MasterClass: "Create a lasting business impact with your talks" with Baldwin Berges

I am going to talk about an easy way to record, and edit videos of your talks. You may be thinking that’s pretty complicated, that you need a camera crew and so on. A little spoiler is that no, you don’t.

I am also going to talk about when you have these recordings, how you can position them as assets to promote your speaking business.

It’s all quite straightforward and simple. I hope you’re going to be quite excited by what you are going to take away from this today, because believe me, it has made an impact on my speaking business.

First I’ll tell you a little bit about who I am. I’m an aspiring speaker. I’m still trying to grow my speaking business. I think I just turned into a professional speaker recently.

I like to speak about the potential of using technology to build stronger human connections with your business. We live in a virtual world, a digital world, and I think it’s increasingly important to figure out how to make not only a more genuine human connection, but how to have much more of one. Because there is an opportunity to connect with more people, to figure out how to do it in a human way.

That leads me to focus on strategic business development, and especially commercial storytelling. Because obviously if you want to build relationships online you have to get people to pay attention to you.

Enough about me. That gives you an idea of who I am. I have a little business called BD-Insider, and a website bd-insider.com, but I’ll talk about that a little bit later. Let’s get into the material I have for you today. Let’s talk about why videos are going to help you grow your speaking business.

Also, let me tell you a little bit about who this is for. If you’re a big shot speaker you probably don’t really need all of this. But if you’re like me, and you’re trying to raise your profile as a professional speaker, and you’re trying to grow your business, this is definitely something that is probably going to be useful to you. If you want to get more speaking opportunities as a professional speaker, or you want state of the art personal branding, but you have a limited budget.

What I’m going to talk about here is really very affordable, and it’s pretty much DIY. It’s kind of fun too.

Why video will help you grow your speaking business

First of all, why video? We all know that video is on a spectacular rise. What we’re seeing here is over four years this is an exponential curve that we’re looking at here.

Traditionally to establish authority the mainstream was to publish a book, and then you’d get recognition. I have a feeling that there is a lot less bandwidth and time for people to actually consume books, and the rise of video is making it very easy for people to communicate their message.

I definitely think there is going to be a shift in what is obviously a lot more consumption of video, instead of reading. Video is definitely something that you have to consider to build your authority.

Another thing I often hear is, yeah, but attention span is very limited, and people don’t like to watch long videos, and so on. However, I found some data which I found quite compelling. The way to read this chart is the ten minutes or more bar is actually far higher over all mediums than we would give it credit for.

If you can get somebody to watch a Netflix show for three hours in a row, that also says that there is definitely bandwidth for video, but you just have to make sure that what you’re putting on those videos is interesting enough for people to keep paying attention. If you have something to say that’s interesting the video medium is a very efficient way to get that message across.

Visibility, authority and shareability

Another reason is because video is going to give you visibility. What I find interesting is that most aspiring speakers out there still don’t promote themselves with a video portfolio of their talks. If you get into this now it’s definitely going to allow you to stand out considerably, because this is still a nascent opportunity.

Another reason is, like I said before, video helps you build authority. There’s really nothing like showing, or demonstrating your mastery through your video talks.

If you can come across as genuine, and you can look like you’re very comfortable speaking about your subject on video, that comes across very strongly. I’m not saying that books are bad. I am saying that video gives us a unique opportunity to show how fluent we really are in our subject.

Andras: Just to reinforce what you just mentioned. From SpeakerHub’s perspective, still quite a number of our speakers, those who are presenting themselves on the website, do not have a video.

One of the key reasons why we created a website like this is so that speakers can showcase videos, because that gives so much information about the person’s ability to structure their message, and showcase their speaking skills.

Baldwin Berges: That’s absolutely right. I’ve noticed that also. I found it quite surprising, because you set up a very nice place to showcase your portfolio, and hardly anybody is making use of it. The key thing here is if you really want to show your mastery there is nothing like being able to eloquently communicate on your feed about it without any editing.

This is an opportunity to stand out. If you get into this game now you can still really stand out. There will be a time when everybody has their video, but that’s not the time right now, so you probably want to rush into this. Video is going to give you leverage.

