Article One: How to Start a Successful Motivational Speaking Business

Becoming a motivational speaker is heavily dependent on how well you market yourself. As you grow your new business, the majority of your time should be spent on marketing efforts. It is of course very important that you have selected the right market to target your services towards, and that you have a highly polished presentation style. Yet the main distinguishing characteristic separating truly successful speakers from those who only achieve modest success is their self-promotional marketing ability.

Once you have identified and begun targeting your services to your ideal market, it may be necessary to build visibility by offering free presentations. It is important that you tailor your program to a tightly focused set of topics and themes so that you can begin gaining credibility within your chosen niche and actually learn about becoming a motivational speaker. The overarching goal at this early stage is mainly to position yourself as an expert in very specific subject areas.

Speak For Free
In the beginning, an effective strategy for gaining exposure is speaking for free. The eventual goal is to build up a solid file of testimonial letters that you can later use for your marketing efforts. From that point forward, you will be able to contact organizations that are relevant in your field and show them testimonials from known competitors within their industry. Your testimonials will help build perceived value and prestige, and will contribute to your 'expert status' positioning.

Create And Sell Products
Most often, those who operate a motivational speaking business will sustain themselves (at least in part) by selling products that they have created. These can be sold at presentations that they give, through publications their products may appear in, and on the internet. Products that you create can range from CDs of your presentations, informational booklets, as well as writing and publishing a book. Many speakers are also now developing digital products that are made available through their website. An important fact to keep in mind is that although a book may not generate large amounts of revenue in and of itself, the added credibility and 'expert status' value that it brings to a speaker is of tremendous worth in terms of self promotion.

Setting Your Fees
While you are still becoming established, you won't be able to charge high fees. Look for other speakers with similar areas of expertise and experience levels and set your fee structure accordingly. Remember that it's much better to charge less than you are worth and have a meeting or event planner feel that they hired you for a bargain, than to be perceived as charging too much. Although you shouldn't let meeting planners talk you down in price, it is important that you always strive to give added value to your presentations. Whether that means offering a sampling of your products or giving a discount on future guaranteed bookings, it is essential that your clients come away feeling that you have gone the extra mile to provide a high quality service. When should you raise your fees? Wait until such time that you have more work than you can handle, or it is clearly evident that your offerings are in high demand. Then and only then should you consider increasing your fee.

Speakers Bureaus
Working with a speakers bureau can greatly increase your annual bookings, as well as your income. However, until you have raised your profile and gained experience and a good reputation, most speakers bureaus will pass on representing you. Many successful speakers advise waiting at least six to eight years before soliciting a bureau for representation. In the meantime, build up your clientele portfolio, create your products, refine your website, and continue developing your 'expert status' and you'll be well on your way to success as a thriving professional speaker.

Article Two: Become a Motivational Speaker

Professional Speakers Have Presence
One major difference between those who speak as a hobby and paid motivational speakers is that the professionals often possess tremendous presence. If you speak on an unpaid basis, it isn't required that you have a riveting stage presence, a commanding delivery style, or a message that is highly inspiring. By contrast, professional motivational speakers take time to focus and hone their presentation and stage skills. Eventually they become deeply balanced and comfortable in front of an audience. They can forget feeling self-conscious, overcome their fears, and concentrate fully on giving an outstanding keynote presentation. This characteristic of self-possession represents one of the main hallmarks that distinguish paid motivational speakers from their unpaid counterparts.

Paid Motivational Speakers Have Passion To Spare
All great presenters have a passion for their topic and can deliver their message with feeling and sincerity. However, presenters of a high caliber very often have an extra special energy inherent in their keynote address, and an added degree of passion. It is this extra element of inspirational energy that makes a speaker truly great, and masterful motivational speakers have developed it deeply. As audience members, we are highly aware of when a speaker is sincere and connecting from the heart, but those who are still learning about how to become a motivational speaker have not yet overcome their inner jitters and lack of confidence to a thorough enough extent that they can achieve this standard. Beginner speakers should therefore strive to become highly attuned to recognizing this 'passion propensity' in experienced speakers, and are well advised to attempt to bring it out from within themselves when they are first becoming a motivational speaker.

