Today, more than ever, a speech is often much more than just a speech. In fact, I see speeches and presentations as a critical part of an ongoing discussion you have with key stakeholders on issues affecting your organization. This discussion is asynchronous, sometimes anonymous and always “on.” It happens face to face, over video, telephone and especially through social media.
As we all know, social media is a huge devourer of content. In promoting my small business, I’m constantly faced with the challenge of developing meaningful and useful news, views and insights. But, I’m also learning the practice of re-packaging and re-purposing what I’ve already written or created and using it in my content marketing activities.
This practice especially applies to speeches and presentations. Every time you or someone from your organization stands in front of an internal or external audience, a wealth of meaningful content is created. This includes:
- The Script or Quotes of important passages and conclusions
- Videos of both the complete presentation and select highlights
- Live Tweets of important messages and reactions during the speech
- Blog Posts and subsequent Comments
- Slides and other Media
- Infographics created by combining images from the slides
And, all of this is in addition to traditional press releases and other media relations activities.
Now, I am by no means a social media expert, so I’m not the right person to give advice about platforms, tools or tactics. But, what I do know is that it is very important to look at every speech as more than just a one-time occurrence. Instead, understand that each is really a Content Generation Machine that will add to and expand your role in the discussion.