This is the thing about aspiring speakers like myself. I’m still, I hope, on the steep end of my little speaking career. But if you have to go and jump on as many stages as you can just to get your visibility, having video recordings of your talks should do the job much faster.

One of the key things here is even though you stand in front of an audience of five or ten people, the world can see that talk if you record it on video, so you get enormous leverage out of this. To me that’s probably one of my favorite reasons to record video.

Video makes things very shareable. I don’t know about you guys out there, but what happens to me is I get my speaking gigs because someone in the audience liked my presentation, and asked me if I would come and do it over at their event or company.

It becomes even more powerful when those people sitting in the audience who enjoy your talk, or found it insightful, get the opportunity to seamlessly share this with everybody else; either their boss, their colleagues, their clients, and so on.

If you have an audience who really enjoyed your talk, and you give them something to share, the likelihood of them doing so is very high.

Video is a risk reduction for the event organizer. Think about it, they get to try before they buy. The event organizer can pretty much picture what kind of a talk he or she is going to have at the event. Video strengthens your profile in the eyes of the event organizer, because you do take away a lot of risk for them, which is a very attractive proposition for them, and for you.

Another thing that I found powerful is when I take control of my own recordings, I have this topic that I talk about, which is called B2H, or business to human, which is how we can become more human with technology.

There are different brands up here, and I do this on purpose. Because if I record a video of my talk, and I feature the event organizer’s brand, then they also have an incentive to go and share this. Provided that you have something to say, and your talk went very well, there is a very good opportunity of getting that shared.

It’s not only you that benefits from your videos, and your network sharing, it’s also the event organizer, or the company that hires you to talk. It make them look good too, so there’s an additional sharing effect there. That raises your value in the eyes of the event organizer.

I hope I established a few good reasons as to why you should start thinking about using video to promote your speaking business.

I’d like to get into the second part, which is the part that you’re probably scratching your head about and saying, okay great, but how do you make these videos. That is actually quite simple.

How to make videos: the technology

I like to call this the DIY recording toolbox. There’s a few pieces of hardware that I use. One is the music note stand. This is typically what musicians would put their music sheets on. I like those things because you can put a laptop onto it.

I use this because there are software packages that allow you to turn your laptop into a recording and editing studio, and we’ll talk about that a little bit later.

What I do is I put my laptop on one of these stands, I place it not that far away in front of me, and the laptop records my talk. But also while I’m doing that it serves as a teleprompter, which is kind of cool, so that’s an additional benefit.

I’m going to speak about this a little bit later. But one of the things you have to insist on when you do these talks. Let’s be realistic, most of the time it’s going to be us organizing the talks, so you have to make sure that you can use your own hardware to reap these benefits.

You’re going to be using your laptop as your camera, as your audio recording device, and as your editing device. It all comes in one box. This will all become clear in a few minutes, so bear with me.

The other thing I like to use is a Logitech HD Webcam. That is the model I like to use. This costs about $100, but it’s a really good investment, because the quality of the video allows you to make pretty professional recordings, but also it adjusts very well to different lighting situations.

For example, if you’re in a conference room typically they would dim the lights, shine some light on you, and you’d have the gleaming light of your presentation behind you. This camera does a very good job of mitigating all of that, so that is why I like to use it.

What I do is I put this camera on top of my laptop here, so that’s the second piece of hardware. Then I use a Lavalier microphone. That’s what I’m talking through right now.

Audio is very important to making good videos. Pros will tune out videos with bad audio, so make sure to get one of these. They come with a standard jack size. If you plug it into your computer or your phone it pretty much works like a nice microphone.

I use a long cord. The cord on my Lavalier microphone is six meters, or 20 feet. That gives me enough maneuvering room. You can also get a wireless one. They are much more expensive, that’s a budget of $200 to $300. But for me the one with the long cord works very well.

Andras: I just want to underline what you’re saying. Because I’ve checked hundreds and hundreds of speaker videos over the past few months as we were welcoming new speakers. I do see that of the ones who have video, audio always tends to be the weak point.

With mediocre lighting speakers can get by. Because you say well it’s a video, we don’t necessarily have expectations that it’s going to be very polished, and shiny. But if the audio is bad that’s a real turn off. I think if you invest in anything, invest in a good microphone.