There is an ineffable quality about experienced speakers. They have poise and deep self-belief. New speakers who are starting their professional speaking business should spend time developing their presentation skills so that they can learn to feel comfortable in front of large groups of people. If you have a strong on stage presence, people will truly listen to what you say, but if you combine that with a sincerely heartfelt passion, audiences will begin to be inspired by what you say. That combination is where the magic and power of a motivational speaker meets.

Article Three: Become a Motivational Speaker - Presentation Tips

Sincerity In Your Message
As a professional motivational speaker, you should always be striving to demonstrate sincerity and a deep conviction in what you are saying. A good way of consistently expressing sincerity is by talking only about what you already know and have already experienced. Nothing comes across as more hypocritical than preaching to your audience about what they should be doing, when you yourself have yet to accomplish it or have no experience with public speaking jobs. An effective method for basing your message on sincerity and authenticity is to include many personal stories in your presentation. This is an approach that is used by top speakers because they understand that personal stories deeply engage their audience. Since true experiences are not conceptual but are rooted in reality, it is much more likely that audiences will feel your message is realistic, sincere, and directly applicable to their own circumstances. You should certainly adopt this technique when you start a motivational speaking business.

Using Stories To Enhance Your Presentation
There is real power in telling true stories to a live audience. One of the best and most frequently employed strategies for using stories during a keynote speech is based on personal tales of triumph over adversity. 

If a speaker tells a story about a time in their life when they were struggling or facing great challenges, and then imparts knowledge that was gained and lessons learned from overcoming their circumstances, it can be very powerful for audience members who relate. In this way, someone who is striving to become a motivational speaker becomes a conduit for empowering others who are now faced with similar problems that the speaker already undertook. If the speaker portrays the stories honestly and clearly, it will captivate the audience and spur them into action - exactly the point of hearing a motivational speaker in the first place.

Visual Aids
Truly masterful speakers do not rely on using props like handouts, slides, or digital projection of any kind. Rather, they are so magnetic and charismatic that there is no need to divert the attention of the audience. That said, there will be times when supportive visual aids make sense to highlight a given point or message. 

However, some of the most accomplished speakers use very simple props to aid their presentation, including the use of whiteboards and red markers. This is a good approach because it keeps the focus of the audience constantly on you, rather than on a handout or a digital visual image of some kind.

It is very helpful to the audience to clarify the main points of a complex issue or thought with simple, succinct written thoughts on a whiteboard. Though digital projectors can be useful at the right time, it is important that speakers learn to not rely too heavily on the use of such visual aids. When seeking to become a motivational speaker with a good presentation, make yourself the central focal point and your audience will ultimately be more deeply affected by your presentation.

Article Four: Become a Motivational Speaker - Developing Confidence

Great Speakers Have Unshakable Confidence
Truly professional motivational speakers have developed an underlying confidence that is clearly evident when they are both on and off the stage. Even when circumstances within their presentation are seemingly out of their control (unforeseen technical problems, mistakes with handouts, etc.), such speakers are able to overcome momentary setbacks and not be overly rattled or unhinged. They are consistently able to make matters right again - they solve presentation difficulties because they were so well prepared that they anticipated potential trouble and had a contingency plan - and they make light of it in front of their audience. This all contributes to their unflappable confidence, and they end up turning seemingly awkward situations into moments that further empower and embolden them. Those who have already achieved some success in the pursuit of becoming an inspirational speaker have an unfailing ease in front of groups of people, even when everything seems to be going wrong for them. In the case of troublesome or disrespectful crowds (it happens!) they have methods for taking control of the situation with authority and composure that puts them back in command of their surroundings.

Confidence Can Be Learned
Although some people are born with an abundance of natural confidence, most of us have to learn, grow and develop it through speaker training and an online speaker school. And though a person may be confident generally, that doesn't necessarily mean it will naturally translate to becoming a motivational speaking.

There are many ways to increase public speaking confidence, however the easiest way to do so is to practice your presentation and delivery. Nothing replaces the experience of gaining composure and public speaking ease than actually giving your presentation in front of a live audience. In the beginning, this can be achieved by joining Toastmaster's and by volunteering your speaking services around your community.

