Being a motivational speaker takes a lot of courage as it can be very nerve racking standing in front of a crowd of people, with all eyes on you. Whether you’re someone who thrives on the adrenaline from these situations, or you’re someone who needs a little more encouragement then there are a network of established motivational speakers to support you.
When it comes to being a keynote speaker, you need to be realistic with your goals and targets, as it will not just happen overnight. It takes time, training and practice to reach a good standard of motivational speaking, and its experience that in time can make you a great motivational speaker.
What is a motivational speaker?
Motivational speakers are individuals who help accelerate the performance of companies and brands through work presentations, group talks, team workshops and so much more. Several research studies have shown that when employee engagement is increased and morale is lifted, company profits rise and targets and goals are met. As motivation can be in many forms, motivational speakers have to ensure that they can overcome all obstacles to create audience unity to achieve success. Speakers need to be inspirational and should be considered a role model in eyes of others. They need to believe in the topics they are addressing for the good of others and for the good the company.
But where do you start?
A lot of individuals start off as keynote speakers for a company and can sometimes be discovered within their own brand. From this point certain opinions and ideas will need to be nurtured to create meaningful change within. Training and workshops are a great way to get started as you can engage with other members of your team, generate ideas and opinions. Interactive activities are also a fun way to hold workshops.
Having coaching sessions allows internal and external help from people with expertise in the area of keynote speaking regardless of topic. Of course it would be rather helpful if the coach was from within your industry so that they familiar with the area of discussion. You can also arrange consulting solutions from experts, this is where the expert would share their success stories and can help you customize specific programs to increase your learning and development retention.
Case studies are great form of support as you can draw from real evidence and statistics. This allows people to understand you or your brands vision more clearly. Visual information and visual cues are something that every speaker should consider, as 40% of the population are visual learners.
Target audience is another key factor to recognize within your motivational speaking practices, as the target audience will vary each time. For example if you wanted to be a motivational keynote speaker for women, your target audience would be a wide range of women of all ages. Another example could be that if you wanted to be a motivational keynote speaker for youths, your target audience could be anyone from 15 years of age and under.
Once the target audience has been defined, a speaker would then spend the time researching particular attributes within that audience so that they can relate. For example topics addressed to youths can be things like school, adolescence, use of illegal substances, bullying etc. Whereas a target audience of women might be focused on topics like childbirth, feminism, women’s rights etc.
This is a guest post by Farnaz Wallace.
Farnaz Wallace is a thought leader, author, speaker, management consultant and growth strategist passionate about helping leaders and companies embrace and grow in a New World Marketplace pulsing with culturally diverse make up of consumers, employees and relationships. She connects rapid, critical demographics and cultural shifts into profit potential and provides a clear roadmap for future growth and profitability. With a proven track record and over 25 years of experience in marketing and branding, she transforms traditional business models into customer-centric, best-in-class growth platforms.