Baldwin Berges: I could not agree more with you. The thing is, the image can be below par, and that’s fine, because that’s only going to make it look more genuine. But the audio is key, because in the end people have to get your message. They can figure out through your body language what you’re saying, but they really want to hear what you have to say.

I think a lot more people obsess with image quality, rather than audio. I used to do that as well. I just noticed a difference when I started paying attention, and getting my audio right.

You also need a wireless clicker, or mouse. I use one of those Apple Magic wireless mouses to do that. But if you’re on a Windows system, and you prefer a clicker, you can get one, plug it in a USB port in your laptop, and off you go. You can steer your laptop/recording device from a distance.

Finally, you need the applications to make this all work together. I use ScreenFlow, because I have a Mac, but you can also use Camtasia if you’re on Windows. On Mac you can use both of these.

They both have a similar price. I think ScreenFlow is around $100, and Camtasia is a little bit more expensive. But they pretty much do the same job. What they do is record the video, and the cool thing is while you’re recording the video what you can also do is simultaneously record what’s on your screen.

I’m just going to jump back a little bit, I hope you don’t mind. What you see here is that was simultaneously recorded with my talk, so I can just insert that, and that’s really powerful. It records the desktop while you record your video, and it also renders the sound.

With this whole suite, for an investment of only $300, you can make state of the art videos of your talks. It’s really simple, and it’s probably one of the highest yielding investments that you can do for your speaking business. Because once you have this gear you can just keep on going.

Are there any questions about the technological part before we move on?

Andras: Here is a question, which you might be covering in the next few seconds, but I’ll ask it now. Sherri is asking, for events that include multiple speakers, do hosts allow you to use your own equipment?

Baldwin Berges: Great question, because that’s very important. I really insist on it. That’s why I bring this bag full of all these cables and stuff so I ensure I can always plug in my own laptop. It is pretty much your job to sort that out, so you have to insist on it.

If they won’t let you do that then it’s just going to be a bit more work, because then you’re still going to be recording the audio and the video of you presentation with your laptop on your stand. What you’re going to be doing later on in the editing is that you’re going to be adding the slides to your talk.

Ideally, it makes things easier when you’re allowed to project the slides onto the big screen off of your laptop, because the software allows you to capture that. But it’s really not a big problem.

I don’t really have a number for it, but most event organizers do want you to use their systems. You can insist on using your own, and sometimes they’re like well, okay. That’s why I also like to show up early at events to work that out with technicians. But it’s definitely not anything that’s going to sabotage your intent of making your video if they want you to use their system.

Andras: Here’s another question from Andrew. He asks if you’ve ever had your equipment interfere with the professional equipment provided by the event?

Baldwin Berges: I guess so. The main difference is you’re going to be using your own equipment. The only difference is going to be whether they’ll allow you to project your slides on their screen. But all the rest can stay in your own closed circuit.

For example, I have my Lavalier microphone on, and next to it I can have another one on, which is for the PA soundsystem of the room. Sometimes you have the Jimi Hendrix effect where there’s feedback that can happen, but usually technicians sort that out. I haven’t really had major conflicts in that sense.

Andras: That’s reassuring. Here’s one more question before you move on to the next slide. How do you deal with moving around the stage? How are you restricted with your movement attributable to the fact that you are recording yourself, and there’s a limited scope of what the camera can take in?

Baldwin Berges: Very good question. This is important, because your camera is going to be in a fixed spot, you don’t have a roaming camera on. What that means is you have to do what they do on a movie set. When you prepare you mark your spot, and you don’t stray away from that too much.

I’ve done a video where I was moving around a little bit too much, and I had to pan the camera along with me because I was filming from a distance. The best practice is to mark your spot, and pretty much stay on that spot.

If you’re the kind of talker that jumps and dances around the stage, you’ll probably want to put your camera far away. But generally, there’s different opinions about this, but speakers who move around too much tend to distract the audience anyway. I would definitely recommend that you mark a spot, and pretty much stay there, and focus on the talk.

