Introduction
So you’re a keynote speaker or you’d like to be one. You’ve got a message that you think is worth sharing and can inspire change in people. If you believe it, then someone else will. But how do you actually get on stage and in front of an audience to share that message and that value?
Keynote speaking isn’t just about delivering a nice speech; it can also be a pivotal milestone in an aspiring speaker’s journey toward professional acclaim. Keynotes offer unparalleled opportunities for visibility, credibility, and career advancement. They serve as a showcase of one’s expertise, a platform to actually influence industry trends, and a catalyst for personal branding. For speakers who want to elevate their profiles and make a lasting impact in their fields, getting keynote speaking gigs is not just advantageous—it’s essential.
In this blog post, we will jump into keynote speaking, exploring its significance, strategies for securing engagements, and tactics for leveraging other speaking roles into coveted keynote slots. Following a structured approach inspired by The Speaker Lab’s SPEAK framework we will provide actionable insights and practical steps to help you navigate and thrive in the competitive landscape of public speaking.
Whether you’re an experienced speaker looking to expand your repertoire or a newcomer eager to make your mark in the industry, this guide will equip you with the tools and strategies you need to succeed in finding and maximizing keynote opportunities.
Learn How You Could Get Your First (Or Next) Paid Speaking Gig In 90 Days or Less
We receive thousands of applications every day, but we only work with the top 5% of speakers.
Book a FREE call with our team to get started — you’ll learn why the vast majority of our students get a paid speaking gig within 90 days of finishing our program.
Understanding Keynote Speaking
What is a Keynote Speech?
Keynotes are generally high-profile presentations that are delivered at big events to set the overarching theme or message of the event. They’re often inspirational, motivational, or informative with the aim of engaging and captivating a large audience. Event organizers will go to pretty great lengths to find the ideal speaker for their keynotes because of the importance it holds for the whole event.
Keynotes differentiate from other speaking formats in a variety of ways. Workshops, for example, focus on interactive learning, skill-building, and lots of participant engagement. There is a lot of back-and-forth with the audience in workshops.
Keynotes, however, are more about delivering a central message to an audience without much interactivity (although there can certainly be some engagement).
Panels tend to involve several speaking in discussion, talking over various aspects of a topic but keynotes are singular presentations aimed at providing a cohesive message.
The Importance of Keynote Speakers
As a keynote speaker, you have a big responsibility. Keynotes serve as the cornerstone of events. They set the tone and direction for the whole thing. They are meant to inspire, challenge perspectives, and initiate action among audiences. Your role will often include address themes or trends that shape discourse in the industry. Your expertise will be in the spotlight.
With that responsibility comes a lot of advantages for you as a public speaker. Taking keynotes can provide a lot of exposure to a very big and diverse audience.These speaking opportunities can hugely increase you visibility as a public speaker within the industry. Keynotes will position public speakers as thought leaders and experts in their field.
Finding paid speaking opportunities will also help build credibility. Delivering a keynote can enhance your credibility as a speaker and give you some authority over other speakers on particular topics. Keynote speakers can become established as go-to sources for insights and expertise within their niches.
Successful keynote speakers can also find themselves getting invited to more and more prestigious and lucrative events and public speaking opportunities. Keynotes can often help one find speaking engagements, paid gigs, book deals, and media appearances. Needless to say, finding events to deliver a keynote at can go a long way in advancing your career as a paid public speaker.
Types of Keynote Speeches
There are three main types of keynote speeches that we’ll go over here:
Motivational Keynotes:
Motivational keynotes are designed to inspire and energize an audience. They will often use personal anecdotes from the speaker’s life and motivational stories. Think Tony Robbins. These keynotes are meant to rile up a crowd and touch on audience members’ emotions, preparing them for calls-to-action that will come both in the keynote and in later programs and segments of the event.
Informative Keynotes:
Informative keynotes tend to focus on delivering substantial knowledge, insights, or data on specific topics or industries. They will often include in-depth analysis, research findings, and applications that attendees and listeners can use and implement.
