Branding Yourself As a Public Speaker

How are you branding yourself?

‘Spread the importance of gaining knowledge through reading so that you can empower yourself to make impactful changes in your world.’

Since I was a little boy I’ve always had the dream to help people out. That’s one of the reasons why I’m here today and will continue to strive to do great things on BookMattic. I’m carrying on one of the dreams I’ve had since I was a child.

I get to share something very important with you which I sincerely hope you can at least take some of my messages away and implement it into your own life.

The 3 tools I’m giving you today will benefit you in branding yourself as a public speaker. Each of these marketing tools has been proven to successfully increase people’s awareness of your brand as long as you devoutly implement them into your marketing strategy.

Note: This post is part of a series of posts I’ll be publishing every other week.

The next post in this series is Marketing Yourself as a Public Speaker,

the third is Why Word of Mouth Increases Your Public Speaking Credibility,

and the fourth is Storytelling: The Key to Public Speaking Success

Let’s start out with the first and most important marketing tool in the process of branding yourself as a public speaker.

1. Branding Yourself

Anyone can give a speech about any topic they desire. There are tons of people that give speeches every day. But who is listening to them? How did you find out about that particular speaker?

You might have found out about this speaker through an advertisement or in a Facebook group or on the dozens of other social media platforms out there. You might have even heard about the speaker through word of mouth.

The question is, why do you want to go see this speaker in action? What makes this person stand out from all the other speakers out there? What makes this person unique and what inspiration do they have to offer you?

That’s where personal branding comes in. Branding yourself is the first thing you must do to brand yourself as a public speaker.

Now, what does branding yourself mean exactly? Branding yourself means to develop a unique professional identity and coherent personal branding statement, no longer than two or three sentences. It should set you apart from others whether it be in your own company or a company you work for.

In order to create a brand for yourself, you first have to think of WHY you are doing what you are doing. What is your reason? Your mission.

To give you a good idea of a perfect example of branding, let’s talk about two of the most famous people that have nailed their own branding and that we can use as wonderful role models for our own success. Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk. We all know who these people are and why they do what they do. Their WHYs are very clear.

Take a look at the brands they have created and see how concise they are:

Steve Jobs

Everything we do, We believe in challenging the status quo, we believe in thinking differently.

Elon Musk

Changing the future in a positive way through sustainable energy, internet, and making humans a multi-planetary species.

Now looking at these statements, you can tell that each of these innovators has a very clear reason for what they do. They have control over the destinies that they have created in themselves as well as their products and companies.

Each one of their products is consistent with their why. They are the embodiment of their products. The best thing about everything they do is that it’s consistent with their goal. You all must have a clear goal in mind and put it deep within your soul. Make your vision part of you.

And just like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, you have to stay consistently within your message. Now if you haven’t already, it’s your turn to develop a personal branding statement which will clearly embrace your why. It should be concise and reflect your unique value as a business professional.

There is a perfect explanation of why having a clear personal branding statement is so important.

Think about this question next.

If someone were to search for your name on the Web today, what would they find? Would they find some old embarrassing party photos from back in your days at university? How about that pessimistic Facebook status you wrote back in 2007?

Those are things you need to be very careful about since every photo, status, and article you put out there can be seen by anyone and affect your image in a bad way.

What you really want is to create an amazing and truthful image of yourself before you hit ‘publish’, that way when someone searches for your name, quality content is what will appear in front of their eyes. That’s part of branding yourself as a public speaker. When your branding is that good and your personal branding statement is clear, you’ll almost immediately have another believer in your cause.

But none of this is going to come instantly. Everyone starts from the beginning. No one is immediately rich or well known, even celebrities that are born into wealthy families have to build up their own personal brand. They might have had it easier than you or I, the path might have been shorter, but it’s the same path in the sense that we all have to build a branding that means something.

Without a reason where does it leave you? Nowhere. With a reason you can change the world.

Having a reason for being someone or doing something the way you do it also applies to Public Speaking.

2. Does your speech topic match the why of your personal branding statement?
Now flowing from branding yourself into the reason why you do public speaking, here are a few examples of topics that have something missing.

-Some people give a speech about money.

-Others give a speech about achievement.

-Some give a speech about the dangers of dumping wastes into local rivers and oceans.

There are so many different topics out there but we’ve heard them so many times. It gets boring when you hear the same thing over and over again.

