Some speaker marketing tools you find online are great…
And some are… well… not...
That’s why I’m excited to bring you another edition of Worth It or Walk Away: an up close look at speaker marketing tools where I test the platform for you and share the experience.
Here, we’re diving into Conference Connect. I first heard about this when another speaker emailed me to ask if it was worth their time.
At the time, I had never heard of it. And when I first checked it out, my initial impression was...
“This could be great!”
So, was it?
First, let me back up and tell you all about Conference Connect.
The Platform That Promises to Connect It All
As a speaker, you can have a profile for your speech. If you’re an event organizer, it looks like you can have a profile for your event.
And then, both of those can be rated. It’s supposed to be a great way to discover events and speakers.
It promotes itself as a way to get discovered, track trends, and find opportunities for your speaking business. There’s a speaker directory, conference database, and tracking for organizations and speakers.
I was actually pretty excited about a feature that creates custom alerts for your favorite speakers and events.
Putting Conference Connect to the Test
Here’s a breakdown of what I tested over the course of three months…
1) Personalized event recommendations
Conference Connect says you can discover events that are relevant to your expertise. I thought this sounded great because it could save me time prospecting. Hopefully, the platform would serve up some speaking opportunities tailored to my sessions.
2) Alerts when my favorite speakers are booked
When I set up my profile, I listed three speakers in my referral ring as “favorites.” They were Jay Baer, Ann Handley, and Marcus Sheridan. We have a strategy called “follow the leader” where we each look at events where the other has spoken. If the event was a good fit for them, there’s a good chance it would be a good fit for me.
It’s like stalking, but professionally. Totally legit. (Right, Ann?)
So, I hoped I would never miss an opportunity where one of them was speaking. I could track their trends and follow their leads – hopefully to pitch those same events to hire me next year.
3) Get discovered by event organizers
We know this doesn’t work very well, but I thought on the off chance this works, let me build a speaker profile to help me stand out. Maybe it would work?
The implied benefit here is that you’re going to position yourself in front of conference decision makers and get those inbound speaking leads. It’s kind of just a billboard, really.
4) Stay ahead of industry trends
They promise that you can see which topics and speakers are trending and you can then position your speech and brand with some constant insight into what event organizers want.
5) Referral and collaboration
Finally, there is an implied benefit of referral and collaboration. So, if you’re going to create this speaker network, you can connect with other speakers who might be worth meeting. I am always trying to find new speakers, so this could be good!
