date: Sunday f 20, 2012
How To Market Yourself As A Professional Speaker
How to Market Yourself as a Professional Speaker
The ability to market yourself as a professional speaker is undoubtedly the key to your success. Marketing means that you must advertise your skills and talents. Since many people don't do that, they end up leaving their career to the wind by default. You have to get your name out there. You have to find ways to connect with people who can and will hire you.
1. Network in speaking organizations. If you're not networking, you're not working. Building relationships with your peers and prospective clients is a must do if you're really serious about your career as a professional speaker.
2. Have a business card. As you take time to network and build relationships with people, you'll want to give them something to remember you by - your contact information. Your business card should have a professional look to it. Since it will be the way people remember you, what do you want them to remember?
3. Create your marketing portfolio. Also known as your promotional kit or your media kit, this portfolio will have everything that speaker bureaus and meeting planners need to determine if you are the speaker for them or not. Your portfolio consists of the following elements: a content sheet, a demo video of previous speaking engagement, your bio, testimonials from previous engagements, a price list of your products and resource materials you sell, a sample client list, and your fee schedule.
4. Develop a website. With so many people and businesses flocking to the internet for information, you'll want to have this as a means to market yourself. You don't have to have a website with all the bells and whistles. While your website should look professional, you can still get a started website with low to no monthly costs. Use your website to be an additional location where you sell your resource materials as well as offer information about your topic.
5. Use online social networks such as LinkedIn and MySpace to begin making connections with your industry peers. You can also use speaker forums as a place for additional resources, sharing speaking tips and tricks as well as getting to know other people in your field.
6. Create and use a direct marketing strategy. Send mailers and postcards to past clients as well as prospective future clients. While many speakers aren't hired as a result of their mailers, they are still an easy way to keep your customers in touch with your business. Additionally, direct mail pieces are relatively inexpensive to create and send and as a result, they are a great way to canvass organizations and get the word out that you are available for hire.
7. Market yourself through articles and product materials. Using other resources as a means for getting your name out will help to spread your name like wild fire! Think of it this way, you create the article one and include a short 2 - 3 sentence bio and you'll have that work for you for as long as it's available!
The way you market yourself will determine whether you will have a great career or not. Start using these avenues of getting your name out there and start to get noticed by meeting planners and speaker bureaus. Start marketing yourself today!
Related products and free Videos
more articles
Using Props In Your Professional Speaking Presentation
... presentations often make your points interesting and it breaks up the monotony of only hearing you speak. For this reason, props can be used to add variety to your presentation. Prizes and giveaways make excellent opening props. Often done with large audience presentations such as in large arenas, props ...
Create Your Professional Speaking Portfolio
... income you've heard and dreamt about by using a promotional kit! Speaker bureaus and meeting planners expect to see certain pieces of information in order to see if you are the professional speaker they are looking for. These pieces of information include a content sheet highlighting the material you'll ...
10 Tips For Professional Speakers
... hears your message, they are already sizing you up and this is impacting whether or not they are hearing what you have to say! 5. Have a backup plan for visual aids used in your presentation. You've selected to use visual aids because you thought they would be helpful in getting your message across. What ...
Ten Sources Of Income In Professional Speaking
... professional speaking career. 6. Get paid for the use of your "voice". Do voice overs or recorded speeches or advertisements as a source of income. 7. Get paid for telephone seminars. Many people are doing live webinars or telephone seminars in their businesses. Make contacts with people in the businesses ...
What Does The First Year Of Professional Speaking Look Like
... network for professionals) or forum and list those topics there. 2) Write some articles on these topics and post them on the free article websites. You can also post articles on your own website and add them to social bookmark sites. Whoever reads your article will see your bio at the bottom of each article ...
How To Tell A Story In Your Professional Speaking Presentation
... or you take too long in getting to the punch line, your audience could tune you out. - Tell where your story happened. Give your audience concrete information to think about and draw their own mental image in their mind. - Use things that your audience is well associated with in your story. Your audience ...
How To Deal With A Negative Audience In Professional Speaking
... Responding to your negative audience with the same negative emotion will cause you to lose control of your topic. Focus on the topic at hand. Train your mind to deliver the message you were hired to deliver instead of letting emotional antics get in the way. A developed speaker is one who has control ...
How To Feel Confident In Front Of Your Audience
... presenting how can you expect yourself to feel fearless? 4. Implement breathing techniques to help you relax. Breathing techniques have been scientifically proven to invigorate the body and help you get rid of nervousness. 5. See yourself on stage before you actually get there. Replay images of your successful ...
What Makes A Great Professional Speaker
... to get a feel for where their hearts and minds are concerning your message. You'll have to think quickly on your feet and be able to adjust your message and you'll have to become sensitive to "feeling" out your audience. 4. Your ability to make your message easy to understand and implement will help you ...
A Professional Speaker Sets The Tone For The Message
... to make an impact! People aren't interested in what you know. They want your information for themselves and passion is like the "grease" that lubricates that passage of information! Do you expect that your audience will receive what you have to say? Do you communicate that you're excited to be there and ...
Where To Find Professional Speaking Jobs
... experience and build your client database. In doing so, you'll be able to go after higher paying jobs as you can demonstrate your professionalism, credibility as a speaker and your ability to draw large crowds. - There are a number of places that hire professional speakers and many of them are in your ...
Organizing Your Professional Speaking Presentation
... method of delivery in your presentation. Review what it looks like on paper. Your outline is like your map for success. Is your map clearly defining the information you want to say? Are there any weak points were the information is not as strong as you'd like it to be? If it's not, revise and review and ...
Get Rid Of Distracting Body Movements
... know you are doing them. Either way, you'll need to minimize and eliminate as many of these movements as possible. 1. Make a video tape of yourself. Do you even know that you are making these movements? Probably not. A video will help you identify which distracting movements you'll need to work on eliminating. ...
... out your speech word for word. Write it as you would say it or would intend to say it. Include every piece of information including what you would say about your visual or audio aids. Every word you put on paper will impact what your audience picks up in your presentation. Read your written speech out ...
Do You Have The Ability To Draw People As A Professional Speaker
... fail no matter how good they might be. Lackluster speaking skills and unpolished scripts can still be presented well when motivation and passion shines through in the delivery! How do you measure up? 95% of your speaking engagement requires engaging an audience who may or may not want to be there and ...
Easy Ways To Remember Your Material
... triggers in your presentation. These triggers can be things like power point slides, props, and story telling that you'll scatter throughout your speech. What the triggers do is prompt you to talk about the next point your trying to make. The triggers can also serve as a trigger to help you remember what ...
Handling Questions And Answers In Your Professional Speaking Career
... audience. Just remember to get back to them as you say you would. 5. Create clean transitions between questions by creating "bridges" to the next question. Ask your audience another question such as "Does that answer your question?" Stay on the question until it has been answered appropriately. Here are ...
How Free Professional Speaking Gigs Help You
... will be able to refer them to your website for more information or additionally, to purchase products and books. The more people that hear you, the more opportunities you'll have. 3. Free speaking opportunities are still opportunities where you can create a video tape of yourself. Many speaker bureaus ...