When asked to speak at an event, how do you go about attracting a packed and really enthusiastic room?

Picture the scene: you’ve put in the hard yards, you’ve crafted, honed, and practiced an awesome speech, and, finally, it’s time for you step up to the podium and speak. But, as you survey your waiting audience, the first thing you notice is a plethora of empty seats or even rows?

How heart breaking and downright soul destroying would that be?

But rather than clichéd talk of “build it and they will come’ tactics that don’t pan out or the folly of “creating the best mouse trap in the world and, because no one heard, narry a person beats a path to your door to buy it”…

…Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a few tricks up your sleeve to encourage people to make a bee line for the room where you’ll speak, ready to be inspired by the words you’ll share?

And all it requires is a little preemptive thinking and networking actions on your part – taking a leaf out of  Dr. Ivan Misner of BNI’s playbook, who says:

“Networking is more about ‘farming’ than it is about ‘hunting’, It’s also about cultivating relationships.” And “Remember, Givers Get”.

If this sounds interesting to you, you’re in for a treat. In today’s expert interview with blogger, founder of Razor Social, and world renowned expert on Internet tools Ian Cleary , we talk about: why it’s so important for you to start your networking before you give your talks , what it really takes to build interest and excitement in what you’ll have to say, how to transform your visibility and reputation as an expert in your chosen arenas online, and much, much more.

Attract a Bigger And More Enthusiastic Audience Every Time You Speak

Listen in as we talk about:

• Why audiences may not seek your talks out, no matter how awesome your content may be
• How playing your cards well can become a master plan
• Why it pays to start conversations before you say a word
• What you can learn from ‘wedding whoops’ and curious minds
• How tracking hashtags and ‘chatting early, chatting often’  are awesome tactic for speakers
• The secret to embracing ‘corridors of power’
• What it really takes to connect with audiences when you venture abroad
• The inside track to making techie information more interesting to any audience you’ll meet
• Why one at a time thinking beats multi-tasking every time
• How blogging can help you to build audiences and gain the trust you crave
• Why ‘for example’ can help you to create more compelling content
• How  ‘greeting and meeting’ at doors leads to bigger scores
• A compelling reason to let your audience know you’ve paid attention to who’s in house
• And more

Your Turn

What ideas and techniques have you used to grow audience interest in attending your talks?

And what have you learned from your experiences that you’re happy to share?

 

 

Interview Transcript

Eamonn O’Brien: Today we are going to talk about why as speakers you need to start your networking before you say a word.

And we have a wonderful expert with us today. It is Ian Cleary. Ian, hello.

Ian Cleary: Hey, Eamonn. Thanks very much for having me on your show.

Eamonn O’Brien: Great to have you here. And Ian, my goodness! What a CV. You are a blogger, you are a speaker, you are a founder of RazorSocial, and in fact you are known as The Source internationally and in Ireland when it comes to tools on the internet.

Ian Cleary: Yeah, I’m the tools guy, so I focus really on the social media tools and technology side. So that was my niche, as they call it in the US.

Eamonn O’Brien: Yes, my mother would call it, too.

Ian Cleary: I am used to calling it niche, because niche must be a French word. I must look it up. The Americans took it up as… but yeah, so I focus on the tools side. I found my background is technology. I focus on social media so it made perfect sense to combine the two of them.

Eamonn O’Brien: Well that’s wonderful. Today what I want to talk about is something that’s happening to you a lot in recent times…because as the guy who is the expert on tools, you are getting to speak on a lot of international speaking platforms. I’m especially interested in your thoughts and opinions about the types of networking you do before you say a word – in terms of building up noise about what you are doing before you actually step up on to a podium.

Ian Cleary: Okay. Yeah, I love speaking. I get such a buzz in speaking. It’s challenging but really enjoyable. One of the things that I always assume is that my room will not be packed so I need to promote it. Now with tools content, I’m lucky it’s popular content so you will generally get a good audience.

What I always have in my head is I want it to be packed. I want people on the floor, I want people trying to get in the doors to the place. What I’m delivering is content, same as the way I would deliver content to a blog. The promotion of the content is as important or more important than the content itself.

