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Get the PR Advantage with Brigitte Lyons: How PR Can Boost Your Speaking Cred & Get You Paid to Speak

Do you ever feel like you’re the best-kept secret in the speaking industry?

If only more people knew about you and your message, you could easily book speaking gigs.

As a speaker, you want to be known for what you do both onstage and off.

One of the best ways to boost your speaking credibility, get the edge of your speaking competition, and even get paid more to speak is with PR.  

Today on the show and blog, my guest is Brigitte Lyons, the founder of B, a Boutique Marketing and PR agency that helps thought leaders and small businesses hone their message and reach more of the right audience.

She’s going to give you the lowdown of how and why you should be using PR to help build your speaking business including:

• How PR can give you a competitive advantage when booking a speaking gig
• Why you don’t need to be famous to get the media’s attention
• How much time you need to spend on PR efforts to get noticed by the media (it’s surprisingly little)
• The four steps Brigitte uses with her clients to get them media placements

Enjoy the show!

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What the Heck is PR & Why Should Speakers Care?

Michelle:

So to start, Brigitte, what is PR? Because honestly when I talk to people about PR, they look at me like I have five heads. Why should I be doing that? So, what is it and why is it important for speakers?

Brigitte:

Yes. PR is a thing that confuses people because honestly, it means a lot of things. The definition is actually in the name so PR stands for public relations so. PR is just a way an organization manages information that they send out to the public. So, that sounds really jargony, but I wanted to mention that because for a lot of larger organizations, that actually means that speaking is under the umbrella of the PR department. When I do PR  for corporations and their executives, finding speaking gigs is part of our job so it's really interesting because that brings a little bit of context.

For a lot of people, speaking is actually part of their PR outreach.  For somebody who has to speak as the core of their business, usually their PR is about media outreach and media relations, and that's just getting your work and your ideas out there through the media.

The reason that this is so important and valuable for speakers, in particular, is what PR ultimately is designed to do is to build up your reputation.  So this can be everything from name recognition to what you're known for. PR can help people associate your ideas or the core of your work with your name when they hear it.

It can also give you a stamp of approval. When you're pitching yourself to opportunities or if you have to do any submissions, you can actually include some of your PR placements. This can add some prestige to your outreach so they say, “I actually haven't heard of Michelle or Brigitte, but look, this person was in Fast Company. That means that they've been chosen by Fast Company as somebody who they'd like for their audience.”

It's almost like a recommendation or a referral. You can think of it that way.

Michelle:

Okay, so PR can obviously build your reputation so you have that association with your topic and your name: it positions you as that go-to speaker, that go-to expert that people want to hire. Then there is that prestige or credibility piece. Yeah, I may have never heard of Brigitte, but I've heard of Fast Company or I've heard of Fortune or Forbes and that gives you a competitive edge.

Brigitte:

Yes, it's a total competitive advantage. Imagine that you're comparing two different speakers and you say, “Well gosh, this one's had all this media coverage.”In your mind you're thinking, people might have heard of them.

Someone who organizes events might be thinking, “This speaker might be a draw because they have some name recognition with our people or our people might see that they've been Forbes, or they've been Entrepreneur.”

That can be really valuable and another related thing is that PR ultimately builds your audience so it helps you get known to more people. Some organizations that are looking at you might say how many people can you draw with your topic? If we put you on our program, how many people can we draw to our event? That's really what they care about, ultimately.

Michelle:

Yes. Ultimately they want to get butts in seats and the speakers are the way they do that. If you, as a speaker, have an audience, and if you have these prestige markers, it shows the organizers, “Oh, this person can actually help us fill our events.”

Brigitte:

Right, exactly! So if they're comparing two potential speakers, all things being equal, the one that has PR is probably going to win against the one that doesn't.

Michelle:

Ahh. I think that's the important point. … There are a lot of speakers, it's a competitive industry so if you have that PR advantage, you're more likely to get booked.

As a side note, one of my clients emailed me over the weekend that she had just landed a paid speaking gig through a placement in mindbodygreen. They saw her article. They read it. They loved it. They reached out to her and she booked a paid speaking gig. I think that's probably more rare.

Brigitte:

Yes. Actually, there can be two different goals for the audience. One goal can be who's the target audience for your speech, but another goal could be, what's the media that the people who are booking the gigs? What media are they looking at? So, it can be trade media or industry media, but if you can get into the head of an organizer, it can actually help you make that happen more frequently.

Do You Need to Be Famous to get Media Attention?

Michelle:

I love that! So, Brigitte, don't I need to be famous to get media attention?

Brigitte:

Absolutely not. I wouldn't say that's the reverse of the case, but you can use media attention again to bolster up your reputation., People often tell me they are going to get PR “after.” “After” can mean things like, “After I redo my website” or “After I book some gigs first” or “After I've made my first million or six figures.”

