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Do you have a personal brand? Speaker and business trainer Michelle Villalobos thinks you should and has concrete steps to help you get started. In this Showcase, Villalobos talks with MSI’s Diane Mulligan about the concept, which she calls, “fundamental” in marketing your personal services.
Villalobos says personal branding makes, “you… top of mind” and generate referrals and business. She points out that this is especially important where there’s a lot of competition and your work is based on referrals.
“If people are talking about you,” she explains, “that creates a premium for your services.” But in any industry where price-cutting and competition have resulted in what she says is “almost a commoditization of the industry” personal branding can help you stand out.
She says that’s particularly important for meeting planers, where many people are in the industry as side-business, and cut rates.
But how do you go about personal branding?
Villalobos, has just authored a chapter in Dr. Ivan Misner’s book, “Building the Ultimate Network,” that covers that issue in nine steps and shared three of those steps with Mulligan.
The fist step she says is to own your name online. Part of that, she explains, is if it is possible, you should own your name as an online internet address. For example Villalobos owns, “MichelleVillalobos.com.” But there’s more to it. She advises her clients to fill out as many online profiles as you can, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter, Google Plus and Google Profiles. The reason for this, she explains, is that prospective employers are likely going to search your name using Google and that, ideally, you want the entire first page of results to be about you and, “make sure it’s saying about you what’s going to be strategic to get more business.”
The second is to gather testimonials. Villalobos says places like Linkedin are perfect for gathering such testimonials. She cautions, however, to not settle for one or two, because that may appear as though you solicited a couple of your best friends. Instead, she suggests you strive for at least 16. She calls 16 a “magic number (that)…completely establishes your credibility.”
Finally she says to deliver valuable content to your network of sites. However, she warns you need to think of your audience, and, “who’s hiring me?” For example, for event planners, she says they need to think about the corporation-level people who are responsible for hiring event planners.
And what’s the point for doing all of this?
Villalobos says once people are talking about you, “you can get a lot of business and all of a sudden your price points can go up.”
Villalobos is one of a select cadre of professional speakers and trainers who are represented by Mulligan Speakers International.
What did you learn watching the Academy Awards this year? For public speaker and speaker trainer Jeff Vankooten, it was a great lesson of what to do and what not to do when speaking publicly.
“The ones that didn’t use notes were the ones that were the most effective,” explains Vankooten in this edition of MSI showcase. He pointed out that those who use notes, “…came across as very rote.”
He cautions those who have to go before audiences to stay away from what he calls, “your cheat sheets,” because you risk losing contact with your audience.
And what about the moment with actress Angelina Jolie struck her now infamous pose on stage? Jeff says it reminded him of the, “I’m a little tea pot short and stout,” song. The take away message from that, says Vankooten is that, “stance matters.”
Jeff is one of a select cadre of speakers and trainers at Mulligan Speakers International.
“The worst possible thing you could say to me at the end of a talk is, ‘that was interesting,’” says author and speaker Chuck Blakeman. If someone says that, explains Blakeman, that means, “I spoke to your head, not to your heart and definitely did not speak to your life.”
In this Speakers Showcase, Blakeman tells MSI’s Diane Mulligan that when he goes before an audience he hopes to offer something that the audience “can go out with that’s very practical.”
Blakeman hopes that meetings planners are looking for people who both train and motivate because while, “motivational speaking is helpful…it’s also got to be practical.” He suggests that planners not simply settle for people who or are educational or informative, but “people who are transformative.”
Blakeman also tells Mulligan about one of the transformative concepts he’s speaking and writing about, the idea of how technology is reversing some industrial-era aspects of life, including the separation of work and play.
He explains that industrial-era employers only want one portion of a person to report to work and the “messy part” should stay home. With changes in communication technology, Blakeman says, that concept is reversing itself, returning to the way things were before the industrial revolution.
Blakeman is one of a select cadre of speakers and trainers who are represented by Mulligan Speakers International. To learn more about Blakeman and the other MSI speakers, visit mulliganspeakers.com.
