‘Expert Status’ Branding For Author-Speakers
Part One of a Series

Richard Andrews
Owner, Motivational Speaker Academy

Personal websites and blogs represent online real estate, and authors and 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 here now to further evolve 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 and several to follow will be looking at how to make yourself and 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 vital question:

What’s the best way to go about developing an approach 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.

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.

More on branding via your website or blog coming later.

Copyright 2010, Richard Andrews

Richard Andrews is the owner of Motivational Speaker Academy, a professional training program forspeakers that prepares them to spread thedir ideas and influence throughout their varying markets with conviction, grace and positive impact. More information is available at www.motivationalspeakeracademy.com

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