You have already determined your niche, now we want to dig deeper and take another step into being a specialized speaker.
It is important to decide who will be your target audience?
You have many industries to choose from: the health industry, the fitness industry, to women’s groups and even men’s adventure groups, real estate industry, construction industry, manufacturing industry, sales industry and so much more. The choice is yours. You know your expertise better than anyone else. You have a niche area such as leadership, team building, sales, branding, social media, relationships, etc.
How do you decide whom you want to reach with your message?
My area of expertise is helping people start and grow their business and build a strong platform. I do this through tools and resources Charli Jane Speakers provides. Now, I could have worked with any group, but I chose to work with Speakers. Which means my area of specialty is business start-ups, marketing and platform building within the speaking industry.
Choose your slice of the pie and stick to it…this will fill your schedule.
Quick Tips:
First, write down your area of expertise. Then, under it write who you want your audience to be. Whom would you like to be working with? In what industry do you feel you connect well? With whom do you want to share your knowledge? For whose problems do you have the solution?
Once that is determined, you develop your topic(s). It is best to concentrate on one topic at a time. I believe that a speaker should guard against spreading himself or herself too wide. Narrowing down your topic and target audience will benefit you in becoming the Speaker of Choice and expert in that specialized field.
Be creative! This is important when giving your topic a title. Do something different and something that will stand out and catch the eye of the meeting planner. Just start writing down different topic titles and you will be amazed at what will start coming to you…while you work, while you drive, while you are doing other activities, sharing some ideas with a trusted colleague, too. Ideas will pop into your head for a great topic title.
Now close your eyes and envision yourself in an audience in front of which you would be presenting. Put your mind in theirs, become one with your audience and ask yourself, “What would I want to learn”? “What can I benefit from?” “What’s in it for me?” “How will it make me feel?” When you do this correctly, and you really put yourself in the mind-space of the audience, then the answers you come up with will reveal some amazing ideas for topic titles!
Make sure your topic title is relevant to the content and to your speech. This is important. Then, the next big step is to create your brand around it.
Wise words: You do not want to spend money and time only to find out you should have done things differently from the beginning. Be sure it is an in-demand topic and there is an audience to serve. Take some time with this because it’s going to become the beginning of branding yourself and making you…YOU!