The challenge is that PR won't immediately bring in revenue and so that's something to think about, what are those immediate goals that you have? PR is something that you can do for free and it's something that takes time to build so I always think that it's best to start PR as soon as you're able. You can start doing your own PR programming in as little as two hours a week and still get huge results. I think the sooner you do it, the more famous you're going to get and faster.

When Should I Add PR to Build Out My Speaking Business?

Michelle:

One of my clients asked me only last week, “When should I start adding PR to build out my speaking business?”                    

She's done a lot of speaking, but she's at the beginning of this new venture. We're working on her messaging, but it's like the sooner you start doing it, the sooner you're going to build your credibility because it is a long-term play. Speaking is a long term strategic play and I feel like PR accompanies you on that journey.

Brigitte:

Yes!, You mentioned messaging and when I'm pitching with somebody, I really like to think about what the different messages are that we could test through the media? During the first six months of your PR program, you should always think of testing and experimentation.You might have a lot of ideas and media is a really good way to get fast feedback on how interested people are in these ideas. You might have three different story angles that you send to one person.

In fact, I think this is what we did with you and Fast Company.

We said, “Here is a hook of something interesting that's happening and here are three things that I could speak to.” Then you see which one they're interested in taking and if you're weighing different topics, this can actually help you narrow it down. I like to say that as soon as you have an idea of what your audience is and what you want your message to be, PR can actually be a way to help you refine that message as you go.

Michelle:

That is a really good point because I know people struggle with finding what topic is marketable for them. Speakers can test it out via PR by doing some pitches, doing the outreach in a few hours a week and see what's really resonating and that would probably reflect what's going to sell the meeting planners as well.

Brigitte:

Yeah. If you think of speaking in PR or speaking in media as all being part of PR, you can see how it all feeds each other in a cycle and works together as opposed to being two opposing tracks. I think that's a really good way for speakers to think about it. Ultimately, you're speaking for certain goals and they might be revenue goals, but they also might be because they have a message they really want to get out.

Speaking is going to get you paid to do that. PR can get your message out and help you get paid more for your speaking. Speaking and PR work really well together and I think that they should go hand in hand as much as you can.

[Tweet: PR gets your message out and helps you get paid more to speak]

Michelle:

That is a really good point! The other point I love that you made is that PR can actually help you get paid more when you're in that negotiation phase with a meeting planner.  That is so awesome.

When you're working with a speaker to establish her platform, what steps do you take?

What are the steps speakers should take to establish their platform

Brigitte:

There are four things that I want to know from a speaker right off the bat and the first one is in your question. My very first question is, “What's your platform?”

Another way that I often ask people is, “What do you want to be known for?”

So, if somebody were to recommend you to an event planner and say, “Hey, I really think you should book Michelle and here's what she speaks to.”

What is that instant association you want people to have with your name? So, I want to know what your platform is and I do a lot of messaging work so like you, I can help people refine that, but they need to come to me with some sort of idea of what that is.

The second question is what are your goals? Different people have different goals for their speaking careers. It can be really important to know that. Some people maybe they just want to travel a lot and do the speaking circuit and that's their goal, but other people want to get book deals or they want to use speaking to build up a consulting business. It's really important to know what kind of goal we're reaching for because those can actually change the kind of outreach you do or the kind of placements you need and it's important to know that at the beginning.

The third question is really important also. It's this: Who is the audience you need to reach those goals? We touched on this a little bit before. Is your goal really to get an important message out there? Well, then your audience is the audience for your speech topic, for whatever you're trying to teach or impart. If you're trying to get a book deal, you might also want to be published in places where publishers might be paying attention, and you will want to speak at certain venues.

Different magazines, for example, put on events or they sponsor events so why not actually try to reach out and work on the PR and media side with that magazine and get your ideas in there.  Then  when you pitch them, you can say, “I was actually featured in your magazine last week.”

The goals are super important and then the last thing is: What's unique about your point of view? I want to know what really lights people up as speakers, but also what is it about them that makes them stand out?

I mean, Michelle, you have this way you talk about it, which I love, which is what are your rants and your raves?

I like to know the same sort of thing. I want to know what lights that fire? What are you saying that's against the conventional wisdom that's the rebel in us, right? What are we trying to push the boundaries on and push further because those are the best media angles!

Then, first, we have to have all of that thing:, your platform, your goals, your audience, and what's unique about you. Then we can use all of that to build a media plan that really reaches the right audience for you.  We can put forward this story that angles to the messages that are going to make you stand out in the way you want to.

The foundation of strategy really starts on where do you want to go and why? Then we build the plan to get there. So, any speaker, I think, can ask these questions. Then what you want to do is build on them and try to build the PR around those outlets that are reaching your target audience.

