5 Ways to Make the Most Out of Your Speaker Website
I’ve worked with planners and speakers for 18 years and it is always a joy to come across an organized, neat, attractive website with everything needed easily at-hand. Anything less can seriously hinder your speaking career.
You have a few moments, minutes at best, to captivate a planner. If you make it frustrating they will move on. Make the hiring decision easy, and the gratitude will come across in bookings. Many times a planner will print an article or Onesheet to bring up before a board or selection committee.
Make sure yours are ready to go.
For each of your pages, do the following steps:
- Do your Homework
I have a blog article that quickly goes over important elements of a Speakers website. Read this article to start today’s task: https://charlijane.com/the-top-5-essential-elements-that-make-an-incredible-and-profitable-speaker-website/
- Critique Your Site
Using the list of website features in my article, can you see areas that you need to improve on your website? Open your website, and begin to make a list of the changes your website needs.
- Weed out the Clutter
Is it easy to find what you need on your website? How many clicks does it take to get to your Speaker information? Is what you do and who you serve instantly obvious on the homepage? Are your Onesheet or sample article downloads and videos easily accessible?
- Don’t Make Them Think!
Are you using “cute” link titles when someone might just want it to be easy to find your “About” page and your Speaker information? “Home, About, Contact, Speaking Services, Books” etc. might seem boring, but haven’t you ever been to a website and had a hard time finding the About page? What did you end up doing? It’s your job to make this easy.
- Schedule the Changes
Whether you maintain your website yourself, or you have a professional to assist you, you need to get the changes into your schedule. Do what you can do today, but if there’s major work to be done schedule time for it or contact the professional who works on your website with a list of what changes you need made.
Branding
A brand is the full sensory and emotional experience of your company that exists solely in someone else’s experience. The act of branding is an attempt to influence that image through the use of colors, words, style, graphics, content, messages, mission, and every form of communication.
Your website is the center of your online branding universe around which your entire online presence and communications should orbit. It’s your job to make sure it’s attractive, easy to navigate, that it’s up-to-date, and that it looks complete. It’s also an evolving document. It’s never “done” while it should always appear complete.
Extra Tips
If you will benefit from seeing examples of speaker websites in action, then visit other speakers’ websites for inspiration and motivation. If this will just give you analysis paralysis and make you feel overwhelmed, save the thought for another day. Never copy from someone else! It’s OK to be inspired, but make sure your content is your own. You may see elements or questions that another speaker answers that you think would be helpful for you to include for your own potential customers.
All your materials – your Onesheet, your business card, your social media sites, should all revolve around the same look and feel, all portray the same messages. Put all your materials in one place and compare them with your website. Make sure that everything looks like it belongs to the same family.
If one social media website goes out of commission or becomes unpopular, you then leverage the next and you carry your audience with you from one to the next through the central hub: your website.
Make sure you are capturing leads into an email database through your website. This is a great way of helping your audience find you on new social media platforms, notifying them of upcoming speaking engagements, and letting them know when you’ve published a book or put out a new blog post or article.
If you liked this post you will LOVE our “Free to $10K, Getting Paid What You Deserve as a Speaker” video training. You can watch it here https://charlijane.com/free-to-10k
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