In honor of February, the month we celebrate love, this month’s meeting of the National Speakers Association Mountain West Chapter (NSA-MW) the program was all about how to make love to the camera so your clients will love you in return (and want to hire you). Actually, the program was How to Use Video to Build Your Speaking Business.
Cory Vandenberg and Ray Lane of Next Level Video Production were there to teach us not only why we should be using video on our website but how to create and post our video clips. A few facts about video on the web include:
- People who view video on a site will stay on that website for an average of two minutes longer than a site without video.
- People who view a web video are 64% more likely to buy.
- Soon video will be 90% of all internet traffic.
Cory and Ray provided a packet via web delivery, of resources to use in the videos we create (royalty free music, graphics, backgrounds, etc). By the time they were done, the only excuse we had for not creating and posting our own videos was procrastination.
To drive home the importance of video for speakers, Richard Schelp, the Founder of Executive Speakers Bureau, spoke to the group via Skype, on the meeting planner’s perspective on the importance of demo videos. His bureau represents big name speakers, like Richard Branson and Jay Leno. He gave his perspective on the need for video and answered audience questions.
Having been intellectually fed, it was time to fill our stomachs. After dinner at the Lion House we once again assembled for the rest of the evening’s program. We started with one of our own chapter members, Martin Hurlburt, giving a five-minute presentation about himself and his speaking topic.
Martin is a financial planner that knows how to make the topic of money funny. He got right to the heart of how to manage all the money you make as a speaker—you do make a lot of money, right? If not yet, you will, as you apply what you learn at our chapter meetings.
The next presenter in the program was Leta Greene. If you are going to make love to the camera, you need to look the part. This is where Leta came to our rescue. She is an image consultant, but not your typical image consultant. To Leta, beauty is not about continuous maintenance but the right combination of knowledge, product, and attitude. Her motto is, “Spend enough time on yourself in the morning to forget about yourself the rest of the day.” We learned some helpful hints on everything from color blocking to attitude—it’s all part of the package you present to your audience.
The evening ended with a presentation by Darin Adams. Darin is an award winning journalist and the cohost of the daytime lifestyle television show, Studio 5. If you know Darin outside of his TV job you will know that he is a pretty mellow, down to earth kind of guy. Get him in front of an audience however, and few things in this universe have as much energy. We are talking a supernova of enthusiasm and passion.
Besides speaking as fast as a speeding bullet, he had a list of great tips on how to get on television and what producers are looking for. He gave a lot of very good advice, including five tips for making a pitch to a television producer and nine points on what you need to do when you get in front of the camera. If you took good notes, you ended up with a perfect script for getting on television.
If there was one thing he emphasized above all, it was the need to for passion when on television. It doesn’t matter what your topic is, if you don’t have passion, people won’t care about what you have to say, even if the subject matter is an interesting one. With passion however, even turtleneck shirts on sale at Old Navy can be more than exciting, as he illustrated. He concluded his presentation with a very clever song to emphasize the importance of passion to your presentation. Who knew he could sing?
Appropriately, we ended our February chapter meeting on the subject of passion. Although the kind of passion Darin talked and sung about is a different passion than the kind usually associated with Valentine’s Day. When you think about it though, both are important to a speaker’s career—love and enthusiasm for the topic you speak on. With that, I will take another month and see y’all back at the next chapter meeting.