Hire Erik Deckers to Speak at Your Next Conference
Erik Deckers is a regular keynote and session speaker, and frequently writer on the subject of blogging, social media marketing, and writing. He has given more than 120 presentations in the last eight years, recently co-authored No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing, (Pearson, 2011), Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (Pearson, December 2010), and helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies (Wiley, 2009). He is currently working on another book project on content marketing.
Erik is an experienced speaker and humor writer, so his speeches are informative, humorous, and use stories and case studies to illustrate his point. He customizes every presentation to focus on his specific audience, their industry, and the issues they’re facing.
Erik has spoken to a variety of audiences, including technology professionals nonprofit and fundraising professionals, journalists, business owners and executives, public health leaders, college students, emergency response agencies, PR professionals, and professional bloggers.
Erik is the co-owner and VP of Creative Services of Professional Blog Service, a blogging and social media agency in Indianapolis. They help companies set up and maintain corporate blogs, social media campaigns, and strategies. He has also worked in crisis communications, public health, computer software, direct mail, and agriculture.
Erik can speak about any of these topics, or work with you to create a topic ideally suited to your audience.
Speaking Topics
- 10 Writing Secrets to Improve Your Blog: With the explosive growth and omnipresence of blogs, it’s hard to make yours stand out. It’s not enough to use all the right keywords, or tell your Twitter followers that you have a new blog post. Because if your blog is poorly written, they’ll quit reading, never to return. This session will show you how to get inspiration for ideas, write even when you think you’re stuck, and discuss professional writing secrets for creating high-impact content that gets returning readers. Target audience: bloggers, writers, marketers, citizen journalists.
- Managing Crisis Communication Through Social Media: Social media is quickly becoming the default way many people communicate and share news. Whether it was the US Air flight in the Hudson River, the Haiti earthquake, Osama Bin Laden’s death, or following the H1N1 crisis, news is coming from social media more than ever. The public is communicating with each other, and creating their own “experts.” For the official to remain credible, the official response needs to go where the public is. This presentation shows the best ways to reach the public using the tools and methods the public is already using. Target audience: Crisis communicators, public information officers, and first responders.
- Social Media & Blogging for Citizen Journalism/Alternative News: A 2011 Pew Internet & American Life study showed that 50% of Americans no longer read a print newspaper, getting their news online — and not necessarily from the “official” online newspapers. People are no longer forced to wait for the publishing or broadcasting schedule of the mainstream media, and have turned to other sources for local and even national news. Erik has been a columnist for one of the biggest alternative news sources for the last 13 years, and helped others learn how to use social media and blogging to publish their news, and reach a new audience. Target audience: Citizen journalists, crisis communicators, bloggers, former mainstream journalists.
- 11 Professional Tips to Promote Your Blog: Eleven tools and techniques bloggers and marketers can use to promote their site, grow readership, and increase sales through social media. This presentation discusses social media tools, automation secrets, and the best ways to find readers who are most likely to become regular readers. Great for bloggers, internet marketers.
- Personal Branding Through Social Media: Using the Branding Yourself book as a backdrop, Erik shows people the best (and worst) ways to build your personal brand through social media and face-to-face networking, whether you’re new to the job market, or re-entering the job market from an old job, or a long time away. Ideal for anyone looking for a job, starting a small business or consultancy, or looking to change carers.
- A Social Media and Blogging Overview for Corporations: While it’s easy for many small business owners to see how they can use social media, many corporations are still hesitant to use social media and blogging as a way to communicate with customers. Erik provides an executive-level understanding about the benefits of these new social tools, and shows how they can work in conjunction with traditional marketing methods, as well as work in new ways that traditional marketing cannot, such as being targeted, customized, and easily measured. Suited for C-level executives, especially CMOs, CIOs, and CEOs
- 10 Blogging Lessons Learned From Book Authors: Erik details 10 lessons any blogger can learn by reading some of the best book authors of the 20th century: Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, Joseph Heller, and others. Any blogger who considers themselves a writer (and they all should) can learn some of the secrets of successful blog writing. This is an ideal keynote for writing and blogging conferences.
- Secrets behind Google Panda’s Update: Gaining regular readers is important, but a blog needs to be found on a search engine too. But search engine optimization is more than just backlinking and keywords. The Google Panda update has put the focus back on quality writing and design. This presentation will show the best ways to not only win readers, but how winning those readers will help search engine placement. Best suited for Internet marketers, bloggers, ecommerce specialists, and writers.
- The Power of Language:Language has the greatest power to move people, more than video, more than pictures. Erik has been a published writer for 22 years, writing newspaper humor columns, business articles, political campaign speeches, two books, stage plays, radio plays, and a couple thousand blog posts. He understands how to use language to move people, persuade them, and inspire them. This keynote presentation is ideal for anyone who use language as a core part of their business. Ideal for writers, bloggers, and people who communicate with the public on a regular basis
These topics may be given as stand-alone presentations, for one hour, or as part of a half-day or full-day seminar.
Testimonials
Erik Deckers provides solid, actionable advice that instantly improves both my skills and site. Each time I hear him speak, I walk away with practical knowledge to build my brand and increase business. — Heather Sokol, professional blogger and owner of Inexpensively.com
There are two qualities that unite every good business speaker: The ability to hold the audience’s attention and the ability to provide actionable value the audience can put into practice right away. Erik Deckers delivers both consistently. What’s even more satisfying about an Erik Deckers talk is that regardless of your familiarity with the subject matter, you still learn something good. He’s definitely worth paying to see. — Jason Falls, social media consultant and owner of Social Media Explorer
Presentation Example
From WordCamp Louisville, December 2010
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
BlogIndiana Regional Presentation: Bloomington, May 2009
Photo credit: HelloLeticia (Flickr)
