I love speaking at events and conferences. Honestly, it is one of my favorite activities, and it is definitely one of the most powerful business building tools for getting new clients.
And not just for me. 85% of my clients use speaking as a way to expand their business. No doubt, if you are following my brand, you are probably using speaking, too. It is one of the most powerful ways to attract clients and get seen as a thought leader in your niche.
The challenge is often that amazing speakers with great messages don’t get booked because of the sheer number of people who are competing for the same speaking gigs.
Event planners have to wade through multiple applicants for one position, so how do you rise to the top of the stack?
That is why I want to share my top 3 tips for using your personal brand to get more speaking engagements.
3 Ways Your Personal Brand Can Get You More Speaking Engagements
1. Your Personal Brand is what differentiates you from the masses.
If you put 100 business coaches in a room, how would you know what distinguishes them from each other?
Their services are similar, their target audience is the same, the way they deliver their content and coaching is very similar, so what makes them different?
Their Personal Brand is what makes them different. Your Personal Brand is the key to getting you noticed in a crowded field. What makes you unique and establishes an immediate connection is all centered around your personal brand.
Your Personal Brand is the cumulation of your brand identity and core message aligned in one place so that people can immediately understand who you are and what you have to offer.
If you want to stand out in a crowded niche, you have to have a consistent personal brand. One of my services is an online brand assessment. I go into detail with my clients and their online impression.
Here’s a simple tip for you:
Go online, open a new window for every online platform that your customers interact with you on and see if your brand is consistently communicated on all platforms.
Look at your images, logos, brand colors, messaging, links and calls to action. Are they consistently communicating the same thing? If you are an expert in your field and that field is crowded, you need something to help you stand out. A clearly defined personal brand can help you do that.
When I wrote my book, The Total Package: Own Your Profitable Personable Brand, I wrote it to help entrepreneurs align their values with their brand so that they can maximize their impact.
Grab the first two chapters of my best-selling book The Total Package: Own Your Profitable Personal Brand and two of my most popular personal brand exercises here for free.
2. Your Personal Brand is what communicates your authority in your niche.
Part of what makes my personal brand unique is the experience I have had in the Personal Brand industry.
When building out my personal brand, I incorporate those elements to help prospects and event planners connect with me. Your experience is one of the cornerstones of your personal brand.
When you know how to use your experience to highlight your authority, you become a top choice for event planners. When given a choice between someone who is similar but does not have authority, event planners will most often choose the speaker with more authority.
For me, my authority is woven throughout my personal brand by highlighting that I have 21 years experience, that I have written a best-selling book on personal branding and I have worked with some of America’s top brands & businesses to help them refine and highlight the power of personal branding for their company culture.
When you finish reading this article, write down all the authority factors that you have accumulated and see if you are presenting them in your personal brand.
What makes you stand out in a crowded niche? Write it down.
3. Your Personal Brand is what event planners see first, getting you noticed above others.
Have you ever been in a business networking event and someone walks into the room who seems to attract the energy and attention of those around them, instantly?
Or, have you ever been scrolling through Instagram or Facebook and see an ad or image that makes you click because you want to know more?
What do they do to make that happen? Simply put, it’s how they use their Personal Brand.
Your personal brand aligns all of the fine-tuned elements of who you are, what you do, how you carry yourself, the energy you project and puts it into one seamless package.
Whether in person or online, people will instantly connect with you and want to know more. You become a shining example of everything that is right about the work you do, and it attracts attention. Building a powerful personal brand taps into creating an intentional plan to put yourself out there, in front of the decision makers and influencers.
Event planners are looking for key elements of the speakers they book.
Beyond being a good speaker, here are the elements you need to focus on to get booked:
- Authority: are you recognized as a thought leader in your niche? How? Define all of the ways that you are an influencer in your niche.
- Credibility: do you have the credibility to back up your brand? Where have you spoken before, what milestones have you achieved in your business? Have you been published? Do you get noticed by media sources?
- Message: does your message make an impact and how is that message woven through your brand? Meeting planners want to see consistency in your message throughout your personal brand. How can you illustrate that message with your online platforms? Do you write about your core topic enough to be recognized as a thought leader?
- Image + Energy: does your brand image and energy fit for their audience? Do you exude excellence and experience in all of your assets — online, email, social media, in-person, on the phone, from your team? How you present yourself to the event planners can make a huge difference in whether or not you get booked. Take a look at all of the assets you have created to connect an event planner to your business and make sure they are consistent across the board.
The bottom line is this — to get more speaking engagements make sure your Personal Brand is consistent and clear across the board. Make sure your authority, credibility, and message are woven throughout your brand online and off.
And finally, review everything you are sending to the event planners and make sure you are consistently presenting your personal brand. Your personal brand can help you get booked — if you have been intentional about building the key elements necessary to showcase your authority, credibility, and message.