promote yourself as a speaker and you're more likely to take that tile graphic that's been created for you and your talk at the event and making sure, for me, it has all of the information.
The hashtag, the landing page, the title of their talk, the duration of the event, but also the time that person is speaking. That's all included on that graphic that I've created for them. They're more likely to promote their own talk if all of that information has been provided for them. And I get that, right?
I also would encourage you to create a hashtag and encourage your speakers to use it when they post. Now, an interesting thing happened. I created this hashtag. It's called WBL 24. So it stands for working, but looking 24. So it's a coded name for this event. What I would encourage you to do is if you do create a hashtag, search for the mentions of the hashtag.
If you find posts on LinkedIn that are using that hashtag, comment first on the post. Your inclination is to click on like first, but it's actually better for the algorithm to comment on it first and do a longer response, like nine or [00:16:00] more or eight or more words, actually is what I look for in there.
Then come back around to add a reaction later, maybe a thumbs up or an applause or something like that. I also started looking around for this hashtag. I started on LinkedIn, and then I look for it on Instagram, and I actually find WBL24. It also stands for the Winter Bouldering League for a Rock Climbing Wall Gym in London, which was interesting.
I searched for mentions on Twitter, or Axe, whatever you're calling it these days. I searched for mentions on Facebook, and then I also searched for mentions on TikTok, and I actually discovered a video by Julia, who's one of our speakers. There's her. Twitter handle is rather, her TikTok handle is ride the Tide COL, standing for collective.
And she did a video promoting the event. So surprisingly I found a mention of it on TikTok, which prompted me to do a video promo there as well. So if you're on TikTok, if you look at hashtag WB 24, you'll see a couple events, a couple of videos rather promoting our upcoming event. All [00:17:00] right, my friend.
So to summarize why I recommend. Booking Friends, Connections, and Up and Coming Stars for my events and why I recommend you do the same as well. First of all, they will be awesome. These people are going to be appreciative that you're booking them for the event, especially if it's unpaid. You know what to expect when you're booking people who are friends, connections, people that, their personality.
There's no surprises there, right? People, even people that you don't know that they're up and coming. They're going to market the heck out of your event. You're, it's your responsibility to market your events, but they will do it. what they can to help to promote it as well. They're going to be excited about it.
They're going to promote it. They're going to comment it on posts. They're going to do their own posts. They might even send it out to their email list. I think it's really going to be a nice reaction for you. And again, they're going to appreciate it, especially. if it's unpaid. So that's all I have for you today.
Hopefully you found these tips helpful on why you should recommend, why you should consider booking your [00:18:00] friends and clients in up and coming stars for your events, as well as some of the bonus tips to get more out of the events. Let me know what you think. If you're following me online, do message me and let me know that you heard from the podcast and then maybe share this podcast episode along with somebody who might be interested in learning more about these tips.
Until next time, my friend, take care.