Any professional speaker will tell you that they have reached their present ability level not because of having read books on the subject of speaking (though that may indeed help), but rather because they have had years of speaking experience in front of  live audiences.

'Master speaker qualities' are not easily taught or conveyed to younger or more inexperienced speakers, yet as beginners starts to gain confidence and skill in handling themselves, their message, and their audience, they will inevitably develop poise, inner strength, and unfailing self-belief. As more presentations are given and the speaker's business grows, so too will their ability to express passion and convey an impressive strength of presence in all their public speaking endeavors.

Article Five: Starting a Professional Speaking Business - Two First Steps

Here are two of the most essential and basic first steps when starting your speaking business:

1) Define Your Expertise And Establish Your Speaking Topics
Everything that has been said thus far about positioning yourself as an expert and tailoring your services to a specific market is now your top priority. What will you speak about, and equally (if not more) importantly, who will you speak to? The question is more easily answered than you might think. Ask yourself: 

• What are you passionate about? 
• What are you experienced in? 
• What are you knowledgeable about? 
• What have you gone through that is unique or unusual? 
• Have you undergone a unique challenge and prevailed? 
• What major life failings have you endured, and what did you learn? 
• What career success did you achieve? What was special or unique about your career trajectory? 
• What valuable insights can you relate to others about your personal life experiences? 
• Have you ever overcome life-threatening illness, or triumphed over a lifethreatening circumstance?
I could ask you questions like this all day long, but the point is that you have to discover your speaking topics on your own. It has to be something that you have a deep desire to express and relate to others. You need to become very clear about what you want to be presenting on as a professional speaker.

2) Seek Out And Discover Your Niche Market And 'Desperate Buyer Only' Audience
The other question of course is who will you speak to? Remember what I stated earlier about 'desperate buyers only?' That's who you need to focus on developing your message for. 

• What specific groups or associations need to hear your message? 
• Who is the main audience for your information? Is it most pertinent to corporations, philanthropies, colleges and universities, or youth groups? What other types of groups? 
• Where do those that need to hear your message congregate - offline and online? 
• Do they have the available budget to pay you to speak to them? Specifically, are funds allocated for speakers in their meetings and events? 
• Are there multiple similarly-minded groups around the country (or even in another country) that you could continually be hired to speak to? 
• What opportunities exist to develop products and other informational materials to sell within your chosen market niche? 
• Is your chosen market 'evergreen'? That is, will the issue or information that you are addressing with them still be valid, relevant, and in demand for many years to come? 
• Who could currently be seen as a speaker competitor in your niche market? Does the market seem saturated with other speakers who present on your topic? 
• Is your chosen market finding other means of addressing or fulfilling their need for your information in ways other than hiring professional speakers? 
• Is your niche market growing and expanding, or is it in decline? What are future prospects? If it is a business, is the industry it is apart of financially stable? If it is an association or philanthropy, are they growing or shrinking?

As you can see, many of these questions require some extensive research on your part. Get online, ask questions, make phone calls, and don't be afraid to test the waters. You can ask personnel whether they have ever hired professional speakers, or if they have a budget for such things. Don't hesitate to find out how they have been handling the issues that you wish to address, or even if they are aware of their importance in the first place. NOBODY CAN DO THIS LEGWORK FOR YOU! You have to do this research by yourself, and I suggest that you take this early task very seriously. This is a major aspect of the 'foundation laying' stage!

Many great speakers provide a speaking service that fills the holes in for markets that didn't even realize they had holes that needed to be filled. Nothing is preventing you from becoming this same kind of trendsetting professional, and it's often easier than you think.

We will be exploring making contact with outside prospects in articles to come, but for the time being you need to work on whittling your message down to a very tightly focused niche. Conducting solid, extensive research is invaluable, and if done thoroughly, it will pay your speaking business huge dividends for years to come!
Look for our future articles, all based on providing you with the internet's leading training on building a thriving speaking business and becoming an elite, six figure professional speaker. In the meantime feel free to join us at Motivational Speaker Academy while membership spots are still available.

Article Six: Do You Want to Become a Well Paid Professional Motivational Speaker?