Speakers for these types of keynotes might use data-driven content to make their points and may provide strategies or frameworks that are useful and relevant to the audience. These keynotes may include more audience engagement than motivational keynotes due to their depth of content. There may be Q&A sessions, case studies, or demonstrations that help enhance the understanding and retention of the information being shared.
Industry-Specific Keynotes:
Industry-specific keynotes, on the other hand, are tailored to address challenges, trends, and innovations within a particular industry or sector. Speakers will focus on providing specialized knowledge and insights relevant to professionals within that industry. Keynotes like this are typical at industry conferences or company gatherings.
Knowing which type of keynote you’ve been hired to deliver is important because you need to understand the audience you’re presenting to. You need to study and be aware of the audience demographics (such as age, profession, interests, etc.) in order to tailor your keynote’s content and delivery. You have to align your keynote’s objectives with the event’s goals and themes to ensure your talk is relevant and impactful.
The SPEAK Framework for Keynote Opportunities
Step 1: Select a Problem to Solve
Audience Analysis
The first step to finding paid speaking opportunities as a keynote speaker is to do your research on who you’ll be speaking to. Learn about the events’ target audiences and understand what their needs, challenges, and interests are. From there you can develop some strategies to align your keynote’s topics with the audience’s expectations and event theme effectively.
Topic Selection
Once you’ve figured out who your audience will consist of and what they need, choose a topic within your niche that will be compelling to them. It should address industry trends, emerging challenges, or some other pressing issues. To make it even more impactful, come up with a clever title and description that will resonate with conference organizers and appeal to attendees’ interests.
Step 2: Prepare Your Keynote
Content Development
Next, you’ve got to actually write or prepare your keynote. When developing the content of your speech, structure it with a powerful opening, an engaging body with loads of memorable and impactful insights, and a conclusion that will leave the audience with something to remember as well. (The basics of speech-writing, really.) Audiences can relate when you incorporate storytelling and actionable advice into your presentation.
Rehearsal and Refinement
Now to prepare. As with any paid speaking gigs, you’ve got to practice. Practice your delivery to enhance presence, pacing, and audience interaction. If there are opportunities at other gigs to practice this particular speech or even with friends or family, do that. Take some feedback and refine your speech.
Step 3: Establish Yourself as an Expert
Building Your Brand
Keynote speakers are generally chosen by decision makers because they have established themselves as experts in their niche. This takes time, of course. Building your brand takes lots of work and experience in the world of speaking. Create a professional speaker profile that highlights your expertise, achievements, and unique perspectives. A speaker website is the ideal place to post this information.
You can also use other online platforms like blogs and social media profiles to show your expertise. This includes thought leadership in your niche. Socials give you a great platform to engage with a broader audience and build relationships.
Networking and Thought Leadership
Building a network of other experts and thought leaders in your niche is a great way to find opportunities. Try to connect with industry influencers, other speakers, and event organizers through networking events, conferences, and online communities. Community is an excellent way to get more opportunities.
Another way to network is by participating actively in panel discussions, webinars, and podcasts to share your thoughts, your message, your expertise. This will help you gain visibility and build credibility as a paid public speaker.
Step 4: Acquire Keynote Speaking Gigs
According to TSL’s founder, Grant Baldwin, there are two main searches you can make when trying to find speaking opportunities: people and events.
Use Social Media
If you don’t know who or what to search, use social media. If you follow industry leaders and influencers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. then your feeds should be flooded with events and speakers to Google.
How to Use Google to Find Upcoming Conferences
Here’s an example: If you’re a dentist in Tennessee, search for “Tennessee Dentist Conference.” Take a look at the big national conferences but also focus on smaller, local events that may be more accessible for you next event.
When you search, scroll to the bottom of the search results page to find “People also search for” and use those related keywords to expand your search within your area and beyond. Most speakers will look through the first page of search results and then look elsewhere. There are good ways to use Google to find speaking opportunities.