I’m giving a talk, before the event I do a lot of promotion. For example, I actually do custom business cards for every event I talk at, and then I go around and I show people the business cards and I invite them to my event. So I say to them, “What are you doing at 10:30 this morning? Why don’t you come to my event? It’s going to be full of practical information. Will you come to my event?” Most people will say, “Yeah. Why not?”

Eamonn O’Brien: Good for you. That is wonderful. So you have a little pre-emptive card and it’s, “Here are three reasons why you should come and listen to Ian this morning.”

Ian Cleary: Actually here is an example of the card and when you open it up, it will have details of the talk that’s on. I actually put a little poem as well on to the card.

There is another card for a separate event that I was doing. The last event I did was TBEX, a Travel Blogger’s Conference in Cancun.

Eamonn O’Brien: Yes.

Ian Cleary: I asked people to put up their hands who got the card and at least half the audience got my business card before the event. So that really helps pack the room. So I do that, that’s one side.

The other side is most people are engaged on Twitter, so I schedule a lot of different tweets. I know the room is going to be busy because I’m doing the promotion so I know I’ll always fill the room because of the promotion and because of the content. So I’ll even have a tweet five minutes beforehand which will be going out and saying, “The room is really filling up, you would want to get here quickly.”

Eamonn O’Brien: How wonderful, I love it! More than that actually what’s interesting is because you’ve given people your card a half an hour or an hour and a half beforehand there is a very good chance they will have checked you out and the tweeting might have already started.

Ian Cleary: You see, in the US, what I am competing against is probably about 12 different sessions at one time. Nobody really knows what session to come to. So I’m the only speaker that actually invites them to come to a session. They have the cards, they have the details of the session so lots of them come along because of this.

What I do actually at the very start of the session is I tell a story about when I go to weddings. So this is true story and I’ll tell you the reason I do it.

Basically when I’m at weddings, whatever table I’m at, I say to people that after three we are going to cheer and applaud and laugh as loud as we can.

Eamonn O’Brien: I love that. Yes, good.

Ian Cleary: Everybody looks at the table and goes, “That’s the best table. I’m missing all the fun.” So what I do at the event is I tell them this story and then I say to them, “Listen, would you do me a favor? If I count to three, can you applaud and cheer as loud as you can?”

They all applaud, cheer and go mad and what happens is the people out in the corridors and those coming out come into my event.

Eamonn O’Brien: Now Mr. Cleary I have to tell you, that sounds like something that you see in a lot of the busking shows. I don’t know if you’ve seen those busking shows in Dublin. They say, “Oh roll, over here.” I wonder what that guy is doing.

Ian Cleary: Exactly, and it works a treat.

The other thing that really works is, because I have met a lot of the people in the audience before the event, then I have less nerves. Because I’m going up there and I see all the faces of people, they know that I’m friendly and nice so I’ve broken the ice because I’ll chat with them when I’m giving out the cards and I’ll smile and I’ll say it’s going to be fun. When they all come in, they are all happy, they are all prepared to cheer and roar. They smile at me because they’ve seen me before and we’ve built a sort of connection. So now they will sort of do what I want them to do.

Eamonn O’Brien: That’s excellent. I have to say, Ian, that’s wonderful because in the trade they are known as the noddies. Because when you are chatting with folks, now they’ve seen you before, they know you a little bit, there is a little bit of rapport and when you look at them and you smile at them, they are going to look back at you. Really what happens is they are like a mood ring, so the whole room feels like, “Oh, this is going to be interesting, much more engaged. Fantastic. I love it.”

Ian Cleary: Yes, so that works.

So other promotion I do is like I do a lot of this stuff on Twitter. So I keep an eye on the hash tag for the event and I’ll interact with people lots. Because they will look you up, they will see that you are a speaker at the event, and generally on my profile I’ll adjust my profile for a couple of days and say I’m speaking at TBEX or speaking at Social Media Marketing World or at whatever the conference is.

So they will go, “Oh, this is a speaker interacting with me,” and again they are going, “He is a friendly guy, he is just chatting to me.” I’ll answer their questions. They would say, “Where is the best place to go when you are there?” If I know the answer, I’ll answer. So I constantly interact and I’ll interact with other speakers.