If you want to become a highly paid, highly successful speaker, you need to distinguish yourself from the speaker competition and become what I call a Guerilla Speaker. At its heart, being a guerilla speaker really refers to radically distinguishing yourself from other speakers and in the marketplace generally.

But isn't that what all speakers want to do, you might be asking. Maybe, but the reality is that they simply don’t, or aren't doing it nearly enough. Perhaps they haven’t accessed the right information and training program, and just plain can’t transform themselves into a dynamic Guerilla Speaker. But that’s a definite good thing for you.
Our main goal is to create (or recreate) you as a dominant speaker who is in constant, high demand, even in today's competitive marketplace.

Here are three universal qualities of Guerilla Speakers:
1) Guerilla Speakers have narrow, tightly focused areas of expertise
They have developed their speaking services and their process of becoming a motivational speaker around very particular topics relating to the issues and concerns of a specific target market.
Very few speakers are primarily advertising themselves as specialists for individual markets, and because of this these speakers have significantly less competition than those who speak on general topics like 'motivation', 'sales', 'leadership, etc. Savvy speakers that have become unique experts catering to narrow, focused markets are in far greater demand as a specialist than a generalist. These speakers are adapting their business to accommodate the lesser known niches in the market, and in so doing are fulfilling the primary quality of becoming a Guerilla Speaker.

2) Guerilla Speakers are taking full advantage of the internet in their goal of becoming a motivational speaker
Every aspiring and established speaker knows how important the online world is to his or her success. But only guerilla speakers who have undertaken quality speaker training know that having a website, an email address, and being represented by a speakers bureau and affiliated with an association simply is not enough these days. Most speakers don't even know what opportunities for exposure they are missing. As mentioned on the homepage, the speaking industry has become a feast for the digitally adept few, and a famine for the ineffective many.

3) Guerilla Speakers Give Superb Presentations
It's impossible to be an effective, in demand professional speaker without being able to deliver first-rate presentations. Guerilla speakers have honed their presentation skills, and understand what it takes to get repeat and spin-off business from their engagements.

We'll pick this discussion up again in a future article where we'll continue to look at how you too can become a Guerilla Speaker, dominate your speaking niche, and become a well paid, in-demand professional speaker.

Article Seven: Success Strategies For New and Emerging Professional Speakers

Positioning Yourself In The Speaking Marketplace
Perhaps you have heard the term Unique Selling Proposition (USP). This specifically refers to your distinguishing marketing angle, and it's what differentiates you from your speaker competitors and makes you special in the potential buyer's eyes. It is absolutely essential that you take a very sober and critical look at your speaking themes and topics, and ask yourself this question: what can I do that no one else is doing in providing solutions and assistance to my prospective audiences?

Now of course it will be impossible to know everything that your speaker competitors are offering. Even if you could find every speaker who is in direct competition with you for your market niche - which would be a tall order in itself - you will never know the intricacies of what their individual programs actually do offer to clients unless you could attend each and every last presentation they gave. That's not likely to happen. What I suggest as a practical alternative is to create a USP that is directly on the pulse of what your chosen market needs.

How is that possible? With the advent of the information age, speakers have never been so empowered in developing cutting edge, highly relevant USPs. There are numerous ways to gather information about how to become a motivational speaker and reach your prospective niche market, but you must be thorough and exhaustive in your approach if you are to glean meaningful insights to shape your presentation around.

The first order of business is to find out where your market congregates online. Do they have a social network that you can join? Can you follow their activity on Twitter, or join their group in Facebook? How about LinkedIn, Xing, or any of the multiple other social networking sites? If you don't have accounts with these sites, run don't walk to set one up.

Once you're on the inside with your new profiles, you need to be searching for your niche market. Do they have groups that you can join? Are there online discussions being held?

Apart from the social networking sites there are blogs and forums. It is almost guaranteed that any group or association of people, professional, philanthropic, or in any other realm, will be gathering to discuss their problems and issues of the day in forums and blogs somewhere online. You only need to go to a major search engine and type in the name of your group or keywords relating to your target market and combine it beside words like forum, group, blog, association, membership, alliance, union, etc. etc.

