Advice for Beginning Speakers

At Extreme Diva Media, we know speaking and writing go hand in hand. A speaking career helps boost the sale of your books and your books help increase your speaking opportunities. If you wish to be published or are already published but do not have a speaking career, you need to seriously consider doing presentations. To help you get started on your speaking career, we offer you these suggestions:

Create a Topic: Begin with the subject of your book. Your presentations should reinforce the message in your book so this is the place to begin. Choose three solid points from your book that can be put together to create a presentation. Your first presentation should be 45-90 minutes in length with 60 minutes being typical.

Go Long: Some groups might want more than one brief presentation. They might want you for a retreat, a conference (where you do multiple presentations) or for a multiple week series. This is not as difficult as it may seem. Take your 60 minute presentation and expand it to 3 or 4 60 minute parts. You will find the more often you give your 60 minute presentation, the more material you will gather. Soon, you will have more information than will fit in 60 minutes. Use this material to create your longer presentation. Expand topics with examples, exercises, small group discussions and Q & A.

Expanding Your Topic List: Consider related topics that expand your original theme but still reinforce it. Fro example, if you do a presentation for work at home moms, you might develop another topic that offers activities for children that allow moms to get work done. As you speak to different groups, you might begin to collect information on the various business moms run from their homes. This would be another topic you could present. You could also develop a presentation to offer advice to moms who are considering leaving their jobs to begin working at home. See how easy it is to spin a variety of topics off one idea!

Get Professional Help: There are groups, organizations and classes to help you in your speaking career. CLASS Services has been training speakers for over 20 years. Many of today's leading female speakers were trained by CLASS. You learn more about them by visiting their website: classervices.com You might visit a monthly meeting of the National Speakers Association. This organization offers training, advice and support to members. You may find them at: www.nsaspeaker.org Toastmasters is also a great resource for beginning speakers. Learn more about this organization by visiting: toastmasters.org

This is only the tip of the iceberg. There are various books and training materials to help you along the way. In addition, the web offers groups that can guide you along the way. Speaking before an audience is one of our biggest fears. When you have the opportunity to meet your readers and connect with the people you help, you will find your fears melting away.