When I’m at conferences, I’m a corridor guy. So I never go into the events. I just hang out in corridors networking with people.

Eamonn O’Brien: Oh that’s a good idea. Now tell me. I’m very interested though in what happens in terms of how other speakers then react to you because you are clearly being very sensible in taking pre-emptive action.

Firstly, what kind of reactions do you get from people where you encourage them to come in and secondly what do other speakers say to you?

Ian Cleary: Well the people that I ask to come in just love it. Because I’m a speaker and a speaker is approaching them and they love meeting speakers. I chat to them. They say I’m friendly and nice. I invite them to come along, and it’s very hard for them when they say yes, it’s very hard for them not to turn up. So the participants love it. The speakers…

A funny story, in one of the conferences our organizer, I was talking with him and a couple other speakers and he asked one of the speakers, “What time are you on at?” The conference organizer says, “Well at least you are not on the same time as Ian.”

They are getting to know I do these promotions.

Now one other speaker only recently, he’s based in Dublin. I can’t think of his name; it will come back to me. Well he started to do cards as well. More people are starting to do the cards, which is fine. I don’t care because I will come up with something better for the next.

Eamonn O’Brien: You are right, it’s only begun. I love that. Tell me though, when it comes to speaking to different audiences. So you are speaking in Ireland, you are speaking in the United States and speaking elsewhere, to what extent do you find that you have to mold your talks in a different way to get a better reaction?

Ian Cleary: Well what’s funny is I don’t speak very often in Ireland. I don’t get invited there. I get invited to speak in the US all the time. I have focused on the US so I just focus on the US all the time.

I spoke in the UK recently and I found that the humor — I love humor and humor just works for me naturally. I know it’s a risky thing, I don’t do any controversial humor but I always have some level of humor. I love it, the audience in the US just love it. I think it’s because of the Irish thing and the Irish accent. Then I slag off myself and I talk about Leprechauns and Guinness just to warm up the audience.

I had a talk in the UK recently and I didn’t do the same level of stuff but I found that the humor was much more difficult. They were a much more reserved audience.

Eamonn O’Brien: Yes.

Ian Cleary: I couldn’t warm them up quick enough. That was my learning experience, and like I say, it’s different audiences that I have to tailor so I have to get used to how the UK audience would react.

Eamonn O’Brien: I’ll give you a quick for instance on how that will work a lot better for you and it really is all about the stories. The problem with gags and actually this is true in university whether it’s in Ireland, whether it’s in America or with the UK is that your audience is full of people who have different things that will make them laugh. It’s very hard to find something that makes everybody laugh. If you are telling me a story though, everybody can take something out of it of their own as opposed to… it’s a bit like my missus is wonderful at telling gags but she will commonly leave a line out – which is a bit like getting directions from Dublin to Cork and finishing up in Belfast because you missed the line.

Ian Cleary: Yeah, I have to be careful. It’s not particular jokes I’d say. I might show a funny picture and I have a little story related to the picture I show. For example, I show a picture of a baby with a pint of Guinness and they love the Irish thing and they love Guinness. I say, “I know what you are thinking. Babies don’t drink Guinness at that age. We only teach them how they have to hold the Guinness at that age. They don’t start drinking until they’re three or four.” They enjoy that. In the UK, it probably wouldn’t work.

Eamonn O’Brien: Well, actually if we could go a bit broader than that…because obviously entertainment and the fact that people enjoy things is important but, of course, the other element is that when you are speaking with the range of audiences that you do, not everyone is going to have remotely the level of tactical knowledge you do. How do you make it more accessible for people to grasp what you are talking about?

Ian Cleary: Well, this is the one good thing that I am able to deliver. My background is always technology but I am always more focused on the business side of it and look at the business results. I’m good at explaining technical things in a nontechnical way. That’s one of the key things that people like and I never really lose people in the audience. I will explain a tool, what I will explain is simply how you work with it and then give a practical example of how you would use it.

Even when I’m explaining search engine optimization, I have a very simple example that people go, “Ah, now I understand it,” whereas I could have people that know SEO much better than me but just can’t explain it to the business person. I was always good at training people and presenting technical stuff in a nontechnical way.