Adapt your search method to your field (e.g., “Top Christian Conferences” for faith-based speakers, or similar searches for healthcare, knitting, youth athletics, etc.). This will help narrow down your results greatly. Using Google alerts can be a good way to stay on top of new opportunities.
Grant’s Pro Tip
Grant Baldwin encourages you to list events without contacting the event organizers immediately. You can use Google Docs or Sheets to make a list with links, dates, and contact information and then repeat this process until you have a solid list of potential events. Set Google alerts for each event.
Pitching and Proposal
Once you’ve established a list and decided to whom you want to reach out, now is the time to pitch. Your pitches should each be tailored, at least slightly, to each event so that it aligns with the event’s themes, target audience demographics, and the organization’s objectives.
Your pitch is your chance to make connections and negotiate. You can discuss fees, logistics, and contract terms as you emphasize the precise value that you bring to the event.
Leveraging Other Speaking Gigs
You won’t often find a keynote speaker who doesn’t have a lot of prior experience in other speaking roles already. You don’t usually jump straight into big keynotes. Use your other opportunities from smaller speaking engagements, like conferences or workshops, to hone your skills and position yourself for keynote roles. Highlight some of your successful speaking experiences and gather testimonials to showcase your abilities and your readiness to be an effective keynote speaker.
Another way to leverage your other speaking gigs is to expand your keynote offerings into series. You can offer workshops based on audience demand and feedback to draw out your keynote into more gigs, or vice versa. This is all about scaling your content in a way that is customizable to different industries, events, or organizational needs.
Find Out Exactly How Much You Could Make As a Paid Speaker
Use The Official Speaker Fee Calculator to tell you what you should charge for your first (or next) speaking gig — virtual or in-person!
Scaling Your Keynote Speaking Career
Managing Speaking Engagements
Managing engagements means balancing commitments. Develop a system to prioritize keynote speaking engagements while also maintaining a personal and professional balance. If you’re not healthy, your work will suffer. You’ll also need to use time management to deal with prep, travel, and speaking without giving up other important responsibilities.
The next thing you’ll want to mange well is your schedule. This includes travel logistics. Start by creating a calendar system so you can easily track speaking opportunities, deadlines, and travel dates. Over time you’ll gain some travel hacks that you can use to minimize stress and maximize efficiency. This might be booking flights and stays well in advance or using loyalty programs to gain points.
Finally, make sure you’ve done your research on each event. If you show up and clearly show that you’ve tailored your keynote to be optimal for the event you’re at, the event organizers will notice and appreciate that you’ve come prepared. That will make you much more likely to get good referrals to advance your speaking career.
Measuring Success and Growth
As you establish yourself as a paid speaker and use keynotes to boost your opportunities to speak publicly, you also need to measure your success and set performance metrics goals in an organized way. This means setting clear goals for engagement, such as audience engagement levels, the number of new contacts you get, and getting feedback scores. You can collect most of this information through audience surveys, social media mentions, and just face to face interactions with people who have heard you speak.
You can also evaluate your own progression just by tracking the number and quality of your gigs over time. Note how you’ve improved the caliber of events and how many repeat bookings you’ve had. Even better, gaining your recognition in the industry via awards, media mentions, etc. is a great way to build.
Try monitoring your revenue growth from not only your speaking gigs, but also things like book sales and consulting offers. Try and find ways to increase your fees based on an improving and growing reputation and the added, unique value that you bring to events. Sell yourself at the rate you deserve.
Conclusion
Keynote speaking can be a game-changer for your career, boosting your visibility, credibility, and professional growth. By using the SPEAK framework you can effectively land more keynote gigs and make the most of these opportunities. Each step ensures you’re connecting with your audience, delivering powerful talks, building your brand, and finding the right gigs.
So, dive in and start applying these steps to find and secure more keynote speaking opportunities. Let your expertise and enthusiasm shine through, and watch your career soar. With dedication and a strategic approach, you’ll inspire audiences and achieve great success.
