How to Use Public Speaking on Social Media to Grow Your Business
Liam Sandford
Liam Sandford is a public speaking coach, marketing leader, and 2x best-selling author, including the book Effortless Public Speaking. He helps introverted professionals and leaders take control of public speaking anxiety and use speaking to market themselves, build influence, and communicate with impact.
Public speaking has evolved beyond conference stages and event speaker slots. In today’s attention economy, your audience is not waiting in a room, they are scrolling through feeds. The new stage is digital, and the stage is your phone camera. The marketers and business leaders who succeed today are those who understand how to use public speaking on social media to connect with audiences, build trust, and drive measurable growth.
Platforms like YouTube, Instagram Reels, LinkedIn video, and TikTok allow you to reach audiences at scale, share your expertise, and influence decision makers long before a sales conversation begins. When you treat these videos as extensions of your public speaking, structured, strategic, and story driven, you transform them into a consistent marketing growth engine for your brand or business.
The Rise of Public Speaking on Social Media
For decades, public speaking felt like it was reserved for stages, boardrooms, or live events. Now, the same skills that make a great speaker such as clarity, storytelling, confidence, and presence are the foundation of success on social media. Video is the most engaging form of content online, and social algorithms consistently reward creators who can hold attention and deliver value in seconds.
What separates successful brands from the rest is intentional communication. Speaking on social media is not just about filming videos, it is about using your voice strategically to shape perception, build credibility, and nurture your audience through every stage of your marketing funnel.
Public speaking on social media combines reach, relevance, and relationships. It allows you to position yourself as an authority while giving your audience an authentic connection that written posts alone cannot achieve.
Why Public Speaking on Social Media Works
Public speaking humanizes your brand. It allows people to see your face, hear your tone, and feel your energy. When translated to social platforms, that human connection becomes a powerful differentiator.
Here is why this approach works so effectively for marketers and business owners:
Visibility Through Authenticity
Social algorithms prioritize human led, video first content. When you speak directly to your audience, you outperform faceless brands who aren’t using public speaking as a marketing channel.
Trust Through Transparency
Seeing you speak builds familiarity and trust faster than text or graphics ever can. It shows your audience there is a real expert behind the brand.
Emotional Engagement
Tone, expression, and pacing all help communicate emotion, something that can be much harder without telling stories through a compelling narrative.
Evergreen Reach
A single YouTube video or Instagram Reel can continue attracting views and leads for months or years after it is first uploaded. Video content is a digital asset, as long as you package it right. Just like any blog post, the SEO angle is key, but once people find your video it builds trust faster than reading a series of blog posts.
Scalability of Connection
Speaking on social media allows you to build relationships at scale. Every video can connect with thousands of people simultaneously yet still feel personal. Imagine 1,000 people sitting in a room. Speaking on social media can get you in front of much larger audiences than events can.
The Nano Speech Framework for Social Media Videos
The Nano Speech framework helps you transform your public speaking into a repeatable, scalable content strategy for social platforms. It simplifies your structure so every video captures attention, delivers value, and drives engagement. It consists of three simple stages: Open, Body, Close.
Open: Win Your Audience in the First Three Seconds
Attention is your most valuable currency. Whether you are posting on TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube, the first three seconds determine whether someone keeps watching.
Use a strong hook that instantly signals value or relevance to your audience.
Examples:
“Your marketing videos are losing attention in five seconds or less.”
“9/10 brands post videos that nobody finishes watching. Let’s fix that.”
“If you want to grow faster on YouTube, stop doing this one thing.”
Speak with energy, clarity, and pace. A good hook makes people curious enough to stay for your message.
Body: Teach, Inspire, or Challenge
The body of your Nano Speech is where you deliver your key insight. Focus on one clear message per video. Use examples, quick stories, or demonstrations to bring it to life.
For example:
Explain a strategy that saved your team time or improved engagement.
Share a customer success story that shows real world results.
Reveal a mistake most marketers make and how to avoid it.
Your job is to deliver something the viewer can understand or apply immediately. This is where expertise turns into trust.
Close: Create a Meaningful Call to Action
Always end with a next step that keeps your audience engaged with your brand. This is not always subscribing, saving the video, visiting your website, or downloading a resource. It can be an action that you want them to take, unrelated to your brand, business or organization. This will help you build trust if the action is all about them, and not you.
Examples:
“To get started, use nano speech to script out your first video”
“Subscribe today to get the latest tips from [insert your credibility]”
“Tonight at dinner, practice the nano speech when you open a conversation. This will be your first step to confident public speaking”
Think of your close as an invitation, not a pitch. It should always help the viewer and align with the content you just provided in the video.