Eamonn O’Brien: Yeah, because I think that’s a major league challenge because I think one of the main issues in your space, in fact for everybody who is online is, there is so much stuff floating out there and it’s very hard for any one person to stay on top of it. Even though you are the tools guy, I suspect that there are times when you need help to figure out what is coming in now, is that worth looking at and what have you.

What do you say to people about not just whether they should be looking at tools but how they deal better with the overwhelm?

Ian Cleary: Well, I suppose it’s to find relevant people that are filtering out the noise. You need to find your three or four go-to people that you go to. Actually they are the ones that deliver good, unbiased, relevant information and just focus on that because there is no point in having 100 people in your list of blogs as for example that you follow or a 100 podcasts because you just won’t keep up with them. Pick out what is really important to you in your business and then find three or four people that you can follow and track online.

I was talking to guys last night about email and they wanted to email marketing. There is a guy called Noah Kagan and he has built an email list of 750,000 people.

Eamonn O’Brien: Wow.

Ian Cleary: “Just follow him around the web,” I said. That’s all, “Just follow him.”

Eamonn O’Brien: That is amazing.

Ian Cleary: Yeah, he is based in the US. He has a site called AppSumo , and he said he works on one goal and that’s it. His only goal initially was build email. Every single day he said, “How many email addresses did we get today? How many do we get tomorrow?” He said the best thing in business is if you can focus on just one single thing at a time; one goal and that was the only one. It was just email for him but if they follow him and just follow exactly what he did and read all his posts and listen to all his videos, they will learn all they need to know about email marketing.

Eamonn O’Brien: Now that makes a ton of sense. I know there are other elements that you are a big advocate of and on top of the list is blogging. Why is that so important to visibility? Of course I am dealing with people who are speaking and those who would like to speak more but why is blogging so important for your credibility and being seen as the go-to person and more?

Ian Cleary: It’s profile. It’s a blog. I got an email about two months ago and it was from a funeral directors association in Knoxville in Tennessee. It said, “We would love for you to come to speak at my event.” This is an email I got. They said, “How much will you charge us?” I charged them quite a big fee and they said, “No problem.” I went to Knoxville and spoke.

The reason is, first of all, I built up my brand online, my personal profile online. I proved that I know what I am talking about through the blog by writing relevant technical contents. They understood there’s my niche and they heard about me through other influential friends in that niche. That was all really related to the blog because the blog showed that I had credibility in this area and it allowed me to build a network with people and then come up with opportunities like the speaking events.

I mean, as a speaker, you need to prove your worth. You need to build your audience, so you need to have an audience. Mostly these places invite me to speak, like Social Media Marketing World in March in San Diego.

Eamonn O’Brien: I’ll be there. I’m looking forward to it.

Ian Cleary: That’s brilliant. Actually my next one is Tampa. I’m speaking at a Kim Garst event called “Boom Social” in Tampa in a couple of weeks in November. The main reason is because of the blog, and the thing is I have an audience because of the blog so when I speak of events people want to hear you speak, so they know of me. A lot of Kim’s audience, a lot of people in Social Media World would know of me because it’s on the blog.

Eamonn O’Brien: You are both great examples, I have to say, Ian, of having used blog to great effect.

Ian Cleary: We generate over 100,000 visitors a month to our blog and I don’t spend any money on it at all. How much is that going to cost you if you really wanted to generate as much exposure as that on an international level?

Eamonn O’Brien: But you do some other things though, Ian. You write really if you like much more detailed blog posts and I know that’s something that your heart’s on because the upshot is that people get more value out of it but from a Google perspective they’re much more likely to find you because frankly you are covering a broader spectrum of things, aren’t you?

Ian Cleary: Yeah, that’s it. It’s like at the end of the day search engine optimization is still important and a lot of it is related to people linking to your content. Well, people will not link to a 300-word post unless it’s a masterpiece in 300 words.

