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NB: This newsletter is published every Monday. Point your browser to www.tayosolagbade.com/sdnuggets to read at least ONE new post added to my SD Nuggets blog on a different category from Tuesday till Saturday (sometimes even Sundays) in line with this publishing schedule

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IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS newsletter is published online on the “reincarnated” version of my Self-Development (SD) Nuggets blog. I continue to put finishing touches to the content. If you encounter ANY bad/dead links, and you can spare the time, email it to me via tayo at tksola dot com. Thanks in advance

No. 152: Do You Need Blogging To Achieve More Speaking Success?

I say YES, because to become an expert-who-gets-paid-to-speak, you NEED to establish yourself as a thought leader – indeed an authority – in the minds of your target audience. Blogging is a powerful (and zero cost) strategy that can be used to achieve that outcome for the long term.

I say this as an expert-who-gets-paid-to-speak, who has now been blogging Mondays to Saturdays (sometimes Sundays) for over a year and a half.

The results I’ve gotten in that relatively short period (like this recent one), prove that blogging, properly done, deliver significant, yet timeless self-promotion benefits!

Before I began blogging, I used to publish a monthly web based html newsletter (called the Self-Development Digest™) which I emailed to subscribers.

I did that – monthly – from 2006 right into early 2012.

Then in June 2012, I came across Patrick Meninga’s very educative 1 hour interview with Yaro Starak.

In it he shared the secret of how he started a blog, and through diligent and intelligent hard work, grew it to earn over $2,000 US dollars monthly via Google adsense..

And he also shared details of how he eventually sold the blog for an amazing $200,000 US dollars – becoming an Internet celebrity in the process.

Google “Patrick Meninga” to learn more.

After listening to Patrick’s MP3 interview, I distilled useful lessons I learnt from it, into an article on my blog – for others to learn from.

I did so because I realized blogging provided a much more effective means of promoting one’s work to a target audience. And could see it took much less effort, than I was expending in manually updating my HTML newsletter and website.

WordPress – being the powerful Content Management system that it is – makes the process of writing and publishing one’s ideas so much easier.

And it also lends itself much more readily to being indexed by search engine, by the very nature of its design.

As long as one publishes content that will be considered interesting or potentially useful by one’s desired audience, using WordPress can dramatically boost one’s visibility online in multiple ways e.g. via search engines, as well as on Social Media platforms.

Now, I had already experienced the benefits of writing useful content even with the manual HTML approach I was using (on my 9 year old former primary domain: spontaneousdevelopment.com)

I had also used article marketing via www.ezinearticles.com to boost the promotional reach of my writing.

Over the years, I’d seen my write ups get widely republished by other website publishers who picked it up via Ezinearticles.com. And the results had come in form of pre-qualified traffic to my website – some of which resulted in sales of my products.

Apart from the growing website traffic, I’d also over the years seen my books get purchased from my online store. Sales reports popping into my email in box, each week.

Then there were the websites that published reports, term papers and other resources, in which they quoted me on topics like Emotional Intelligence, based on articles I’d written.

In addition, I had the publisher of a university journal, in India, write me for permission to include my article titled “Are Your Employees Happy & Satisfied With Their Jobs? (A Ten Item Quiz That Can Help You Find Out). That journal has since been published and put on sale – my article was included, with my permission.

In essence I’m saying that I had seen how my relentless commitment to writing useful content enabled me build name recognition, credibility and authority status.

It therefore occurred to me that using blogging the way Patrick Meninga recommended it be done, would simply enable me take the results I was getting to a MUCH higher level.

Like I said at the start of this piece, as an expert in your chosen field, you are a potential thought leader.

But note the word I used there: POTENTIAL.

As long as you are competent and qualified, it means you have, in you the capacity, and capability, to become a thought leader in your field.

However, you must MANIFEST that potential. That is, you must put it to work for you.

The most effective way to do that will be to share your ideas, experiences, insights etc.

Now, a variety of ways exist to share what you know, in order to get accepted as an authority.

Speaking is a very obvious one of them…

However, you first have to get people to think highly enough of you to invite you to speak!

You have to SHOW them you know enough of something they desire to learn about.

To do that, you need to offer them “samples” of your knowledge and insights. And you have to do this on a regular basis, without relenting. That way, they will believe you have MORE to offer.

What’s more, if you do this right, they will actually assume you will be a better knowledge provider to connect with, compared to any competitors or rivals they are aware you have.

My experiences and observations convince me that offering such “samples” to your target audience is best done by writing creatively.

By CREATIVELY, I mean not just writing randomly, but doing it in a way that is deliberate and constantly evolving

This belief was what I based my entry into blogging upon, back in June 2012 (and today, I’m reaping massive multi-dimensional rewards, even more than I’d imagined possible) .

I knew I needed to do as Patrick had said – share passionately, what I knew. And I was already used to doing that from the article writing I’d been doing for years.

But I was excited to see the organized structure that a blog would help me achieve. For instance, the archives facilitated review of what I’d written, and exploring book ideas from them.

In fact, my new book titled “Kukuru Danger™: Adventures (& Misadventures!) of a School Age Child Trying to Make Sense of the World and his purpose in it!”  which I will publish in my online store this week, was partly written using 2 articles I wrote on this blog last year.

And I’m already compiling material to publish a book on public speaking using a collection of my most read blog posts on the subject in a few weeks. [ See what I mean? And this is apart from the many successes (paid speaking/product sales wise) I’ve shared about in past articles.]

Those were the additional benefits of blogging that I foresaw. And they are what people who fit your target audience profile WILL SEE, when they check you out!

The writing you churn out via your blog (if useful) will gradually win them over, making them consider you ahead of your peers.

By the time decision makers contact you, and you “converse”with them in a manner that shows you’re as good as your written content suggests you are, chances are good they’ll choose to hire you over others.

It’s simple common sense. No meeting planner wants to hire a speaker who will under perform or disappoint.

So they always want to assure themselves you have the depth, and delivery, that is required to impress their members.

Your blog, with updated, and useful content gives them a good avenue to establish that, to a great extent.

I like to think of it as proactive/futuristic marketing, in which you’re writing now, to meet the needs and interests of potential clients, who are yet to “find you”.

By the time they do, you’ll have built a critical mass of useful content that will entice them to contact you!

But get this: If you do your blogging, as part of a Web Marketing System, such that videos, audios, and other “content” are accessible through it/via social media, you’ll achieve multiple benefits.

Final Words: Blogging – done on a consistent basis, to share useful content – boosts an expert’s credibility, and earns him/her authority status.

When that happens, s/he will naturally become an “attractive” option for meeting planners looking to hire an expert-who-speaks.

Note that apart from boosting your chances of getting hired to speak, “visibility” conferred by blogging can also attract new/repeat sales leads to you, for products and services you offer!

And that’s why many leading experts-who-speak, and even renowned mentors of highly paid speakers (like this one), use blogging for self-promotion.

So, why not get started with blogging today? Don’t know how? Or need help? Click here to contact me!

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