Whether you’re marketing your employer’s products or services, your own business or just enhancing your image in the marketplace, the “Power of the Platform” can be a simple, quick and no-cost strategy. Delivering workshops and presentations can help you accomplish several important self-marketing goals:
- Creating positive exposure for you as a credible expert and a valued resource. You also generate positive PR exposure for your employer.
- Producing positive name recognition for you and your employer, which can be a definite competitive advantage in your marketplace.
- Providing you with credible marketing support tools, especially if the program materials describing your presentation relate to your areas of expertise, or those of your employer.
- Stroking your creative ego and professional self-esteem by seeing your name – and possibly your photo – in print or being on the platform.
- Enhancing a career mission-critical skill that increases in importance the farther up you go in any organization.
Where to Speak?
There are lots of different audiences for your presentations. Just be creative and strategic.
- Start with your own employer, by doing seminars or workshops on topics that will help other people in your organization solve problems, reduce costs or increase revenue/profits … and enhance the value of your function or department.
- Then, try your own professional associations, like COSE or your local chamber for a presentation at a monthly meeting or professional development workshop. They will be a comfortable and supportive audience for you.
- Also consider other professional groups you belong to or that relate to your areas of expertise or the industry of your employer.
What to Speak About?
Talk about what you know or have learned and aim it at people who might be interested in learning more about that topic. You don’t need to be an expert to be able to share experiences or expertise.
- Start small & simple, especially if you’re not comfortable doing presentations or don’t think you’d be good at it. When you know about your topic and care about it, everything else is just details.
- Talk about content areas you’ve learned as a result of your job experiences or training. So, what do you know enough about to do a 30 minute presentation for people who don’t know as much as you do about the topic?
- Attend other speakers’ presentations for the groups you might consider to observe the organization, structure, materials & style they use successfully. Mirror what works.
How to Get Started.
The best way to get started is to do it … now. It may take some time to build relationships that produce opportunities. Many professional groups plan an entire programming year at one time. So, determine what audiences you would like to get in front of to enhance your self-marketing image or that of your employer.
Get contact information for the program directors and indicate that you have some information their members would find interesting and enjoyable. Be persistent but not obnoxious. Offer to write an article for their organization’s newsletter or web site on the topic of your presentation.
So that’s the “Power of the Platform” – simple, quick and no-cost strategies to promote your image or the image of your employer in the marketplace and help you sell YOU! Hey … works for me!