So how can you be different from the rest? Instead of just speaking about your topic, speak about the reason why you are speaking about a particular topic. Taking, for example, the topics I mentioned before. This time I’ll add a reason.

-Some people give a speech to help you earn more money.

-Some people give a speech to help you to achieve more.

-Some people give a speech to show you a way to prevent the dangers of dumping wastes into local rivers and oceans.

After seeing the second version of these common topics, you should have a better sense of clarity about the reason why the speaker is promoting themselves through these topics and of course the second version of these topics match with the speaker’s personal branding statement. So next time you’re getting ready to make a speech be sure to think about your personal branding statement first, THEN, come up with a topic that closely matches with your image.

Here’s another example of connecting your brand with your topic, right now you have a man in his early thirties standing in front of you. He’s put all his hard effort and heart into his blog which has so far got him opportunities to make small yet powerful impacts on the Surabayan society. That person is me. We’re talking about how personal branding statements affect all that you do in your business life, and the topics you choose for speaking events.

At the beginning of this post, I purposely mentioned my personal branding statement in my introduction because I wanted to let you know WHY I’m here. I hope that it’s already clear to you. The reason why I’m here is not for me, the most important reason is for you. That’s why I’m here. In case you don’t remember my personal branding statement, here it is:

“Spread the importance of gaining knowledge through reading so that you can empower yourself to make impactful changes in your world.”

-Matt Hutson, BookMattic

In addition to making sure your topic is clear to your why, you also must inspire your audience to take ACTION by providing a reason WHY, what you’re saying is important to them. Not just WHAT the topic is or why it’s important to you. I think the audience already knows it’s important to you otherwise why would you be there speaking in front of them. You’ve got to create a message that goes straight to your audience’s heart. This WILL give you a leg up on branding yourself.

The reason why you give a speech is to help or inform people in some kind of way. So when you’re not on stage you must also pursue the same type of goal as when you give a speech. Remember, you ARE your brand, so live it, breathe it, sleep it and think about it always.

There is one other thing I’d like to mention in this post that you need to have to make sure your branding sticks out.

3. Honesty Is Important In Branding Yourself

While you’re thinking of your reason why you’re speaking you must present yourself as an honest person.

Humans are amazing at detecting whether someone is being genuine or not. So it’s best to always keep your WHY clear of any lies, make sure it matches with your personality and the way you promote yourself.

Imagine a sleazy used car salesperson. You’ve seen one or least heard of how they are, right? That is not what you want to look like when you get up on stage or most importantly off stage. What you do want to be like on and off the stage is a genuine and helpful person. The more you help people the more you’ll get back, the more you’ll make new connections which in turn will give you more opportunities. The benefits go on and on.

Powerful Lesson: Your brand is your brand only. No one else can ever take that away from you. Know why you are going out there and speaking with people, make sure it’s connected to your brand clearly. Treat your own brand with respect, own it, live it, and spread it to others. Look at it this way, if you don’t say what your brand is out loud to other people, then how will they ever know about it? So spread it!

Some Other Aspects to Consider When Branding Yourself

There’s so much more that goes into branding yourself as a public speaker. Actually too many to mention them all here, but next week I will be posting a follow-up post about branding yourself as well as marketing yourself as a public speaker, so be sure to keep on following BookMattic for updates on this topic. In fact, this topic is a necessity for anyone in the business world, so even if you’re not actually speaking in front of big audiences, you may find yourself having to lead a meeting.

My goal for this series of posts is to strengthen your ability to promote yourself with your own personal branding. To close out this post I’ll give you a few insights on what is to come as part of these series of posts about branding and ways of marketing yourself as a public speaker:

Build a community: What are some ways you can build a following around your brand? There are, of course, some obvious ones such as a Facebook group, but much more that you can use to your advantage that I will cover next week.

Showcase your portfolio on social media: Use video! Facebook Live and Stories, YouTube, Instagram Live and Stories too. You’ve got them at your fingertips so use them. Videos show people who have never seen you what you’re like. Post video clips of your events as well. Let people know who you are.

Reach out: Sometimes we get stuck behind a computer or phone screen way too much. You still need to get out there and talk with people. Make connections through personal interaction. Word of mouth is still a major form of marketing. In fact, sometimes we neglect the power of word of mouth.

Write a book: Once you’ve got some credibility and have built a following, it’s time to write a book or an e-book. This will increase your credibility even more.