Ep. 161 – SECRETS to Getting Speaking Gigs at Events and how to NETWORK at events you DON’T ATTEND! + HULU = Meh ?!? | Ask Us ANYTHING

Foreign welcome to do this not that the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

We are back for Ask Us Anything from Do this not that.

This is our super short episode where all week long we get in questions, we get in work questions, we get in some seriously ridiculous questions and we try to tackle one of each.

And if you want to submit a question, all you got to do is go to jaychweddelson.com there's a button that says podcast, another one that says ask us anything and just put anything in there. We love getting questions and we don't always have the answers, but we're going to try. So let's first talk about our work question.

We got a question from Allison from Chicago. Oh, I eat so much food when I go there. I like Chicago. The hot dogs are the best. Deep dish pizza, Great movies have been filmed in Chicago.

You probably know this. Ferris Bueller, of course, was filmed in Chicago. The Dark Knight, among the best. Batman movies, Transformers. That movie's terrible.

All filmed in Chicago. So there's my Chicago knowledge. Anyway, what is the question, Jay? I have a two part question. How do I get a speaking slot at an industry event?

Do you have any tricks? And also I have FOMO on on some upcoming industry events that I'm not going to. How can I still network and learn stuff without going?

Okay, so let's first talk about how can you network and learn stuff without going to the event? And then we'll get into how to actually get speaking slots.

So if I wasn't able to go to a big conference, what I would do, what I have done many, many times is I take the entire speaker roster the event and then two weeks out from that event, I message every speaker on LinkedIn and I write a custom note to every speaker on LinkedIn and I write something like this. Your session looks fantastic at X, Y and Z conference, hoping to connect.

And you're not saying, hey, I'm going, because that's misleading, whatever, but that speaker gets excited. Ooh, somebody knows I'm speaking.

They're checking out my session and they will connect with you, which is really great because it allows you build up your network of these very, very important people. Because if they're speaking, they're probably important. So I love that tactic.

Doesn't take that much time and it's a great way to get in with some big people in your industry. Of course you want to follow all the hashtags immediately. Follow all the hashtag of the event.

Now, a lot of events don't make their content publicly available. Okay. Which is a little bit annoying.

So, so then what I do is after the event passes, I go back to all the speakers I connected with and I say, I send them a note and I say, hey, I heard your session was great. I wasn't able to get to it. Is there any way you can share your deck and they will send it to you?

And these decks are so valuable because these speakers, I don't care who they are, everybody works hard on their deck. And so you getting access to that content is incredible.

And I also go in and I look at anybody that's exhibiting or sponsoring and, and I reach out to the vice president of marketing at any of those organizations and I send them a custom note also with something that says something along the lines of excited to see you'll be exhibiting at X, Y and Z show. If you're sharing any new content, can you please send it my way?

And a lot of times these exhibitors or the sponsors have new stuff they're debuting at the show and it allows you to get access to really the latest content that's out there, allows you to stay up to date on stuff. And then the last idea related to all this is you can participate in the conversation.

So I love doing a post, let's say, on LinkedIn, that says something along the lines of, hey, X, Y and Z conference is coming up. What is the big topics you're hoping to learn about at the conference or things that you hope to uncover at the conference?

And then people will start to.

And you, you tag the actual conference that's going on, you put them in the post, use the hashtag, and everybody attending will start to write what they're excited about. You connect with all those people and then you really get the buzz about whatever's going to go on.

All right, so the second part of the question is, how do you get speaking gigs? A lot of times, you know, you want to speak at a conference. Maybe you're just getting started in your career.

You have never spoken at a conference before. Are there any things that you can do? And there are a few things that you can do. I went bananas early on in my career.

I'm talking about, like, while I was still in college, I was submitting to try to speak at events because I thought that was a great way to grow my business.

And I will tell you, from all the analysis that I have done, when you go to submit a session that you're trying to get a conference to say yes to, if your session title is a list format has a number in it, I'll give you examples of what I mean. I see over a 50% higher acceptance rate in terms of that session getting accepted by who's ever putting on the conference.

Meaning if you submit a title that says something like the five key strategies for boosting whatever, the 10 essential tips for mastering whatever, the seven pitfalls to avoid, blah, blah, blah, the eight secrets to this, the six common mistakes for that conference.

