November 3, 2020 — With the explosive adoption of Smart Speakers, the primary interaction with your content will become auditory instead of visual. On the world wide web, our brand revolves around a URL, logo, tagline, color palette, font, images, etc., but when your audience is no longer engaging with your content through a screen, traditional brand elements become invisible. In a voice first environment, when your audience just asks for what they want, they expect the answer to be returned verbally. In a voice first world, what does your brand look like, (I mean, sound like)? In this talk, I explore the components of a verbal brand, how to prepare for the shift from written content to verbal content, as well as the future of voice technology and how to prepare for it.

June 2, 2019 — Whether you’ve been blogging for a decade, or you’re just starting out… creating great content for brands is one of the best ways to make money. Throughout this session, you’ll discover ways to use your own skill-sets to bring value to brands, regardless of what your own personal following might be! You are able to provide value whether your content lives on your own platforms, the brand’s platforms, or both; and it’s your job to get creative with how you package your value. My goal is to answer the following questions…

What services should I offer?
Chances are that your blogging experience has turned you into a one-stop-shop media company! And there are many ways that you can bundle those skills into services that companies are willing to pay for. We will discuss a variety of specific and marketable services as well as ways to figure out which services will be the best fit for you personally.

How can I market those services?
Once you have a clear idea of what you’d like to provide to brands, you need to convince them that you are the best person for the job! The good news? There are endless ways to market your services, and we will dive into various strategies that you can start implementing right away. The bad news? They all take time, effort, and consistency. There are clear paths to success, but there aren’t any shortcuts.

Who should I reach out to?
This part of the process is so crucial! After putting in so much time and effort into the services and the marketing strategy, we are just ready to throw it out into the world and see what happens. Unfortunately, if you don’t have a massive following already, this method won’t get you very far. Instead, we want to be strategic about finding new direct contacts that are a great fit for what we are offering. Again, this is time-consuming (and oftentimes brain-numbing), but it works!

The beauty of this process is that any blogger can follow it and find a new source of income. Once we start thinking of ourselves as mini media companies, a whole new world opens up!

April 18, 2018 — Brand is a popular buzzword, lately. And yet, it is an old and established concept, one that tugs to some very remote and deep strings within us.

So, HOW did we become brands? And how should we tend to our “personal brand”?

In this talk we will discuss what brands are, how they are built, and what we need to pay attention to, both to care for our own public image as well as to “see through” some of the glamorous limelight that may surround others.

Presentation Slides »