by Wendi J. McNeill
The only way your going to get more speaking engagements and fill your schedule is if you get your message out and get it out to the right people, the people in your market who have the buying power to hire you. Get to know them and build relationships and you will find your schedule full every year.
How do I get my message out? Market, market, market! Opportunities don’t normally land on your lap without doing a bit of work first, once you start marketing yourself one door leads to another as you continue to market on a daily basis and build your platform. There are so many ways to market and finding the ones that work for you will be through trial and error, something that works for one may not work for another. My suggestion first is to make sure your website is in place and marketable this is extremely important as planners and media professionals are online now looking for their experts so make sure you have everything on your website to back your “talk” and show you are the expert and this will make for an easy decision for them.
Another recommendation for marketing is to start an article marketing campaign and write articles on a regular basis and have them submitted to article sites, this will place you as the expert and link back to your website. If you don’t have time to market your articles then think about hiring a virtual assistant to help you with this.
Another marketing technique is to join many networking groups both online and off, build relationships and grow your mailing list (very important) you want to grow your mailing list so you can continue to market to your audience, share valuable content that will help them solve their problems and also offer your services and products that will assist them as well.
Although there are so many ways to market both online and off the above are just a few to get you going and remember even though you may not like marketing yourself it has to be done or nobody will ever know you exist. Once again if marketing isn’t your thing think about hiring a virtual assistant to assist you in this area. Keep marketing on a continuous basis and you will see a world of difference!