Video Testimonials

While testimonials are great, they are not all created equal. The best kind to have are video testimonials for a few reasons. You can use it as the video embedded on your page and you can type the words out and post them somewhere else. There is power in watching someone speak highly of a person that feels more sincere and convincing.

New Headshots and Photos

This is the hill that I will die on: Your website can only be as good as your photos. Pixelated photos that are cropped awkwardly are going to hurt you the most. Bright, clear, powerful photos are what your readers are going to connect with. Having professional pictures (and not just selfies) show that you take yourself and your business seriously.
If you are a professional speaker, the best way to communicate is through your photos. Having professional shots of you on stage in front of a crowd shows your reader that you are the real deal. A meeting planner (your target audience) wants to be extremely confident that you know what you are doing and people are going to love it. This leads me to my next point:

Video of You Talking

Any event planner that has done their job a couple of times has seen some bad speakers. I’m guessing most people have had to sit through a talk that wasn’t particularly great. You want to show someone looking to hire you that you are capable of doing the job. Having a few minutes of your most popular presentation is good or even a highlight reel of when you got the punchline and you can hear the audience laughing. If you aren’t already, you should be recording your speeches (with the event planner’s permission) for your promotional content. I hired a speaker once that actually required that we had his presentation recorded. I totally understood why because you want a lot of proof that you are an expert and you never know when you are going to need a particular angle or audience shot.

Downloadable Media Kit

This is something that may be a little more hidden on your website, but it is still something I highly recommend. After you are booked, sending a link to your Media Kit page will save everyone a lot of time. Have your favorite headshots, introduction, or other marketing material like social media posts ready to be downloaded so the organization can start promoting you!

Tour Dates

There are a few benefits to putting your booked dates on your website. It’s more social proof that you are in-demand, so you must be good right? It also helps a planner see immediately if you are available on their event date.

Where You’ve Spoke

Have you been hired by a recognizable company? Put their logo or a testimonial from them as prominently as you can. Again, our goal is for your website to be your ultimate hype-man.

Something I’ve also seen is after a while, speakers putting a map on their website and highlighting all the states that they’ve spoken in. You may find That this makes an audience in an unvisited state selfishly want to be the person that you color that state in for. I will warn you that if you haven’t traveled a lot, this might be an idea for later down the road so that your map is more impressive.

Your Story

It’s an age-old rule in sales that people buy from people that they like. They are even more likely to buy from someone they’ve found something in common with you. It can be scary sometimes to be vulnerable in our businesses, but you are a professional speaker because you have a story or background that others want to learn from.

A Lead Magnet

Social media followers are nice, but honestly, a social media platform could lose steam and shut down or change direction at any time (looking at you, MySpace, Tumblr, etc.) Having email addresses to reconnect with your audience is key. When thinking about a lead magnet, there are a million different ways you could go about this. Is this something you’ll be pitching on stage for your audience to go and download that would potentially lead them to coaching or a course you have? Then make sure it provides value for that audience so they are impressed and look forward to hearing from you in the future.

A Blog or Podcast

There are SO many benefits to blogging on your website. First, the more content you have on your site, the better your website’s SEO, or search engine optimization. To get on the coveted first page of your audience’s searches, Google needs to know who you are and what you speak about. Creating content that is helpful to your audience also builds trust with your potential clients. “People buy from people they know, like, and trust” is Marketing and Sales 101. People will get to know you through your personal stories, like you Because of your personality, and trust you because you’re making an effort to share more about your industry and the things that are important to you. The bonus benefit of writing a blog is that if you want to write a book further along in your career, you’ll have already put in so much time and work that the material may already be written.

Are you someone that struggles with writing? I would also recommend looking into starting your own podcast. The beauty of this is that you can still get all the benefits I just talked about because you can have your podcast transcribed without any extra effort on your part. You’re a speaker, so your voice is most likely your best asset anyways.

Better Speaking Photos and Headshots