Once you have greater access to your target market's online meeting places, you need to start looking for recurrent, unsolved issues. Once again, it is impossible to know how unaddressed or resolved these issues are in a broader sense, but that's why you need to do some deep research in addition to attending online speaker schools that offer comprehensive speaker training.

Join the forums and write responses on blogs. Sign up for free memberships where you can and get access to conversations, but more importantly start to join conversations. Once you begin doing this type of interactive sleuth work, your investigation into whether your potential USP is a good one or not will start becoming clear.

If it turns out your idea is irrelevant, already being addressed by the group, or generally not very meaningful, go back to the drawing board. Ask questions and create surveys to determine whether your ideas and solutions are needed by the community. Use the answers to your research for developing your USP and your niche speaking message.

Article Eight: Grow Your Speaking Business by Speaking For Free

Five Reasons Why Speaking For Free Will Help Grow Your Business:

1. Giving a free speech is an excellent networking opportunity. Ideally, you will be able to interact with your audience at the end of your presentation and talk with both decision makers and meeting planners. The potential long-term benefits of such networking could be well worth having spoken for free. This is your chance to ask for referrals, recommendations, and letters of reference.

2. After your free speaking event you should write a press release giving details about yourself and your topics of expertise. Though the press release will center on the speaking event itself, it can be used as a powerful marketing tool. It can be sent to your local newspaper as well as online at press release sites. This is a great first open door for actively promoting your business.

3. A free speaking opportunity gives you the chance to have a live video of yourself created. Most speakers bureaus and meeting planners will not represent or hire you without first seeing a video of your live presentation. As you know, purchasing a professional quality recording device is cheaper than ever nowadays, and many speakers opt for a simple flip camera with a small tripod. Record your presentation and put it on YouTube in ten minute segments. Be assured that posting a video of your live presentation on video sharing sites will increase your expert credibility 1000 fold.

4. A free presentation can quickly lead to a paid one. If you speak to a club, an association or an organization, many of the audience members could be business owners themselves. It only takes the right person to see you speak for free to one day hire you to speak at their own event. You never know when you may be addressing decision makers who could ask you to speak to their people - for your fee price.

5. If you've already developed a product line or have written a book, you can speak for free and sell your products at the back of the room. Those with past experience in public speaking jobs do this to great effect. The latest statistics show that back of the room product sales now account for over 50% of professional speaking profits. You could easily speak for free and make a healthy return just by selling your products, books, or other off-stage services. The more free engagements you give, the more chances you'll have to make sales of this nature - and set yourself up for eventual paid events with your ever-expanding network of contacts.

So as you can see, there are obviously many potential positive outcomes and immediate benefits to giving free speaking engagements. This truly is your chance to get attention fast, build a reputation, and create a foundation for future success. Now that we've determined speaking for free is the right thing to do, let's make it happen as soon as we possibly can....

Article Nine: Blogging For Speakers - Building Your Business One Post at a Time

Using A Blog To Promote Your Speaking Business
A blog is the perfect tool for integrating your Web 2.0 and Social Marketing strategy into your speaking business. The whole purpose of a blog is to document your thoughts, views, and opinions on your speaking niche and related topics and to solicit comments from your readers and drive traffic to your primary speaker website. Additionally a good blog will put more money into your pocket! Blogs are really the pioneer tools of the current Web 2.0 craze; they are dynamic social websites that allow user interaction, which could help build your network and increase your number of annual speaking engagements.

A couple of obvious ways to promote your blog via Web 2.0 are simply placing links to your blog on your profile pages and lenses, and plugging your RSS feeds into your social networking portals. But there are also some really good social sites that are geared exclusively for bloggers. There are two in particular that I highly recommend. In fact if you do nothing else discussed in this article you should at least start a blog related to your speaking services on your own domain and start using these two blog networking sites right away!

When another user comes across your blog they can add it to their favorites, link to it, or subscribe to your RSS feed. This alone will generate a substantial amount of free, highly targeted traffic for your blog, and hence your broader speaking business. Once you register your free account with Technarati, you should immediately claim your blogs. This is Technorati talk for adding your blogs to their search and RSS directory.

