Your Presentation Is Over, Now What?
Speaking has always been an important element of legal marketing for lawyers and firms. Whether in person or virtually, at conferences, firm-organized events or client CLEs, speaking before the right audiences provides an opportunity to showcase your expertise and enhance your visibility with people who make legal hiri88ng decisions—or influence those who do.
Putting together substantive presentations can be time-consuming. (For tips on creating effective presentations, read my blog “Preventing Homicide by PowerPoint: 5 Tips to Better Presentations.” ) Fortunately, by optimizing your presentation content, you can generate a return on your investment of that time and effort that is exponentially greater than the business development opportunities you may see from a single speaking engagement. Your PowerPoint slides, speaker’s notes, and the presentation itself aren’t the final products, to be shelved once the applause dies down and the audience goes home (or logs off). They can (and should) be the jumping-off point for a wide variety of materials that can be used in multiple ways and across numerous channels. They can be reinvigorated and turned into content that can serve as additional touchpoints for the original audience to keep you and your presentation in their minds, both immediately after the event and for months after. They can also be repurposed to extend your reach to additional audiences.
Talk about the presentation on social media
Promoting a speaking engagement ahead of time is a given, in particular as a way to boost attendance. But you should also be talking about your speaking events after the fact, not only to enhance your visibility and reputation as a recognized expert in your practice but also to set the stage for future speaking opportunities. Potential social media posts can include thanks to the organizers for hosting you and to attendees for coming to hear you speak, photos from the event (and of you speaking), video and audio clips, recaps of your or others’ presentations, answers to questions you received but didn’t have time to answer during your talk, or just about any substantive content related to your topic or the larger theme of the event.
Make video available
Ideally, you should coordinate getting a video of the presentation ahead of time. Many virtual platforms do allow for recording, but even if the presentation is live, there may be a way to have it videoed. Post links on your firm website and bio and on social media (make sure you get permission from the sponsoring organization). Do some proactive outbound marketing to encourage people to view the video. Email attendees the link, along with a thank-you for attending. Consider sending additional materials or resources you may have mentioned or offering to answer any questions that you might not have had time for during the presentation. Extend your audience reach by emailing the link to clients and contacts, either using a firm or practice group mailing list or by sending notes to your individual contacts (e.g., “I gave this presentation you might be interested in.”).
Repurpose the content for other channels
If you spoke at a conference sponsored by an association, ask if you can recap the substance in any newsletter or magazine they publish. If it was a firm-run program, consider creating one or more alerts or blog posts from the content. If you covered one topic extensively or touched on a topic that merits a deeper dive, consider repurposing your presentation content into a single article. If the presentation covers multiple topics or can easily be broken into pieces, get as much mileage as possible by serializing the content. Written content isn’t the only option for repurposing your presentation content. Consider serializing the content into short video or audio clips, capturing key points in infographics, or repurposing the content into one or more podcasts on the subject. Creating media that’s shareable by others on social media can also extend your audience reach.
Look for other opportunities to give (some form of) the presentation again
Any presentation worth giving once is worth giving again. And again. The original audience likely isn’t the finite group of people interested in hearing you speak on the topic. You can tailor broader event or conference presentations for specific clients or industries or offer to cover the same legal topics for different jurisdictions (for example, one client I work with gives a New York and a California version of the same full-day client conference each year). Create different formats for the same topics—for example, shorter or smaller breakout sessions, interactive workshops, panel discussions, live or virtual “office hours,” or AMAs (“ask me anything”).
Use the presentation to attract media opportunities
Publicizing and promoting your speaking engagements through firm-controlled and social media channels can signal to other content creators (podcast hosts, reporters, bloggers and vloggers, etc.) that you are an expert and an insightful source on certain topics, increasing the potential for interviews, guest blogs, or other media opportunities.
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