Hello!  Thank you for speaking at Unity of Kalamazoo.  As the tech person responsible for promoting your talk, here are some thoughts on best practices.  In 8+ years, I have seen everything from novice speakers to professional full time speakers with full media packages, and this is what I have learned.

Note: my opinions, not those of the church.

There is a lot of information on this page and it could feel overwhelming or demanding, but these are only suggestions - take it at your own pace, and in a way that feels right and true for you! I just want to give you the best possible framework for moving forward.

Bio for your speaker page

o   Please write your bio in the third person.  “Bob graduated from…” not “I graduated from…”.

o   Credentials are nice. “Bob was ordained at Unity Village in 2009 and served at Unity of Mars and Unity of Venus for four years each.”

o   How did you come to Unity? How has Unity impacted you?  How do you hope to impact others through Unity?

o   People often like to hear a charming bit of personal life.   “Bob currently lives on Pluto with an ornery billy goat.”

o   You have a fairly unlimited amount of space for this, as it will be a standalone web page.  We keep these speaker pages hidden when not in use, so if it has been a while since you spoke here, you may be due for a bio or photo update.

o   We can add videos to your speaker page!  Audio files, too. 

o   If you have a website or are promoting a project like a book or retreat, please provide the link and we will add that too. 

Intro

o   Third person, as someone will be reading it to introduce you, and we may put it in the weekly email newsletter (with a link to your full bio page) if you are new to our congregation.

o   This one is brief.   Think of three things.  “Speaking today is Bob Paulson.  Bob recently served at Unity of Mars and Unity of Venus.  Bob is currently planning a worldwide speaking tour with his billy goat.”

o   Consider something that will lead into the theme of your meditation or your talk. 

Headshots

o   You don’t need professional shots!  Phone shots are fine.  iPhone portrait mode is great, actually.  

o   Try taking photos of yourself every day for a week, to come up with a few shots you like, that are slightly different angles and different outfits.  (I can’t do much with the ONE pixely ten year old photo of yourself that you like.)  Variety really adds so much!

o   Place your phone at or slightly below eye level, in natural light.  I like setting it on a window sash.  Use the timer.  Make sure your eyes aren’t shadowed – your photo is the first time a congregant “makes eye contact” with you, and we want it to be a bright, warm, and trustworthy feeling.

o   Try to ensure contrast between you and the background.  Is your hair dark?  Please don’t use a dark background.  If your background is white, don’t wear white.  The reasoning for this is that when you send me a pic, I am typically removing the background and repurposing your photo in a variety of ways.  The cleaner the distinction between you and the background, the cleaner the final product looks. 

o   Make sure your body parts are not cut off!  Your whole head and the sides of your arms should be visible.  I can always crop your picture down but I am not going to be generating new body parts for you. 

o   Send the picture as a png attachment to an email.  Do not insert it into a bio document, as that will kill the image resolution.  Do not send me a link to download it from Google images or Dropbox or any of that – everyone uses something different and I don’t need fifty image storage service accounts.  Just email it to me (and/or the office). 

o   Feel free to submit a silly image that really shows your personality.  Your speaker bio page has a lot of room, and it is perfectly fine to have a formal speaker photo and also a personality photo.

Talk Titles & Image Concepts

o   The sooner you can have your talk title to us, the better.  I work 4-6 weeks ahead, generally speaking.

o   A short and punchy title is best, something that solves a listener’s problem is better. 

o   If you have an idea of a kind of image that goes with the theme of your talk, send that idea with your talk title!  You can send a specific high resolution, copyright free image if you have one. But if you just send me an idea like “a billy goat in a thunderstorm”, I can source an appropriate image for you very easily. That is actually better for me, as normally the subject of an image is centered, and I need a TON more space than that to have room for the ad copy.

Talk Slides

o   Our screen, and therefore our slides are 4:3 ratio. In PowerPoint, that is found in the Design Tab, then on the far right click Slide Size. In Google Slides, it is in File, Page Setup.

o   Images should be high resolution and owned by you, used by permission, or copyright free. Copyright free images can be sourced at www.pexels.com and www.unsplash.com. 

o   You can email your slides to me at least a week ahead of time, or you can bring your slides on a USB drive and insert them before the service starts.  Note: we operate on a normal PC laptop, not a Mac, so there is no AirDrop capability. 

Any videos you want to show (also must be copyright free, owned by you, or used by explicit permission) must be loaded onto the laptop – we NEVER rely on a wifi connection. 

That is everything I can think of at the moment.  If you have questions, need help, or would just like to brainstorm how to improve your “speaker package” offering, just shoot me an email.  I find this niche area of marketing fascinating and love to chat about it.

Marion
marion@unitykalamazoo.com
March 2025

This image is perfect for our purposes.