You'll be able to give your blog a title and description, and enter the tags (or categories) you post about on your blog. The great thing about this is each time you make a post on your blog from here forward a keyword optimized link to your post will appear on the Technarati site. If you own a blog and don't use Technorati you are missing out in a big way. Truth is, when you use RSS feeds on your blog it acts as the kind of social proof the herd mentality responds well to. They say to themselves, "hey a lot of people read this blog so the author must know their stuff." By extension your primary speaker website and speaking services (including your product line) will all be positively affected.

Therefore, I suggest you go out right now and register for Technorati and MyBlogLog. And if you don't already have your own blog, hosted on your own domain drop everything at once and make this priority number one. The impact on your speaking business will be tremendous.

You can get a search engine friendly blog installed and hosted on your own domain at a great rate through this service. MyBlogLog is an excellent blog directory that allows you to list your blog and personal profile, and to build a network of friends, rate other users' blogs, etc.

Having a blog and posting regularly will contribute to your 'expert status branding' initiative, and will help position you as a leading authority in your speaking niche as you build your motivational speaking business.

Article Ten: ‘Expert Status’ Branding For Writer-Speakers

Personal websites and blogs represent online real estate, and writer-speakers are striving to claim their stakes with as wide and compelling a reach as possible. You’ve all heard that a website is your ‘online business card’. Well I’m evolving that for you – your website is your online business, period.

Gone are the days when it was merely important to have an online presence to diversify and grow your overall business visibility. In the second decade of the twenty first century, having a website (and a blog) has become your direct route, par excellence, for expanding your paid speaking business.

So with that said, this article will be looking at how to make your website exceptionally good, and get you positioned for the long term in your chosen writer-speaker niche. And now that we all understand how crucial our online positioning actually is, let’s ask this question:

What’s the best way to go about developing a website that maximizes our marketing efforts?

One word: branding.
Brand Yourself!

There’s a lot of buzz about branding in the professional speaking and writing worlds nowadays, and with good reason. Once you successfully brand yourself you’ll become known as the authoritative expert in your niche.  If you’re seen as the leading expert, you become the go-to person for solving problems and providing information to groups of people who are in need of it. If your target markets are the proven ‘desperate buyers’ that that we suggest you focus on offering your speaking services to, your bookings will start to grow in proportion to your expert status. It really is as simple as that.

But at this point, you might be saying to yourself, “How can I brand myself and become an expert? I’m a complete unknown as a speaker!”

Here’s a little secret that will change your thinking once you fully grasp what it means for your marketing strategy moving forward: above all else, establishing expert status is based overwhelmingly on one factor – perception. 

What that actually means is that very often those with the most expertise don’t achieve the most success. Rather, it’s their well branded writer-speaker counterparts who take the bigger pie slice within their given niche market.

Simply put, the bottom line is that those speakers with the greatest visibility (obtained by having the clearest and most effective marketing strategy) earn the prize of ‘expert status’. Reject this marketing reality as unfair at your own risk – it won’t change the fact that it’s frequently the best marketers and not the best speakers that make it to the top of the pile and dominate their speaking niche!

Marketing gurus the world over have been preaching this hidden-in-plain-sight truism for years. Ultimately what it means is that when enough people start to perceive you as an expert in a given field, you actually become one. In other words, the title of ‘expert’ can be arbitrary granted, and it’s very often based on what people perceive about you than who you really are.

Aspiring writer-speakers need to embrace this truth and leverage it to their advantage!
So now you finally know the mind-bending truth – that becoming an expert is, in large part, all about proclaiming yourself to be an expert! This is an empowering revelation, and your job is to use it to your advantage at all times. In addition to getting quality speaker training from online speaker schools, expert status branding is one of the most important aspects in your goal of becoming a motivational speaker.

Now of course I wouldn’t advise that you start to brand yourself as an expert in any writing or speaking niche if you don’t already have an exceptionally strong grasp of the subject material. You also need to be able to speak competently in front of an audience. But if you have both of these bases covered then you are ready – today – to start branding yourself as an expert. And that’s exactly what you’ll be doing.

