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If you are growing your professional services practice, one of the top three strategies for building your personal brand and attracting more of your ideal clients is through public speaking.

If you have a business blog, there are a number of ways that you can integrate your on-line presence with your professional speaking that will not only build your credibility and reputation but also ensure that you get approached as a speaker by event organisers.

Here are three actions you can take today to power up your professional speaking though your business blog:

1. Provide valuable resources – Event organisers want to hire people who are considered experts in their field. Make sure that you have content rich articles on your business blog that provide not just that “what to do” but also “how to do it” in your field of expertise. If you provide such great information at no cost, you can be sure that event organisers will be curious as to just what you will share for a paid speaking gig and will be more likely to call you.

Adding new articles on a regular basis will help you come up in the search engines for key words that event organisers are searching on. My business blog articles act as my unpaid sales force 27/7 and 365 days a year.

2. Create your speaker showcase – Make it easy for event organisers to get a sense of you and your ability as a speaker. Hiring you sight unseen is a high risk for them even if you were referred to them.

I recommend that you have a section of your website specifically dedicated to event organisers which includes elements such as the details of key note addresses you have given, access to testimonials from event organisers you have worked with, access to audio files and video files so that event organisers can see and hear you in action and a calendar of your forthcoming events so that event organisers get a sense of the kind of organisations you are already working with.

3. Provide bespoke resources – So you have delivered your presentation but how do you ensure that you can provide additional information and valuable resources to people who attend your event? This is something that event organisers will really thank you for as this is perceived as added value.

When I speak to large groups I create a special page on my business blog which I include in the handouts I give attendees to my events. This page is created specifically for them and lists additional resources and tools that they can implement and is highly specific and relevant for the community I am speaking with and is considered to be a valuable resource by event attendees and event organisers alike.

YOUR ’BIZ GROWTH’ ACTION STEPS

If you are looking to build your brand and want to explore the marketing strategy of professional speaking, or you want to take your professional speaking up to the next level, I recommend that you review your on-line marketing and communications plan to support your professional speaking career against these three action points.

What other ways do you integrate your business blog into your role as a professional speaker?

© Krishna De, 2007. All rights reserved. This article is extracted from Krishna’s home study programme “Marketing On A Shoestring Budget”.

Update 27 August 2007 – this article was included in a compilation of ”72 More Blog Tips From The Blogging Community” by Darren Rowse of Problogger in his “31 Days to Building a Better Blog” series which you can access here.