My fellow Maverick, Tom Flynn and I are in Atlanta this week. Tomorrow, we are privileged to be speaking to members of FEMA – no – not the folks that showed up late to New Orleans – FEMA – the Farm Equipment Manufacturers Association.
The subject? Making Some Dollars and Some Sense out of Social Media. We’ll be speaking with Willie Vogt, Corporate Editorial Director at Farm Progress Companies. Willie’s got game!
To often I go to events or conferences with speakers that know nothing about me or the poor schmuck sitting next to me. #fail. So, when that happens, the message delivered if often not relevant or not nearly as impactful as it could be.
I suggest doing what we did in preparing for this speaking event. Poll your audience prior to the show. This does a few things:
1. Makes them curious about what you have to say. “You haven’t even met me and you want to know about me?” – They may like us already.
2. Gives them a glimpse of what we’ll be talking about. Only 1% of the group we polled has heard of Ning.com – guessing they might have Googled it after the survey was over. In this case, they learned something – even before we talked to them.
3. Customize your content. Knowing to whom you speak can often be more important that what you speak about. In this case, we found that 80% of the audience either dabbled in social media on a personal level or knew that they should be using it for business. Cue the image search of “person about to jump off cliff.”
I don’t know how the presentation will go, but I certainly feel really prepared. The group we are speaking to certainly knows what social media is, they just don’t know to how harness it for their business… yet.
Author: Josh Fleming
www.lessingflynn.com