But before we can move into working on your website, we need to focus on branding you. Your personal brand needs to be a reflection of not only everything you value, but also everything you represent as a speaker. You need to take the time to identify what you value in your life - all those things that are the foundation of what you believe in and live by.  As a speaker, it is important that you have a clear picture of your values and everything that you choose to stand for. This will very clearly come across to your prospective clients when they encounter you both online and offline.
What is inherent in your unique selling proposition that also reflects your values? Perhaps you write and speak about being a breast cancer survivor, yet you also counsel people who have breast cancer on a volunteer basis. That demonstrates that you value serving others in need while also revealing your USP. Everyone will be different in this regard, and your value integrated USP doesn’t have to sound like you’re a saint. Just remember – branding is about developing other people’s perceptions of you, so put your best qualities forward and don’t be afraid to boast a little.

Once you have a defined image of how you want to self-brand, you’ll be working to become your brand immediately. That means you need to know how to describe your brand, and be ready to promote it to anyone you meet who could benefit from your message and potentially hire you (or have contacts that would hire you). You’ll be your own walking, talking brand, and I urge you to start thinking of yourself in those terms from this point onward. It’s not about just selling yourself – it’s so much more than that. It’s about demonstrating at all times to everyone (at least in a business environment) that you are what you preach, that you walk the talk, and that you have a value integrated USP.

This deliberate act of intelligent, values-conscious branding will significantly distinguish you from your writer-speaker competitors and allow you to dominate your niche speaking market more than ever.

Article Eleven: Branding Your Site 101

Now that we’ve established you need to leverage the all important expert status into an abundant speaking business, we’ll be working on branding you as an expert, and the single best way to do that is by positioning you as such through both your website and your blog.

Keep in mind that, in essence, you’ve been branding yourself all along if you’ve already set into motion your online promotional strategy in the pursuit of becoming an inspirational speaker. Your Facebook page, your LinkedIn profile, and any other public accounts that display your business information are already serving as the bedrock of your personal brand. But those elements are only the basics. What you require now is next level branding with the development (or recreation) of your website and blog.

The Guerilla Speaker approach outlined below is going to give your upgraded website a massive advantage because it will position you as superior to the mass of generic speaker websites out there right now. In addition, many speakers still don’t have blogs, so you’ll be building your perceived expert status in multiple ways.

The very first thing you’ll be doing in branding your website is some competitive analysis. It’s important that you learn to beat your competition without looking or sounding like them. Do research to see what the websites of other speakers in your niche look like. Make sure that you avoid using the same color or design features that your competitors are using. Think about specific actions you can employ in forging your branding image that will position you as superior to your direct competitors.

Here’s the National Speakers Association chapter listings for you to perform your spying, ahem, research:
 http://www.mynsa.org/CHAPTERSGROUPS/Chapters/NSABoasts40Chapters.aspx

Now comes the fun part – the actual branding for your website. This should start with the basic step of creating a branding statement that will appear on your website, perhaps on your ‘About Me’ or even home page. Your branding statement should be powerful enough to grab the emotions of your prospects, while giving the impression that your offerings are unique, special and distinct from your competitors. This statement is something that needs to stand out in your prospects mind, but the shorter the better. Don’t overload them with too much information in your branding statement.  More descriptive depth about your speaking services will come later.
The following three elements are foundational to branding your site:

• YOUR DOMAINS NAME: The more memorable, the better. If you’re already well known in other fields you might want your domain to be your full name, but I suggest that you use keywords from your speaking niche. In fact, my advice is that you focus on incorporating as many keywords from your chosen niche into your domain name as possible. This will greatly help your search engine rankings when someone is looking for a speaker on your topic. For instance, your domain could be: www.johnsmithsalesspeaker.com, or www.janesmithfuturetrendsspeaker.com. You get the idea. Having both your name and keywords from your speaking niche in your domain will help expand your brand when you start using your domain name for all your business materials (letter heads, business cards, post cards, statements, etc.)
• GRAPHICS AND LOGO: Your graphics and colors will create a mood for your website, which if properly done, will convey all the right information about how and your motivational speaking business ought to be perceived. Logos are the single most important design feature of your website. Even though you’re a personal and not a corporate brand, you can still develop you own logo. It might contain your name, or keywords relating to your speaking offerings or presentation topic. In any case, incorporating a solid logo and clean, attractive graphics will help establish your site’s brand.
• YOUR WRITING STYLE: Our words form our personality, and they are the chief indicators of who we are when someone forms an online relationship with us. For visitors to your site, your words need to project the personality of your speaking services. You need to write in a way that reflects who you are, what you stand for, and what you are capable of delivering to your customers and clients. You won’t be perfect at this in the beginning, but with practice and growth you’ll start learning how to make potential clients see you as the best, and hopefully only, answer to their problems.