Andras: Right. You’ve got a great idea from Bernadette who says you could edit in the slides at those points where you actually move too far. You could easily play around with what’s on the screen depending on where you happen to be.

Baldwin Berges: Very smart indeed. You can do that exactly. In a few slides I’m going to offer you a free guide. I’m going to show you how to do this. I actually did a live session on this, so stay tuned for that, you’re going to be able to download that.

Managing Logistics

Getting ready for the talk is very important as well. First of all you have to tell the organizers that you’re planning on recording. This is very important, they have to know this. Why? Because organizers get pretty nervous about you filming the audience. Most of the time there’s no release forms and all that in place, so they don’t really know what to do with that.

You have to assure them that you’re not going to be filming the audience, but you’re just going to be filming the talk. You just have to make sure that they also understand that this is a branding opportunity for them, because you’re going to license that video as well.

Like we covered before, you really want to insist on using your own hardware. Again, the only complication with the event organizer is basically where that cable that projects the slides on the screen goes into. Whether it goes into their system, or your computer. Again, make sure that you coordinate that with the organizer.

20 minute video filmed in high definition is about five to seven gigabytes. There is a reason why TED Talk does their talks in 18 to 20 minutes. It’s aimed for video diffusion, and it has to do with the time span and so on.

If you want to be successful in getting your whole message through on video you’ll probably want to adopt the TED Talk format of speaking for 18 or 20 minutes.

Sometimes you may get yourself into trouble by featuring people asking questions, and you don’t have their information, so in making your videos you’ll want to stick to the topic you’re delivering.

This is the guide I was talking about. I put together this guide because I didn’t really want to make this too technical, because then it just becomes too dense. What I did is I put together this little guide where I walk you through all these little technical details.

In fact, I actually decided to show you live how this works. What I did is I stepped into a big meeting room. I was in NYC at the time. I filmed the presentation in which I explain all this. Then I take you into the video editor, and I show you exactly how to edit these things, and the results you can get.

It took me 20 minutes to do the presentation, edit it, and produce a video. 20 minutes. I demonstrate it live there. There’s a link to the video. Make sure to download that. You can do so on my website bd-insider.com/RecordingGuide. Then you type in your email address, and I’ll send you the book. It’s definitely something to pick up.

You understand why you need videos, and you have your videos. Now what are you going to use them for? So how are you going to share these?

Sharing your videos

Remember what we said about leverage, right? This is where we’re going to apply that leverage. Let’s start with our host site, SpeakerHub. They have this beautiful section where you have a lot of space to post all of these videos. You really should use that, because it’s going to make your profile become more alive.

SpeakerHub is the obvious first one to mention, not only out of courtesy for setting up these amazing webinars, but also it’s a place where people are going to be checking out speakers just like you.

Andras: I want to reveal our thinking. Those speakers who do not have videos uploaded we very publicly display saying this speaker has not uploaded any media content yet.

We actually debated that internally pretty much saying, should we say that. Should we really display that message that this speaker doesn’t have videos, or just simply not display that section at all.

We said we’re going to display it, because video is the number one thing that an event planner will be looking for when they consider you seriously. Just as you said before, to minimize the risk, in terms of the branding element, and of course shareability.

Very often the person who discovers you as a good fit for their event may not be the decision maker. They would like to share your credibility, or your video with their peers, or with the managers, or the person who is eventually going to give the green light, that yes, we can hire Baldwin for this specific talk.

Baldwin Berges: You are so right about this, because it just makes the whole decision process a lot easier. That’s one of the reasons why I love good content, especially audio/visual content. Because when people to stick their neck out for you it’s going to be fine because they have something that helps them get what they want with your content.

• LinkedIn. LinkedIn also has spots for your videos, and you should use that. On your LinkedIn profile if you say you’re a speaker, show it. LinkedIn, I don’t have to tell you it’s a big search engine for talent, so it’s nice to put your videos on there, and they’re pretty visible if you put them on there.
   

• Facebook. Facebook is a great way to move your videos around. That’s my page, Baldwin Burges’s page, and I show my videos there. On Facebook or LinkedIn if you have a bit of a budget you can actually target your videos to certain audiences if you want to, so that makes it even more interesting.
   

