Today, personal branding has become more and more a necessity if you want to succeed as a speaker. There are numerous benefits and advantages to consider as one of the marketing strategies. You can reach a larger audience, gain international recognition and be asked to speak in the largest companies worldwide, and all of this using just the most important resource you have.

The following list does not follow an order of importance, all the mentioned tips are equally valuable, and so it is advisable to keep them all in mind.

A bigger Reach

Let’s start with one strong point and with the main purpose of every speaker: the reach of their words. Personal branding gives you the ability to reach a much larger audience, no matter if you are just starting out or if you already have several years of experience in the art of public speaking. 

By strengthening your personal branding, many people around the world will be able to grow interest in you, talk about you and share what you say. An engaged audience is vital to anyone who wants to be a successful speaker, and an online presence is the way to go to achieve it.

Recognition

Having a larger audience always offers advantages for any speaker, and one of them is recognition. In order to strengthen your personal brand it is necessary that you know what you are talking about and that you are confident with yourself, and if you do it well, the world will recognize it. An international recognition opens the doors to different job opportunities, as well as offering you a wider field to evolve as a speaker. While you strengthen your personal brand, you are directly strengthening your position as speaker.

Strengthening Your Network

Many things become easier if you know the right person, and strengthening your personal brand gives you the opportunity to meet many people, increasing your portfolio of contacts and improving the chances to succeed. Recognition will make you grow and know the big names in the market. If during this process you start a friendship with different professionals, your portfolio of contacts will only increase.

The strengthening of your network benefits you enormously since it gives you the opportunity to be invited to different events and even to be recommended to speak in different locations.

Higher Income

Let’s face it, one of the main goals of any business is to get more income, and improving your personal brand will definitely increase yours. With all the new employment opportunities, and with 84% of the world’s employers using social networks to hire personnel (according to shrm.org), strengthening your personal brand increases your chances of improving yourself economically.

International Opportunities

The Internet connects the world, and one of the benefits of personal branding, as mentioned above, is recognition. When that recognition becomes international bigger opportunities start to arrive, as it is now much more possible that companies come to you on their own, so you’ll have to invest less time in finding sites to make your public speaking.

Personal Growth

During the process of strengthening your personal brand, you need to think about certain things, define who you are, what you want, and what you can offer and learn, so that in this way you identify what you are deficient. All of this leads to an unparalleled process of learning and growth, which will help you to improve as a speaker.

You are Your Own Business. You are the Brand!

From the moment you want to become a speaker, you start to be your own business, because all decisions depend on you, as well as all the personal and professional growth you carry out in the process. This is exactly what strengthening your personal brand is all about, so both correlate very well.

Learn about the Digital World

Personal branding is not something you can do without learning something along the way. The whole process of creation, implementation, and development leads you to learn about technologies, social networks, the digital world and all sorts of topics related to the internet and mobile devices. All that learning serves you to talk about the subject, to be knowledgeable and not to sin of looking like an “old school”.

The more connected you are to technology, the more likely you are to generate interest and respect from your young audience.

More Time for Learning

A successful personal branding campaign guarantees you several opportunities, as we already said, and one of them is the learning opportunity. All the aspects you’ll learn in order to strengthen your brand will make you stand out from the crowd as a speaker. You must be a sponge and absorb as much knowledge as possible, and with personal branding, you will have time for that.

Success

And last but not least, success. An undeniable reason why personal branding is important is that it opens the way to success. All the great speakers worldwide are recognized by their personal Brand, so if you want to be a successful speaker, you need to follow in their footsteps.

Starting Out

Since we know why personal Brand is important, we can take a look at how to implement it if you’re just getting started.

The basic principles of personal branding for speakers include:

• Online presence: Perhaps the most important factor in personal branding. Online presence is obtained by creating a professional email, website, blog, and accounts on the main social networks. As a speaker, you need to create an audience to talk to, so that’s why it’s essential to use social networks. Creating quality content and addressing the topics you feel most confident with will help you generate that audience.
• Podcast/videos: Another thing you can do while strengthening your personal branding by being a speaker is to create podcasts or videos talking about particular topics, this way you will have a sample of your work on the web.
• Speaker one-sheet: As a speaker, a necessary piece in your Brand is the Speaker One Sheet, which should contain your talking points, the target audience, the advantages, and benefits of hiring you, a short biography and your contact information. If you have already been hired in the past, you can add the list of clients you’ve had and some testimonials.
• Blog/post: Another way to reach a larger audience, by the letters. Having a blog allows you to write a little beyond the limitations imposed by social networks, as well as increase your credibility as a professional in the market.

If you still have doubts about whether you need personal branding or not, you should re-read the benefits. Currently, there is nothing to lose and so much to gain if you are a speaker. By creating your Personal Brand, the advantages are huge compared to the disadvantages, so do not wait any longer, your personal and professional growth is just a few clicks away.