
Helping event organizers find the right speakers for their events is at the heart of what we are doing at SpeakerHub.
It’s a challenging and time-consuming process to reduce a list of potential speakers to the one, or few, that you actually need.
Speakers are a huge factor in determining whether a conference or workshop is a success because they must communicate their message and connect with attendees.
Positive word-of-mouth is necessary if more events are to follow. So you need to know that your vetting process helps you hire the ideal speaker.
SpeakerHub is designed to connect you with potential speakers, but we don’t stop there.
The platform is specifically designed to assist you throughout the vetting and the event planning phase.
By making informed decisions, you improve the likelihood of a successful event.
So how do these tools work, and how can they help you?
Here is a recent success story of an event which benefited from using SpeakerHub’s vetting tools: Patreon’s Fireside Chat.
Background:
Patreon is a crowdfunding site that assists creative individuals such as writers, artists and musicians to create a source of income via their respective craft.
Creativity is one of their central values, and they are strong believers in empowering people to make the most of their skills.
Patreon planned a Fireside Chat where 150 individuals — not yet part of the Patreon network — would come together.
They were looking for people to inspire this new audience and show them how the concept of Patreon (using the appropriate marketing skills and hard work) can turn creativity into successful businessopportunities.
Faced with many inspiring applicants, it was vital that the event organizers were able to dive into enough detail about each applicant before an informed decision could be made.
This is where our application management and vetting tools came in.
The risk Patreon took when advertising their event was the organizers needed to trust unknown speakers to deliver messages in line with the central goal of the event.
During the Fireside Chat the organizers needed speakers to share their success stories about how they turned their skills into businesses, with hard work and commitment to their creative talents and crafts.
This is a unique approach and Patreon needed to know whether the speakers:
Due to the unique audience and theme it wasn’t possible to simply draw speakers from known sources because:
If you have a few speakers who you think might be the right fit, you can invite them to apply for your event by hitting the “invite” tab. We even go the extra mile by suggesting speakers we think might be a good fit, based on the topic of your event.
When you post an event to the Event Page, we will also send a notification to speakers who we think might be interested in applying, to make sure you get as many passionate speakers to send in their applications as possible.
But once they got a handful of great applicants, how could Patreon determine who would be the best fit to inspire this creative group?
How could they pick the best from the bunch?
Patreon made use of a range of vetting tools on the SpeakerHub platform, specially designed for event organizers.
These tools are freely available to any organizer posting an event.
It helps organizers see who on the list of applicants stand out above others in quality and who is most likely to fulfil the expectations set for the event.
What tools are available for event organizers?
1. Proposals specific to your event
When the speaker applies for your event, we make sure that the information they supply you with is customized to your event.
Some of the information is automatically pulled in (such as their topics, date of application) but some of the fields need to be filled in, such as:
You will be able to see instantly who has put time, thought and effort into their application. Take a look at the application Robb Braun sent to Patreon below:
2. Free access to multimedia-rich, speaking-centric profiles
It is possible to search on resources like LinkedIn or Google for speakers, and you may even find many great presenters. Finding out about their speaking abilities, and whether they are available and suitable for your event may prove to be much more difficult.
With our speaker profiles, all the information you need to make the right decision is centralized in one place.
The event organizers for Patreon could view all applicants’ profiles in one place.
SpeakerHub profiles are the one-stop shop for finding out all the relevant info about a speaker.
Here is what they include:
3. Contact the speaker directly
Making contact with applicants was found to be a valuable tool to narrow the list of applicants down even more.
Organizers garnered information by asking applicants questions. This was essential since external speakers were tasked with communicating the heart of Patreon.
Patreon also wanted speakers who have used and loved the Patreon platform. Through communication the speaker directly, their level of knowledge and enthusiasm could be appropriately assess.
Personal questions can reveal much about a person. Via personal messages to applicants organizers got to know more details about possible speakers.
Organizers could plan how this information could be worked into their event to make the biggest impact and benefit attendees.
Applicants whose profiles showed their success in the business world could be asked how their creative talents were used in their journeys, since this was a vital part of the Fireside Chat’s vision.
Organizers could talk to the whole group of applicants by sending them a group message, or send individual messages only to the ones they were most curious about.
4. Shortlist, approve, decline or hide applicants
After reading the application, looking through the speaker’s profile, and contacting the speakers they wanted to know more about, the organizers could classify each applicant into a category.
These categories included:
Through this feature organizers kept track of applicants during the vetting process.
Once you approve or decline an applicant, they will get a notification letting them know of the change.
Is it possible to have a fast and hassle-free vetting process that offers a selection of speakers based upon relevant and adequate knowledge?
A well-constructed vetting system can assists you by giving you access to the relevant information you need to make the right choice.
The benefits Patreon found:
Make it easy for yourself and post your event on SpeakerHub today. You’ll be kicking off a dynamic process!
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