I can’t write masterpieces in 300 words. I don’t know about you, Eamonn, but I can’t do it. All I can do is go, “How much value can I give in a post?” When I’m giving lots of details and practical examples and all sorts, that means I’m giving more value. The more value I give in a post, the more likely people are going to share it and link to it.

Eamonn O’Brien: Yes. You are doing something differently though. I’d be interested in your thoughts on this because, again, for speakers when they are thinking about creating content… when I am writing a blog spot, I can tell you my sweet spot tends to be something between about 450 and 800 words where I will have a single point and I will give examples and something to think about but now, you’ll take a different tap because you really kind of go the full hog and say, “And then consider this, consider this, consider this.” There is much more stuff that you can do on the back of almost any post that you write.

Ian Cleary: Yeah, well somebody said to me, “If you want to expand your post, think of the words ‘for example.'”

Eamonn O’Brien: [Laughs] I love it, wonderful, which applies to speaking anyway.

Ian Cleary: Yeah, absolutely you are going, “Here’s a post,” and go, “Okay, I’ll put in ‘for example.'” People love examples and then you can introduce your story, so your post will get a lot of longer if you use “for example.”

Eamonn O’Brien: I think that’s wonderful. Now just rounding out, if you like then, because we started this talking about why it’s so important to start your networking before you say a word. If you were to get somebody who is new to speaking, who has an expertise where people would like to hear what they say, a few tips. What would be your top maybe 3 things that you say, have a go at this, this will help get people more excited about what you are going to say?

Ian Cleary: So before they go to the event?

Eamonn O’Brien: Yeah.

Ian Cleary: I think the cards work brilliantly.

Eamonn O’Brien: I love the cards and I admit I’m probably going to run out down to Reads [SP] and get myself a bundle of those. I love it.

Ian Cleary: They work really well. I think that interacting online before the event… so I often share tips, really useful tips and I use the hash tag because people going to the event will monitor the hash tag. If I’m sharing lots of tips related to it and go, “Oh, this is great.” A third one is at times we’re in a competition so I let people know that there is a competition at the event because people love entering competitions and winning something.

Eamonn O’Brien: They do. Wonderful, now I love that. Last thing and this has more to do I suppose with your experiences now as a speaker. If there is one thing that you have learned now that maybe you didn’t realize at the outset that has been important to the way you connect with people, what is top of your list?

Ian Cleary: Well, that is an interesting one. I don’t want to keep going on about the cards but that does give me a chance to meet and connect with people. I did read from Brian Tracy before is meet as many people as possible in the audience before your event and that works really well for me. When people are arriving in, quite often I would stand at the door and not up at the stage waiting.

On the stage, you are there on your own. I stand at the door, I shake their hands, I welcome them in, I chat with them and it creates a nice atmosphere in the room. Meeting as many people as possible and not avoiding people… I think a lot of speakers avoid any sort of chat with anybody before the event and then they relax afterwards.

Eamonn O’Brien: I love it because obviously and the upshot of that is you are going to start conversations, which is what you are trying to do anyway.

Ian Cleary: Yeah and the other thing I do is when I have the conversations, I’ll ask about their business and their background and answer some questions about tools to use or whatever, and then I’ll mention them during the event and say, “As I was talking to John earlier on,” then John wakes up and locks, you know.

One final tip that really works well for me no matter how long the talk is or how many talks I do, halfway through I always break it up somehow. So if I’m doing a 40-minute talk, I’ll never talk for 40 minutes. After about 20 minutes I’ll say, “Now what I want us to do is introduce yourself to the person beside you and share your favorite tool.” What happens is the room erupts with noise, chat, chat, chat, people chat about everything. They are not talking about tools; they are totally just chatting.

It relaxes me, lets me relax and get prepared for the second half and now they are also ready to listen to again more information. Because too many tools in a row, people can go, “Oh overload,” so taking that break really helps.

Eamonn O’Brien: Ian, listen. I knew this would be a terrific conversation and thank you for getting up bright and early of a nearly bank holiday in Ireland to do that.

Ian Cleary: Thank you very much, delighted to be on the show, Eamonn. This is not early for me.

Eamonn O’Brien: Well it’s not early for me either but anyway, it just seems early to the rest of our families.

Photo Credit: Chris Eaves