How to Use YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok in Your Funnel
Each social platform plays a unique role in your public speaking marketing strategy. Understanding these differences allows you to create the right type of content for each stage of your funnel.
YouTube: Long Form Authority
YouTube is where you demonstrate depth and leadership. It is the digital equivalent of delivering a keynote. As the second biggest search engine, YouTube is the best place to build your brand authority.
Public speaking on YouTube builds long term authority because videos are both searchable and evergreen.
Tips for success:
Focus on educational or story driven content that align with your audience’s challenges.
Use clear, keyword optimized titles and thumbnails to improve discoverability.
Add a call to action at the midpoint of your video, not just at the end. This will increase your conversions
Obsess over watch time. This is the main metric for growth on YouTube. If people always drop off after 5 seconds, there is something wrong with your hooks. If it is always after 60% your videos might be too long.
When done right, YouTube becomes your long form stage, a place to nurture trust and attract high intent leads over time.
Instagram Reels: Connection and Consistency
Public speaking on Instagram thrives on authenticity. Reels help your audience see the human behind the brand. Use them for short, frequent touchpoints that keep your voice in your audience’s daily feed.
In every Reel you should:
Intentionally hook the audience
Use on screen captions to help increase watch time
Be focused in what you say. If you can say it in 5 words, don’t use 10. You are playing the attention game
The more consistent your presence, the faster your audience develops a sense of familiarity. Instagram builds the emotional bridge that turns viewers into followers and followers into paying customers.
TikTok: Creativity and Reach
TikTok is where you test, learn, and scale your speaking style. The platform rewards authentic, high energy communication. It is the best environment to experiment with new hooks, visuals, and storytelling formats.
To succeed:
Post frequently and iterate quickly.
Don’t try to convert, optimize for attention and brand familiarity.
Repurpose top performing TikToks into YouTube Shorts, Reels and LinkedIn posts.
TikTok is an ideal top of funnel platform. It generates awareness and drives traffic to your deeper content on YouTube or your website.
Integrating Public Speaking Videos into Your Marketing Funnel
Speaking on social media should not be random or reactive. To turn it into a marketing growth channel, each video should serve a clear purpose in your funnel: awareness, consideration, or conversion.
Awareness: Educate and Entertain
Start by teaching something useful or challenging a common belief. Your goal is to make people stop, think, and follow. Avoid selling here. Focus on being interesting and valuable.
Examples:
“How to sound confident even when you’re nervous on camera.”
“The one sentence that will make your marketing videos unforgettable.”
“Why most brand videos fail in the first 10 seconds.”
Consideration: Build Authority and Trust
Once your audience knows you, use your videos to go deeper. Share stories, case studies, or data that show how your expertise drives real results.
Examples:
“How speaking on social media generated 2,000 new leads.”
“3 lessons from converting 100 leads in 1 week from Instagram”
“Behind the scenes of creating a viral YouTube short.”
Conversion: Encourage Action and Retention
Now that trust is established, encourage specific next steps. This could be downloading a resource, signing up for your newsletter, or booking a consultation. Keep it conversational and aligned with your audience’s journey.
Your videos at this stage should make it easy to move from inspiration to action.
Measuring Growth: KPIs That Matter
The real power of public speaking on social media is its measurability and ROI to your business or organisation. Every platform gives you data to understand what works and where to improve.
Track these key KPIs:
1. Watch Time: The average duration people watch indicates how engaging your speaking style is.
2. Retention Curve: Identify where viewers drop off and refine your pacing or structure.
3. Engagement Rate: Likes, comments, and shares show resonance and relevance.
4. Click Through Rate: Measure how well your CTAs drive traffic to your website or funnel.
5. Lead Conversion: Track form submissions, downloads, and inquiries linked to your video content.
Analyzing these metrics allows you to optimize your message, timing, and delivery for greater impact. To learn more about how to use public speaking on social media to help grow your business, check out the Ultimate Guide to Public Speaking in Marketing.
TLDR: Using Public Speaking on Social Media to Grow Your Business
Public speaking on social media allows you to turn your voice into a growth engine for your business.
Use the Nano Speech framework to structure your short videos.
Focus on YouTube for long term authority, Instagram for connection, and TikTok for reach.
Build videos that guide your audience through your marketing funnel.
Track engagement, retention, and conversions to measure success.
Stay consistent to turn visibility into trust and trust into sales.
More From Liam Sandford
Read my book: Effortless Public Speaking. Learn how to speak confidently, reduce stress, and turn public speaking into your competitive advantage. These actionable public speaking tips will help you improve your presentation skills for any audience.
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