How to find people who work in paid media and are open to speaking

Programming a panel or a conference track means finding two things in the same person: that they can speak to the subject, and that they are open to speaking at all. Search for one without the other and you get a list you then have to qualify by hand, one message at a time.

What this combination finds

Work tagged Paid Media, by people who have said speaking is something they want.

You read what someone actually does before you approach them, rather than after. And because you are landing on the work first, you can tell the difference between someone who runs paid media and someone who once wrote about it.

Why speaking is its own tag

Someone happy to be quoted in an article is not necessarily willing to stand up at a conference, and someone who will do a podcast may not want to run a workshop.

The open-to axis keeps these separate: Speaking opportunities, Panel discussion opportunities, Podcast guesting, Workshops or training, Being interviewed or quoted. One tag covering all of them would mean nothing.

To narrow it

Add the tool. Paid Media plus a specific platform finds people who work in the channel and the system you are asking them to talk about.