• YouTube. Obviously if you have videos you should get a YouTube channel. Basically this is my repository of all my video content. I have it all on YouTube, because with those links I can post my videos elsewhere. I believe I post my YouTube links in SpeakerHub, right Andras?

Andras: I hope so. Just one comment there. I think with YouTube videos obviously you’re not expecting that any of your videos will ever go viral, or they might do so for reasons you don’t expect. But you expect that the right person will watch that video.

You’re not aiming for hundreds or thousands of views, but you’re aiming for those very targeted views from those event planners who are just looking for a talk where you can participate as an expert.

Baldwin Berges: Absolutely. That’s exactly right. In the next slide I can show you exactly how to put that to work. Last week somebody came to me through my inbox, and said “hey, I met you a few months ago, I saw you speaking, I’d like to do something similar at my company event.”

I was able to send them to my speaker page, and my webpage. There is a whole collection of all the talks, and I said well, why don’t you have a look at these talks, and you tell me which one you’d like, and the deal was done. They got to see the product before they bought it.

Andras: I have a question here. Because the embedded videos remind me of Wistia as a plugin.The question is which plugin service do you use? YouTube, Vimeo?

Baldwin Berges: I use YouTube as the main repository. When it comes onto my site, or when I’m allowed to, I also use Wistia, which is another video platform. Wistia costs me a little bit of money, but it’s worth paying for. What I like about Wistia is it really puts it very cleanly on the screen. Also Wistia gives you good statistics. Those are the platforms that I use.

I don’t use Vimeo. I never found a compelling reason to use it.

Andras: This is, I think, the main reason why anyone would use Wistia, which is wistia.com, is because of the analytics. You can see how far somebody has watched a certain video, you can see demographics, browsers, and things like that, which you can then turn into business intelligence.

Baldwin Berges: It gets kind of creepy actually, because if you have someone’s email address, and you send a video to them you can actually spy on them, how much they watched it. But it’s powerful. For me, for example, although I can’t really tell who’s watching my videos by name, it does give me feedback on the parts that people pay the most attention to.

I should have gotten a screenshot of that to show you how that works. But maybe I’ll add that to the guide. I can update this guide because it is an online guide.

You have the SpeakerHub page, you have LinkedIn, but you should have your own page. The reason is because it’s a very useful resource for event organizers. Because on my speaker page there is a picture they can use for the brochure, there is going to be a bio that they’ll want to put in the brochure. It’s a one stop shop for everything that they need.

Also, license these videos to them. Sometimes they’ll just go and say, check out the video that happened at our event, and it gets sent to their list, which is kind of amazing, right?

Video makes your blog posts a lot more fun. Based on the argument that I think we’re going to have a gradual decline in content being absorbed through reading, and a clear rise in content being viewed.

You can take out parts of your presentation about a certain point that you want to make in your blog post, you can share your whole video, or you can just cut out a few minutes of it to make a point. That’s pretty powerful. That’s pretty good content. Definitely videos are great to boost your blog posts.

Key Takeaways

That’s pretty much what I wanted to cover today. I’d like to run through the key takeaways here. First of all, I think videos are becoming the preferred content format. I think in a world where we’re going towards virtual reality that’s only going to accelerate further, so definitely get ready for that.

Videos of your talks are going to give you more visibility, leverage, you’re going to get more authority, and it’s going to help you get hired as a speaker. People are going to be more confident about hiring you if they can try before they buy it.

Hopefully I was able to convince you to entertain the thought that recording your talks on your own is actually fairly easy, and that you don’t really need a whole professional team around. You can pretty much make a video that, I’m not going to say is totally state of the art, but it’s going to be really decent.

Another point is I think if your videos are too polished they’re going to look like they’re too engineered. Don’t forget that what people like is genuinity. If you make something genuine that looks good, you’re onto something.

Finally, these recordings are gold, they’re assets. They’re going to allow you to promote your speaking business across a variety of platforms. Your talks are going to be seen while you’re sleeping, so to speak.

Andras: I just wanted to ask regarding the previous page with the takeaways. What do you think about recording your workshop for instance? Because there the format is obviously different, and you might spend a couple of hours, half a day, or maybe a full day running a workshop, so I presume that’s not something you would consider recording. What do you think about that?

