Mom Bloggers Should Speak at Events and Conferences

By Wendy Piersall from Mom Blogging For Dummies

Nothing boosts your visibility among the blogging community more than when you speak at events attended by your readers and peers. Speaking on a topic gives you instant credibility that can be achieved in only a few other ways, like being quoted in the mainstream media, or by getting a very high profile recommendation.

It’s really only eclipsed by writing a book on a topic or being on the radio or TV. In the online business world, building trust is extremely important to your success, especially because you usually don’t have the benefit of people literally witnessing your real-life actions to back up your words. Speaking experience is a rock-solid way of building trust.

When considering speaking at events, you really want to focus on the topics you know like the back of your hand. This is true for a lot of reasons:

Your speaking engagements should be supporting your overall business model.
Public speaking can be a high-stress situation, and you need a comfortable level of understanding of your subject in order to hold up under the pressure of being in front of a room full of people.
When (not if — when) you make a mistake or lose your place in presentation, you need to be able to ad-lib good content to get back on track.
You will probably be asked questions by the audience, and you need to be able to answer them intelligently.
Event leaders want the very best people who can offer the most value to the conference attendees.

You can still get all the benefits of public speaking without having to get up alone in front of a crowd. The way to do that is to become a panelist. Almost all events and conferences have a combination of workshops and panels led by a moderator.

In a panel format, you share the stage with a group and basically answer questions and have a public conversation together. Getting onto a panel is the absolute best way to get started speaking in front of a crowd.