And that’s it! Pretty simple, isn’t it? Granted, there’s far more to branding than the aforementioned, but for the time being this will get you started in conceptualizing your website branding. Your domain name, your graphics, logos, and colors, and your writing style form the basis of your web branding.

But there’s one more factor that, if capitalized upon, will distinguish you from the competition in a big way. You guessed it - your blog.

Article Twelve: Blogging Your Brand

If you have a blog portion of your website, you will be well on your way to positively distinguishing yourself from your speaker competitors, many of whom won’t have a blog. But a quality professional blog is a major departure from the personal blog where someone gives their opinion on just about anything. You need to craft a tightly focused blogging message that delivers value about relevant issues pertaining directly to your topic. You must communicate with your readers about what they need to hear, not only what you’re interested in writing about. As far as being a continuation of your personal branding efforts as initiated with your main website, a blog can ultimately be one extended unfolding of your own brand, as we defined it earlier in this lesson.
Blogging your brand will:

HELP VISITORS UNDERSTAND ABSTRACT CONCEPTS RELATED TO YOUR NICHE

Not only does your original writing voice brand your blog and help you attain expert status, but your knowledge can be used to help your readers understand abstract concepts, which will further increase your value in their eyes. Not all prospects that are reading your blog will be well-versed with some of the finer points relating to your topic. That’s where your expertise comes in. You can disseminate hard to grasp ideas, expand on difficult issues, explain important concepts, and make abstract information something tangible and easily understood. This doesn’t have to be done all at once – it can be the result of many blog posts over weeks and months. And don’t be afraid to give away your knowledge and know-how for free. It will come back to pay you ten-fold in the end.

KEEP IMPORTANT IDEAS FRESH IN YOUR READERS’ MINDS

Sometimes in this industry, speakers overuse terms and they become stale and cliché. You can give terms like this within your niche a fresh new name to keep your audience’s attention. For example, if you are talking about sales success, you can take the basic idea, now clichéd, that the ‘customer is king’ and revise the underlying concept into something more immediately applicable to practical life, perhaps by using a real-life example. The old saying that there’s nothing new under the sun still applies, so just try to be original without getting too caught up in sounding like you’re proposing a revolutionary approach. Don’t get me wrong – if you have revolutionary ideas and approaches, don’t hesitate to bring them to life on your blog. But bear in mind that you’ll also need to appeal to traditionalists who don’t want to deviate from the friendly and the familiar as well.

MAKE YOUR NEW CONCEPT MORE MEMORABLE By inventing Buzzwords

Many of you have already created new concepts and ideas, and if that’s the case don’t be afraid to invent and use catchy buzzwords to describe your concepts. This will be a potent tool in your expert status self-creation. Don’t overdo it though - a short phrase or easily remembered invented term is more likely to stick and gain traction with the public than a long-winded explanation. Consider the term ‘Guerilla Speaker’ which I invented. It is merely the extension of another known term – ‘guerilla’, which references anyone who employs unconventional or imaginative techniques to achieve a given purpose.

It is outside the purview of this lesson to provide more technical details about website creation and blogging technique. This was an introduction into the world of branding – both for yourself, your website, and your blog. We’ll be revisiting the notion of branding as the course progresses, so think of this as your first exposure to an essential strategy that will influence and direct your marketing objectives for the rest of your speaking career.

Above all, remember that branding is psychological, meaning that your job is to get into your prospects heads and stay there. Your ultimate goal is to make such a strong and lasting impression through your branding that you get hired, and referred, and then hired over and over again. Branding has the power to do that when you learn to leverage its full potential.

All articles are written by Richard D. Andrews, President, Motivational Speaker Academy. Please note that these articles may not be reproduced, borrowed, or otherwise used in any way without the permission of Richard Andrews.