Brands, and logos, and mission statements aren’t just for companies. If you are regularly presenting, you need to establish your presentation brand. But what does that mean? In the world of public speaking, it’s primarily a combination of two things: style and marketing.
Style
Each and every presenter has his or her own style. Some presenters are known for being more spontaneous and laid back. Others tend to be more polished and professional. In order to establish your presentation brand, you need to know what your specific presentation style is. If you need help figuring out your presentation style, consider taking Badge, our presentation persona assessment (it’s like the Myers-Briggs for public speakers).
Once you know more about your personal speaking style, you’ll need to do 3 things: elevate it, solidify it, and communicate it.
- Elevate it: This simply means not letting “it’s my style” become an excuse for weaknesses that you can overcome. For example, if you consider yourself to be a laid-back speaker, this isn’t a license to forego proper planning or to strive for excellence. Identifying your style means honestly examining both your strengths and your weaknesses in an effort to elevate your overall delivery and performance.
- Solidify it: Once you know what your style is, you’ll want to solidify it. This means keeping it pretty consistent. Of course each speaking event changes a little based on the context and audience. But for the most part, you should work to maintain a consistent speaking identity. That way, the people who hire you know what to expect and your audience comes to recognize your presentation brand. After all, it takes 5-7 impressions before customers start to recognize a brand. They can’t do that if your style keeps changing.
- Communicate it: If you only had 3 words to tell people about your speaking style, what would they be? Stop right now and try to identify them. Once you’ve identified them, you can use them to guide your own brand, meaning, you can focus on them as goals every time you take the stage. But you can also include them in your marketing as a way to communicate who you are as a speaker.
Marketing
Once you know your presentation brand, it’s time to market it. If marketing is a field that scares you or feels outside of your expertise, remember that it’s relational. It’s not manipulative sales schemes. Brand marketing is the effort to create a reciprocal and trusting relationship between you (your brand) and your audience/customer.
One of the first things you’ll want to do is create a logo. If you don’t feel comfortable doing this yourself, hire a graphic designer to help. After all, your logo is face of your presentation brand, so it’s well worth the investment. In Entrepreneur, Su Mathews Hale of design firm Lippincott says that your logo is the “visual cue that tells a story of the brand’s culture, behavior, and values.”
As you think about your logo and marketing materials, use the same 3 strategies you used for speaking style: elevate it (start by making sure you have attractive, professional marketing), solidify it (make sure it is consistent in all forms), and communicate it (use it on varied media platforms to get your brand out there).
Check back on Friday, when we’ll share 3 things to consider when creating your brand, and we’ll go into more detail about things like color and font selection for your brand. In the meantime, start thinking about what your brand is. Spend some time getting to know your speaking style and figuring out how to elevate, solidify, and communicate your presentation brand.
Ethos3 can help with presentation development, design, and delivery. Get in touch with one of our experts now.