You’re one of a million speakers.  How do you stand out?  Let’s say you’re appearing at one of those enormous, week-long events like Hubspot’s INBOUND.  This year there will be more than 25,000 people and over 250 speakers, if the trends from the last several years continue.  How do you attract an audience and avoid getting lost in the crowd?  And even more important than one single event, in an industry with more and more competition, how do you stand out and win your share of speeches?

You might be tempted to frame the problem in something like the following way:  How do I market myself, or talk about myself, in a way that is so compelling that people will flock to my events?  You’d be tempted, because it seems like the natural place to start, but you’d be wrong, and for two reasons.

First, it’s hard to talk about yourself in the way that will light up social media, win gigs, and attract a crowd.  It’s hard, and, for most people, it’s uncomfortable.  There are exceptions, but many of us were brought up on some variant of “don’t brag about yourself.”  And talking about yourself as the next big speaking threat seems like braggadocio.

Second, we’ve learned over the years to factor out a good deal of marketing as just hype, simply because we have to deal with so much of it, and you run the risk of falling into that bucket of stuff that no one pays any attention to.

So how effective can talking about yourself be if you don’t like doing it and other people don’t like hearing it?

There is a better way.  In fact, there are three better ways.

First, make it about them.  Instead of turning the spotlight on yourself, turn the spotlight on your (potential) audience.  We get easily bored listening to people bragging, but for some reason we rarely get tired of hearing other people talk about, well, us.  So tell your audience about themselves, what their hopes and dreams are, and what’s on their minds.  Can you dig up aggregate data about them?  If you’re talking at an industry conference, what’s the current state of that industry?  What are the stats on growth, innovation, who are the stars, and why are they succeeding?

Hold up the mirror to your audience and they almost always love what they see.

Second, get them talking about things they care about.  Beyond themselves, identifying industry trends and issues, the particular challenges the industry  faces, and how that industry can change the world.  Most of your (potential) audience got into the business because they care about some issue the industry is addressing, so focus on that.  Perhaps there’s a non-profit you could partner with that benefits that industry or at least pushes its ideas forward.

Play back what your audience is saying about the issues and it will eagerly take up the conversation.

Finally, get them talking about you.  Third party endorsements, thanks to Amazon and its million imitators in the retail world have firmly established the idea that what you say about you doesn’t have much credence, but what she and he say about you is a much different proposition.  Even if you don’t have a huge number of fans, the beginning of a conversation is better than a monologue.

So think of standing out as a program not to learn how loud you can shout, but to learn how generous you can be with your ideas.