Building Your List: Step 2 Speaking

If you’re subscribed to any of the ‘big’ lists, you’ll see that they offer free teleseminars, training calls or Q&A type calls on a regular basis.

This is a great way to keep to stay connected with your list as well as demonstrating that you know what you’re doing!

When you don’t have a list or if you have a small list, you can get some practice and gain some exposure by speaking to other audiences and build your list all at once!  This can be done in two ways.

1. Speaking Live to local audiences at meetups, networking groups or associations.
2. Via teleclasses or webinars to other people’s lists.

The key with this strategy is to have a plan in place to be able to add interested people to your list.

When you’re speaking live there are at least 3 different ways to capture your opt-ins.

1. The old fashioned sign up sheet in the back of the room.  (*Note some autoresponder services make it very difficult to manually add people to your list.)
2. Announce your feebie and your website and hope that they will go back and visit your site to opt-in.  Sweeten the incentive for #1 & #2 by doing a raffle or giveaway of some sort for those who register.  (The sky is the limit here, it could be the chance to win a free session with you, a free product, a signed copy of your book, and iPad or Kindle for big events or audiences.)
3. Capture your leads via SMS or Text Message!  Some email autoresponder services like Mailchimp, and big dogs like Infusionsoft, offer the capability to subscribe to a list via text message.  Anyone with a cell phone can instantly add themselves to your list and receive your freebie before you’ve even finished your talk!

When you’re speaking via teleseminar or webinar you collect your leads via an opt-in form.

Depending on the agreement you make with the host of the teleclass or webinar it can look something like this.

1. Set up an opt-in page, specific to the host or audience you will be speaking to.
2. The host sends an email announcement to their list, inviting them to join them for your call/webinar that directs them to your opt-in page.
3. You send them a thank you email introducing yourself, telling them everything they need to know about the call.

Voila!  They’re on your list.  From there you can continue to communicate with them and bring them into your fold.

Note**If by some chance the host will not allow you to host the call registration page, there is a workaround.

You can create a handout for the call/webinar and create a simple opt-in page for the handout.  Then announce the special handout at the top of the call and mention the url where the audience can download it.  You may not get as many opt-ins this way, but it’s better than nothing!

Some hosts will offer to host the page and then ‘share’ the list with you.  This works well if you’re able to upload their list to your autoresponder service, but it has to be done with transparency.  Your unsubscribe rate will be much higher if people don’t understand how they came to be on your list.

As the business owner, it’s important to know the ins and outs of the strategies you put into place, but please don’t get bogged down with the nuts and bolts.

For these list building strategies, your role is simply making the connection with the host, getting booked and creating the content.

Your VA or VA Team can take it from there!