Producers who don't know you, they love the idea that their attendees are going to get something really valuable and tangible and tactical out of whatever you're saying. So thinking about that with your session titles is a great way to get accepted for from what I have done.

The other thing is you need to put out content of yourself speaking. You need to make a video of yourself, okay? And it could be short form video where you're sharing different tips, different tactics, different things.

You recording this video and you're putting on your LinkedIn feed, you're emailing that video to the conference decision makers. You have to be able to show them, listen, I'm good at this. I could talk in front of people, check out this video.

And if you're not willing to do that, forget it. You're never going to be able to speak anywhere because you're not going to write such compelling copy in your submission.

That is going to just get you over the hump. You need to show people how engaging you are. And then the other piece is speak anywhere. Right? You need to get a few things on your.

I've spoken at these three different places. I don't care if you speak in front of seven people.

I don't care if it's something that you've actually spoken at internally in your own company, that you led a meeting and the meeting was about how to increase pipeline growth. Okay, you can say that that was your speech, okay. And you can label it that this is, you know, our team summit or whatever you want to call it.

And then you can add that to your LinkedIn. Anytime you've spoken anywhere, you add to your LinkedIn as a separate experience.

Nobody has any idea the size of different conferences or events or whatever. These conference decision makers just want to know that they're not the first one to take a shot on you as, as a speaker.

And they see, oh, they spoke at these four other places, these four other things. Great. We're going to give them a shot. Okay, so you got to get a few wins under your belt and then it will start to steamroll.

So that's what I would think about, about how to network with people and how to get speaking gigs. All right, before we get into the ridiculous question, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Baragold.

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You go to jelson.com Marigold the complete guide to zero party data@sonson.com Marold I learned so much from it. You got to download it. All right, let's get on to the ridiculous question. We got a question in from Renee from Columbus, Ohio. Oh, Columbus is cold.

I've been. I mean, it is straight up cold. Not right now, but it is cold. By the way, you know, that's where Oreos are from. I like Oreos.

Although double stuff are disgusting. If you like double stuff Oreos, who are you? I don't like double stuff. I also don't like the thin ones. They have the new thin Oreos.

If you're gonna eat an Oreo, just eat an Oreo. Regular Oreo. It's fine, whatever. All right, Jay, Renee wants to know, what do you like better, Netflix or Hulu? Okay, well, here's what I'll tell you.

I'm gonna give you my rundown. I have tried. I have subscribed and canceled probably every streaming service on the planet.

I still have a bunch, but I've gotten rid of a bunch and I've tried a bunch, and some of them are terrible and some of them are decent. So let me tell you what I think are good and bad. So Netflix all day long. Love Netflix. If you don't like Netflix, I don't even know what to tell you.

Okay. I also have Peacock. The problem with Peacock is has really good content because that's where all the Real Housewives are is on Peacock.

And I love all the Real Housewives shows. But the interface is very difficult to navigate. I always wind up turning on the wrong thing. So if Peacock's listening, it is just that. That whole.

It's just not intuitive. I don't really go on Hulu anymore. I should probably cancel my Hulu. I just barely go on it because there's never.

I mean, is there anything on there I care about? Not really. Not for me. I don't know why I had the Hallmark Channel, which is so random, because I really like.

I like movies and stuff where nothing bad happens, especially during the holiday season. So I had the Hallmark channel. It's $5 a month. But I was like, right, really? This is on, like regular tv. So I got rid of that.

Because I'm like, how many Hallmark movies am I really watching? I have Apple Plus. Apple plus is okay when they release something, but usually there's nothing coming out. You got to wait forever. Like that movie.

Not the movie, the show Severance. Love the show Severance, but it's been two years. I heard it's coming back out in January, but two years between new seasons is ridiculous.

They got to work on that. And then I also got Max. They got to go back to calling it hbo. This whole Max thing ain't doing it for me. I'm sorry, I don't understand.

And then you find like your HGTV shows on the same place where hbo. I don't know. It's all very weird, very long answer to your question. But I appreciate you all checking out.

Send us your questions, follow the show, leave a review. I hope you're keeping it real. And thanks a lot. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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