Greetings everyone,
Some of you might find this article helpful. It has to do with branding your website, and I wrote it for my industry, however it does have wider applications. For all internet marketers, self-branding is an important factor to consider if you ever plan on creating and selling products in your niche, or really just gaining any type of standing or prestige within your market(s).
So I hope you find this helpful!
Branding Your Site 101
By Richard Andrews
Now that we’ve established you need to leverage the all important expert status into an abundant speaking business, we’ll be working on branding you as an expert, and the single best way to do that is by positioning you as such through both your website and your blog.
Keep in mind that, in essence, you’ve been branding yourself all along if you’ve already set into motion your online promotional strategy in the pursuit of becoming an inspirational speaker. Your Facebook page, your LinkedIn profile, and any other public accounts that display your business information are already serving as the bedrock of your personal brand. But those elements are only the basics. What you require now is next level branding with the development (or recreation) of your website and blog.
The Guerilla Speaker approach outlined below is going to give your upgraded website a massive advantage because it will position you as superior to the mass of generic speaker websites out there right now. In addition, many speakers still don’t have blogs, so you’ll be building your perceived expert status in multiple ways.
The very first thing you’ll be doing in branding your website is some competitive analysis. It’s important that you learn to beat your competition without looking or sounding like them. Do research to see what the websites of other speakers in your niche look like. Make sure that you avoid using the same color or design features that your competitors are using. Think about specific actions you can employ in forging your branding image that will position you as superior to your direct competitors.
Now comes the fun part – the actual branding for your website. This should start with the basic step of creating a branding statement that will appear on your website, perhaps on your ‘About Me’ or even home page. Your branding statement should be powerful enough to grab the emotions of your prospects, while giving the impression that your offerings are unique, special and distinct from your competitors. This statement is something that needs to stand out in your prospects mind, but the shorter the better. Don’t overload them with too much information in your branding statement. More descriptive depth about your speaking services will come later.
The following three elements are foundational to branding your site:
YOUR DOMAINS NAME: The more memorable, the better. If you’re already well known in other fields you might want your domain to be your full name, but I suggest that you use keywords from your speaking niche. In fact, my advice is that you focus on incorporating as many keywords from your chosen niche into your domain name as possible. This will greatly help your search engine rankings when someone is looking for a speaker on your topic. For instance, your domain could be: www.johnsmithsalesspeaker.com, or www.janesmithfuturetrendsspeaker.com. You get the idea. Having both your name and keywords from your speaking niche in your domain will help expand your brand when you start using your domain name for all your business materials (letter heads, business cards, post cards, statements, etc.)
GRAPHICS AND LOGO: Your graphics and colors will create a mood for your website, which if properly done, will convey all the right information about how and your motivational speaking business ought to be perceived. Logos are the single most important design feature of your website. Even though you’re a personal and not a corporate brand, you can still develop you own logo. It might contain your name, or keywords relating to your speaking offerings or presentation topic. In any case, incorporating a solid logo and clean, attractive graphics will help establish your site’s brand.
YOUR WRITING STYLE: Our words form our personality, and they are the chief indicators of who we are when someone forms an online relationship with us. For visitors to your site, your words need to project the personality of your speaking services. You need to write in a way that reflects who you are, what you stand for, and what you are capable of delivering to your customers and clients. You won’t be perfect at this in the beginning, but with practice and growth you’ll start learning how to make potential clients see you as the best, and hopefully only, answer to their problems.
And that’s it! Pretty simple, isn’t it? Granted, there’s far more to branding than the aforementioned, but for the time being this will get you started in conceptualizing your website branding. Your domain name, your graphics, logos, and colors, and your writing style form the basis of your web branding.
Happy Branding!
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Hopefully some of you will find that information useful.
Best,
Richard
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