Social Media Domination

Yesterday I had an incredible opportunity to speak to date. Jean Palmer-Heck of Real Impact and President of the Indiana chapter of the National Speakers Association asked me to speak to regional speaking professionals on Social Media. I wound up spending the afternoon at Karl Ahlrich's home with the group! Good friend John Ketzenberger of The Indianapolis Star was there as well.

Jean and I had decided on the specific subject, How to Manage an Online Persona for Greater Visibility and More Bookings. Basically, tailoring a social media presentation to provide the folks with an overview of the technologies and how they can put it to work to build authority and presence on the Internet that will lead to more bookings.

Brooke Billingsley of Perception Strategies challenged me to narrow the 3 hours of presention and conversation down to 3 tips for their group to walk away with. Since many of these folks were new to any of the technologies involved, my response was:

Research what searchers are looking for on the Internet that will lead them to your business. What you're known for or wish to be known for are often in conflict with what people are searching for!
Create a business blog that targets those keywords and write frequently, utilizing the keywords that have been identified to capture that search engine traffic.
Build authority with those in your field of expertise by finding other professional speakers who are blogging on the Internet and joining their conversation through commenting on their blogs. Bloggers enjoy user-generated content because it adds value to their blog without any effort - and they often reciprocate by mentioning your blog. This provides your blog with backlinks, a gold standard for search engine ranking, as well as exposure to their audience.

An Example of a Misguided Site

You don't bite the hand that feeds you, but its always great to provide a relevant example. In this case, I'll use the NSA, a fantastic organization. According to their website, the mission of the NSA is:

The National Speakers Association (NSA) is the leading organization for professional speakers. Since 1973, NSA has provided resources and education designed to advance the skills, integrity and value of its members and speaking profession.

If I do some keyword research on the NSA, though, the keywords they're recognized for are much different than what folks may be looking for, like How to Become a Professional Speaker. Unfortunately, they are being indexed for different keywords that folks are not searching for.

Later in the afternoon, I demonstrated Compendium for the NSA members and showed them how our company provides both the products and services that would enable them to build the online persona they need to get those bookings!

It was a pleasant surprise... we even had clients in the audience that praised the work we were doing for them! One of the members who spoke up was a professional ghost blogger! It's always nice to get a nod of approval from those who depend on your company for their bread and butter!