The first thing you need to do is commit to the long term.  This rarely happens over night.  It is a continuous improvement effort that includes always improving your speaker marketing materials, your speaker website and the speeches themselves.

Often the best source of speaking engagements are the people that have just seen you speak or hired you in the past.  If someone in the audience really likes it and they are involved in putting on other events, this can result in great speaking opportunities.  Also, if your presentation gets good results then you have a good chance to be invited back in the future.

It is also not very difficult to build a speaker lead generation website that will rank high in search engines when meeting planners are out doing research for the meetings they are preparing to do.  While these are easy to set up, they do take regular writing and a commitment to improvement over time.

Another good source is to work with other speakers that compliment your topic.  Then when there is a bigger event that you get to speak at, you can close the opportunity and then ask the planner if they need any suggestions on other speakers.  When you share these kinds of speaking opportunities with a small group of professional speakers you will all increase your business.

You will find that the web and referrals from past audience members and event planners is the best source of speaking opportunities for Small Business Speakers that I get.  Speaking engagement opportunities for Marketing Speakers are surprisingly easy to come by with a good speaker lead generation engine, for example.

The ultimate key is that a paid speaking business is a slow growth effort unless you manage to get incredible PR and exposure.  You need to be comfortable promoting yourself or have a great speaking agent to quickly make money speaking.  For many people, slow growth with referrals and targeted web efforts will provide a steady supply to work with.  Then continue to grow from there.

As a small business speaker I am always asked after my presentations about how to build internet income on the side – there are a lot of wanna-be Internet moonlighting entrepreneurs out there.

So if you are interested on that kind of thing go look at the upcoming event at the thrive super conference.

The fact is, a clear, simple, memorable brand for a small business will stand out more from the experience people have with it. So instead of spending time and money on new branding, a small business owner could invest in training, customer service and product development.

So if you are looking for a small business branding speaker, take the time to figure out what you really want them to cover before bringing them in.

Well, of course you can.  But there are some critical factors.

You should not sign up for twitter a few weeks before the event.  You are going to have to work too hard to build your list in time to have any impact.  Just not a good return on your investment.  (Although you could get lucky)

The better way to use twitter for your event is to build a big list of people that care about what you have to say, and then when you tell them “Look at the small business speaker we just booked…” they go and check out the event site.

And you can do this over and over for each speaker, each course/seminar, some big vendors, contests, the list of things you can tweet about for an upcoming event is big – and never has to be selling the event.

But again, if you have not built your list before you need it, you will not have a big enough audience that is paying attention.  Twitter can be a powerful tool, but it is not about the tool, it is about having people that care about what you have to say.

Instead, if you have a lot of small business owners in your audience you will want to do a small business lead generation workshop or presentation that will show small business owners how to create lead generation engines via seo and social media.

Ron McDaniel is a web lead generation specialist that uses organic SEO and social media to craft value driven sales funnels that produce outstanding ROI and targeted leads.  If this it the kind of Search Engine Optimization Speaker you are looking for, contact Ron and find out how his SEO Speaker Services can help your next event be a bigger success.

Instead, Ron helps small businesses step back and plot out just how to use social media to generate targeted online leads that will grow the small business and provide a positive return on investment, of both expense and time.

They key is not to start with the tools.  Social Media is just a collection of online tools that anyone can use.

Instead, start with the outcome you want.  Do you want to grow your email list?  Do you want people to call you?  Do you want people to come to an event you are organizing?  Then you need to start with that outcome and work your way backwards into a profitable, targeted social media and content strategy that will produce measurable results.

Ron McDaniel is a small business speaker that teaches people to to do just that.  Call today and book Ron for your next event.

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Of course, there are a variety of elements to look at.  What is the small business crowd interested in and what will make your event spectacular?

Begin by doing this:  What is the most important to your small business audience?  Of course, if you will have multiple speakers you will hire multiple small business speakers to fill there roles.

1. Entertainment – Funny and Enjoyable Speaker?
2. Celebrity – Do people know the small business speaker and wish to have similar success?
3. Training – Do you want someone that will teach valuable information to small business owners?
4. Motivational – Do you want a motivational small business speaker to inspire people to reach their goals?

While every speaker wants to bring elements of all of these to the speech, you can be sure they do focus on one or two more than the others.  Could you imagine a big name celebrity doing a training speech?  So your first assessment might be to ask a small business speaker, if they have to pick one, which of those four best describes them.

Personally, I would answer that I do training and motivational speaking, depending on the audience.  While I am fun as well, I am also passionate about giving people the tools to go back to the office and make big time changes in their income stream.

Next, you should write a list of Small Business Speaking Topics that you consider of interest to your audience.  Then put these in order of interest, highest to lowest.  You might even do  a survey in advance to let your audience tell you what they will find most interesting.

Your list might look like this:

1. Low Cost Marketing for Small Business
2. Sales
3. Branding
4. Employee Management
5. Health Care Costs

You then take your narrow list of up to 10 topics, and as you interview possible Small Business Speakers, you ask them to put them in the order of their expertise.  They can simply mark off those topics they do not cover at all.

The reason you do this is that many speakers can adjust their presentation to fit many needs.  For example, I speak on Business Blogging, Branding, Word of Mouth Marketing, Lead Generation and more.  Fairly broad – but they are all inter-related.  So if you are looking for a small business marketing speaker, I could fit the need in a variety of places, but you would want to know what is my strongest area.

Of course, you take these two sets on data and compare them to your need.  Don’t pick the person you like the best of that you found by accident, let the numbers to the talking.  Who best matches your goals.

Now before you hire the speaker, you do want to look at testimonials, experience, speaker cost, etc.  There are still a lot of intangibles that must be considered – but if you go into the search with a clear idea of what you want, you are more likely to produce the event that you intended.

1. Small Business Owners rarely want fluff.  That is why I only speak about social media in the context of how to use them to generate leads for the business.  I don’t know many small businesses that want to hear about things that will waste time and not generate more sales.
2. Fewer is better – Yes, you can speak about 100′s of different social media tools, but people would rather know a few effective tools and how to use them well. 
3. Stories of success – Your small business speaker needs to be able to convey stories of how other businesses have generated huge leads or transformed their organizations using social media.

I have presented to 1,000′s of small businesses across the US and have watched people become authors and grow their business just by starting out doing a little with social media.  Give me a call and lets talk about your next event.