Baldwin Berges: Totally. I do recordings on my own sometimes without an audience. I record workshops absolutely. You raised a good point, because you don’t actually have to get in front of an audience to showcase your talk.

Pretty much in this guide, the video in there actually has no audio, so I did this by myself. You’re right, you can actually create a whole portfolio of your talks with just you and the camera.

Andras: I think that’s a very good point. Because some of the speakers who are starting out, and are fairly new to the speaking world may not have an audience yet. It’s a chicken and egg problem of which one you do first.

If you get on a stage, which is a real stage, not just in a meeting room, and you get an opportunity to record yourself. That’s why I very much like your point on authority, because being on a stage gives you a lot of authority. Even if there is no audience, you are still delivering a talk which shows your speaking abilities, and shows that you’re able to be on stage.

Baldwin Berges: Absolutely. I saw a question in the chatbox that I want to clear up. Yes Linda, you can project your slides and record them at the same time.

Bernadette is suggesting that you transcribe your videos. Absolutely. Bernadette that’s how I write. I either use my videos, or the stuff that I mumble to myself on my phone as the guideline for what I write.

If you missed the slide before that’s where you can get your free guide here. It’s not a very long guide, but hopefully it will help you understand this a little bit better.

I am at your disposal if you have any further questions. You can get in touch with me via the website, or via Andras. I am happy to answer more questions.

Andras: Here is one question that is very interesting. The essence of the question was are you not concerned that they might not hire you because of your video. Your video backfiring because it just didn’t go as planned. What do you think about that?

Baldwin Berges: That can happen, that’s definitely a possibility. If your concern comes from the video not being good enough, that’s just like speaking itself; practice, practice, practice. For the Americans out there, if you want to up your batting average you have to swing the bat.

I’m not going to say that you’re going to get this kit, and next week you’re going to have awesome videos. You should see my first videos. I love to watch them because they make me giggle. The thing is it’s going to take some time before you feel entirely comfortable in front of a camera.

I like to see things a little bit more in line with destiny. If the event organizer actually sees your talk, and doesn’t hire you because of the video, that probably means that it wouldn’t have been a good idea to present the material anyway. I think the event organizer is doing everybody a favor that way.

I have more of a positive attitude towards these things, or I try to have one. I must say the videos have helped me more than they’ve worked against me. If I have to look at it that way it skews towards the positive, for me at least.

Andras: I am totally sold on the idea. Honestly, I myself didn’t consider recording my talks unless they were recorded by the organizer directly. But I think with this equipment, and this approach it can work out very well.

Another thing someone mentioned here in the questions is uploading the audio portion of your video to other platforms, such as iTunes. That fits into the broader concept of repurposing content, which is what you hinted at when you said you can create a blog post, maybe you can transcribe it, you can embed your slides.

So don’t limit yourself to the video itself, which is already great, but repackage it, and use it on other platforms as well.

Baldwin Berges: If you’re a real content ninja you think like that, right? You make sure that the way you speak, and the way you structure your talk is also valid as an audio only. If you’re going to do a real TED Talk you’re going to have everything really nicely rehearsed. It can also be a transcript of a piece that you write. If you’re a real content ninja you’re going to aim at repurposing as much as you can.

Andras; I suppose you’re available for emails, questions, and any sort of follow up.

Baldwin Berges: Absolutely.

Andras: All that’s left for me is to mention our upcoming webinar, which is in one week. We’re going to be having Alfred from the US who will discuss webinars as a tool for speakers. Stay tuned, and I hope you can join us next week. Baldwin, thanks very much.

Baldwin Berges: Take care. Keep presenting.  

Feel free to reach out to Baldwin, or to us at SpeakerHub, and we’ll always be very happy to help you develop your speaking career.

A bit about our speaker

Baldwin Berges has been active in global business development for more that 20 years with a specific focus on marketing and online positioning. He helps design business development systems and strategies that get results in the hyper-connected world through digital marketing.

He speaks about topics like marketing strategy, new business development, innovation, and social media communications.

Links:

• Baldwin Berges SpeakerHub Profile
• B-D Insider
• Business Voodoo

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