Leverage public speaking to grow your online audience

Speaking
Written By Liam Sandford
grow an online audience

Speaking has the power to scale your opportunities and your business. There has never been a greater time to leverage public speaking than right now. Social media creates the opportunity to speak to the world at the click of a button. Sure, you have to drive traffic and build an audience to attract attention, but speaking is also a growth tactic that will grow your following.

You may associate video content with dances that go viral or entertainment style videos but it has been the key for many creators in building an educational content business. People are flocking to social media to learn new skills, and in the world of being a creator entrepreneur you cannot ignore the potential video offers.

You have to become comfortable speaking on camera. The tricky advice I have to share is that to become comfortable on video you need to be on video. It stats by having your video on for every call you have and scaling up from there. Video can be the difference between building a superficial audience that just sees what you write vs being a person who your audience feels connected to because they have heard you speak. It could be the difference between whether or not you convert your followers into customers. But why does it make that big a difference?

Showing your depth

Let’s say you are building your audience on LinkedIn or Twitter (or are we calling it X now?), everything you post is written, and usually within 280 characters. You can provide great content that is educational and adds value to people but you can only go so far to show your understanding.

With speaking you have the ability to show you have a cause-effect understanding of what it takes to reach successful outcomes. In other words you can explain how steps 1, 2 and 3 get you to outcomes 11, 12 and 13. Showing depth, and giving more insight into how you think about problems builds trust with your audience, in particular if they have the problem you are solving.

Having depth and building trust with your audience is a key factor in converting followers into customers. They know what they are getting if they come to you for coaching, delivering a service or any other type of product.

Communicating your message effectively

As with all speaking, video content is no good if you are longwinded and unclear in what you are saying. The ability to speak clearly and articulate your points concisely is a superpower. You can work on this to ensure you communicate effectively via video. The best way is to use the nano speech to structure your videos — the quick open, body, close structure.

If you cannot deliver your main point in one sentence you are not clear enough. But if you can you have a huge opportunity. Showing you can be clear in your message and deliver it effectively is a game changer for video content. You can use all of your public speaking skills to ensure you land an important message in every video to grow your following.

For example, storytelling hits differently when told vs when you read it. Pauses become a piece, speed of delivery becomes a piece. You have the power to captivate your audience just by bringing your emotion and passion into it. You can fully leverage the power of storytelling to land your message effectively via video. The better you are at storytelling the faster you will grow your audience using video.

Letting people get to know you

If you are using video on text based platforms, video becomes a scroll stopper — just because it is different. Just by speaking to your audience rather than writing to them you capture their attention.

There is something powerful about your voice in letting people get to know you. People read your content in your voice once they have heard you speak. This is what takes a video from being something that someone watched to being an effective relationship building tool for your creator business.

I have found this with Twitter Spaces which is an audio only platform. If you want to get into video but it feels like a big step or is uncomfortable, audio content is a great option in your transition from writing to video. You will still be able to show depth and also begin building the foundations of a comfortable speaker.

As a creator entrepreneur, video (and audio) content is something you should embrace. Great for improving your speaking ability and amazing to grow your social media following.

Actionable takeaways

  • Use the nano speech structure for your videos — this will give your videos a clear and engaging structure. Remember to open with a bang, deliver your message clearly, and end with a call to action.

  • If the thought of speaking on video is overwhelming, start with audio content, or jump into Twitter Spaces to gain comfortability speaking.

  • Showcase your depth. Don’t just share what someone should be doing, show why it is important and how it worked for you. This will help grow your audience and convert your followers into customers.

More from me

Liam Sandford
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