Creating Separate Brands as a Speaker – Good or Bad Idea?

Thanks to Linda from Facebook who asked todays question about creating separate brands as a speaker.

While it is possible to do, I don’t advise doing it.   Too many speakers today are getting in the business because they’ve seen speakers from yesteryear and the new speakers try modeling or copying what the old speakers who are already established have done.  There’s a problem with that.  The most famous speakers of today are using a business model that is about 40 years old.  While it works great for them as an already an established brand, the new speakers of tomorrow don’t have the luxury to be a generalists and solve everybody’s problems all the time for every thing.

I would recommend instead, develop one really strong brand identity.  Realizing of course, most people won’t take that advice – if you do choose to develop three or more brands then you must have three separate websites and three different SEO campaigns and keep them completely separate.  Otherwise you’ll lose credibility.

For example if I said that I was the speaker training expert and then you went online and you found that I also boast myself as the relationship coach expert and then you keep digging and  you find yet another website that says I am the small business entrepreneur specialist for companies that are in the IT business – all of a sudden my credibility of all three brands drops down because I’m not really a specialist at all.   Today more than ever, people are looking for specialists in a specific area.   Rather than develop multiple brands, ask yourself is there a way you can embody all those services into one brand.

For example, I have a program called Verbal Aikido which is clearly about negotiation.   That has nothing to do necessarily with professional speaking, but I use the techniques on stage every single day; so rather than just brand myself for professional speaking my new focus is on Mass Communication which includes speaking onstage ,speaking on TV, and it also includes selling to the masses.  Now I can take my speaker training and my negotiation program and it sites nicely under the Mass Communication umbrella and I haven’t lost credibility.

If you’d like some more tips check out http://www.bulletproofspeaking.com and you can register for a free Living eBook from me called The Professional Speaking Secrets of Topher Morrison.