Michelle:

What's really struck me is that you and I do very similar work. It has different outcomes in some ways, but one of the things I hammer home all the time is this idea about strategy. What is it that you want to be known for? Who do you want to reach? Where are they hanging out? Where are the people who are hiring you, hanging out?

Having those specific goals, knowing how you're using speaking in your business and what the end goal is, is it just to be a paid speaker or is it to get the book deal? What is it that we're trying to accomplish here? Then, your unique viewpoint: all of those things are what help you build a successful speaking business. AND, it's also going to get you that media attention that supports building your speaking business.

Brigitte:

Yes, and  I think that there might also be strategies important because of the mindset piece. Both of us are involved in speaking media outreach and things that are really long-game kind of strategies, but not everybody wants to be out there and seen in that kind of way, right? Some people like being behind the scenes and I think that when you're going out there and actually doing the work, it can really help you to know why you're doing it, what results you're trying to achieve so that you can keep your eyes on that prize and keep going because otherwise you're going to get rejected, right?

You're going to send out a pitch to reporters and they're not always going to respond to you.   … With really well-crafted pitches and positioning and really targeted lists, I see a 20% success rate. It means 80% of your emails probably won't ever receive a response. If you know that and you say, “Okay, well, this is why I'm doing it and this is important enough to me to keep doing it”, then I think that's important too.

That's why I tell people two hours a week. If you are a speaker and you're like, “I want to get started.” I'd say, just pick a day. So say, every week on Monday morning, I'm going to figure out what's a media outlet that's reaching my audience.and what they are speaking to. Then send somebody your pitch.

You could pitch yourself to write an article or you could pitch yourself to somebody who regularly writes about your topic and if every single week you send out a pitch, by the end of the year, that's 52 pitches, right? You can get a huge response and a huge amount done in that time.

Let's say you take off four weeks in the year, it's still 48 pitches. It doesn't have to take more than one or two hours a week to do that so you can have insane results.But you need the tenacity to keep going and I think having the tenacity is part of knowing why you're doing it.

Michelle:

Yeah, because I know that the tricky part is not hearing anything. I'd rather get rejected than not hear anything at all. That is a black hole and you have to have that tenacity to get through.

Michelle:

My final question for you, Brigitte:  Are all media outlets created equally?

Brigitte:

No, although this is sort of a complicated question because what works for one person, won't necessarily work for another.  You mentioned mindbodygreen and I've worked with them for clients a lot and I had one client … So, this was actually more about an audience building thing, than a speaking thing, but she did a contribution in mindbodygreen and she got 1,000 leads for her program.

Michelle:         

Wow!

Brigitte:

She got 1,000 leads (meaning people who sent her email, who signed up on her site) from one contribution in mindbodygreen.  But I've also worked with other clients who've gotten five visitors to their websites from contributions in mindbodygreen, so no, not all media outlets are created equally. This is why I really encourage testing to figure it out. Ultimately what you want to ask is, “Was that message matched to the media outlet?”

That's a way to think it through. Is your audience reading that media outlet? Are they watching that program or what have you? Are they covering your topic?  A lot of people think that you want to go into the media with something kind of unusual, but really you want to fit within what they're doing editorially and then offer a spin on that topic.

Michelle, you are a perfect example. When we went to Fast Company, you were like, “I hate everything they write about speaking.” Remember that?

Michelle:

I do remember that. I was like, “Oh, all their articles suck.”

Brigitte:

You were like, “This is terrible and I don't want to be associated with this.” And so I said, “That's perfect. They talk about speaking so now we can go in there and tell them why they all suck in a nice way, right? You can tell them what’s the better way.”

When you can find that kind of match where they're already talking about the topic, but you have something fresh to offer, that's where that rant can really come in handy. You've usually found a really good match for your message there.

Media outlets are not all equal and to me, it isn't always even about size, it's really about the audience. The most prestigious media outlet won't matter for you if your audience isn't hanging out there. It’s really important to look at the media outlets, not from your perspective of what you want, but from your audience perspective of what they're looking for.

Michelle:

That totally makes sense. Everything goes back to the audience and what they want and where they are hanging out and where you are going to be seen by the right people.

Thank you for being on the show, Brigitte!

You can find Brigitte online at www.brigitteLyons.com and she is @brigittelyons everwhere (Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook)

If you go to www.brigittelyons.com/rebelpositioning, you can get a mini email course that can help you clarify some of these questions:

• What do you want to be known for?
• Where is your audience hanging out?
• Who's your audience?

I encourage you to if you are launching your speaking business and you’re wanting to use PR to help it grow, go grab Brigitte's course because she's magical at what she does.