While you can’t be everything to everyone you can be yourself to everyone. That means blending and interweaving your personal brand online AND offline. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Azadeh Yaraghi.
Azadeh is a brand strategist, speaker, author, the past President of CAPS BC, and the 1st Canadian team leader of the West Coast Alliance with NSA. With 15+ years of international experience, she’s worked at top agencies in Paris & NYC, built remarkable brands, and earned several marketing awards.
We dive into topics including:
- Where and how many speakers go wrong by not blending their online and offline brands.
- How you can start improving your online brand today.
- What happens when people see your online and offline brands and they don’t match up.
- How to find your brand’s voice as a speaker.
- Why building a personal brand means knowing how you want people to feel about you.
- The importance of not using AI for content as it is, but actually training it to create content in your voice.
- How to bring your online brand offline with you.
- Why no other time than now has authenticity and trust been more important to speakers.
- Give yourself grace to learn and evolve in time.
- The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to successfully blend your online and offline brands.
…and more golden nuggets of advice!
Why is Blending Your Online and Offline Brands Especially Important to Speakers?
Blending your online and offline brands is especially important for speakers. Let’s say you’ve got a speaker who is amazing on stage. They present well, they wow the audience, and those who don’t know them in the audience, whether it’s a keynote speaker or someone who just did training or they went to their workshop, they go to their online presence to check them out, and it’s kind of like, oh, there’s a bit of a disappointment after seeing their online presence. But then you also remember experiencing them as a dynamic presenter.
And then on the flip side, there’s the speaker that does an amazing job on their online presence, like flashy videos, great headshots, just like super professional, and then you have them come on Zoom and they don’t look like their online presence.
Usually they look worse than their online presence. Either they haven’t prepared properly, they just look super casual, or their online presence (pictures and videos) look 10 years younger than what they look like now. Sometimes people are do a double take, like, “Oh, is this…”
And they’re kind of like going, going back, like, “That’s the video. That’s the website. This is the per- Oh, it’s, it’s the same name.” Then you do this double take. Yeah. And so the in-person now doesn’t match the online presence. When it comes to personal branding, that’s a big challenge for professional speakers to bridge the gap between the in-person experience and the online experience.
How to Improve Your Online Personal Brand
The easiest one is headshots. We all do them, and if you’re a member of NSA, a lot of times, I know you have photographers in the room, if you go to the annual conference (Influence), you know there’s gonna be photographers at the conference. Take advantage of redoing your headshots once a year.
If it’s not once a year, once every two years. And a lot of times it’s not, and, and this is for mostly, let’s say, for women than men, sometimes our styling changes, hair changes, um, hair color changes. So you just wanna make sure all of your photography is updated as much as possible. And then there’s your video…
Consider your sizzle reel or your snippets of videos that you’ve taken while you’re presenting. If they’re from 10 years ago, then yes, maybe you don’t look similar to what you look like now. But also, maybe your messaging has changed. Maybe if those videos are from four or five years ago, you don’t really talk about similar things today, or maybe something has shifted in the message.
It’s normal that your business evolves and changes, and your messaging evolves and changes. It’s not necessarily an extreme situation like you used to be a communication specialist and now you’re an AI specialist. You’re not changing lanes per se. But it’s more so nowadays, and especially with AI’s influence, maybe there’s another take on your messaging that you’re talking about now. Whereas four or five years ago if you still talk about the same thing today, it may feel outdated.
So those are some of the things that people are listening for, and you might not even notice because you’ve moved on, and the world’s moved on. You’re sending your proposals and all that jazz, but people are still going back to your LinkedIn, to your social media, to your website and checking you out, and is all of your content still up to date?
How to Find Your Brand’s Voice as a Speaker
How do you find your voice? Azadeh says if you’re a speaker you already have your voice. You just need to hone it on stage and off stage and not just when you’re presenting. So, if you’re stuck and let’s say you’re in an interview conversation, are you prepared to come and have a thoughtful conversation? Did you research the interviewer’s interview style beforehand? Do you know what brand messages you want to get across in the interview?
If you’re a successful speaker you should know your message. But if you feel like that voice has changed and evolved, then what Azadeh usually recommends to her clients is write out what that new voice or messaging is. The first thing she suggests is to focus on the first three to seven seconds; how do you want people to feel about you in that short frame of time? Because that’s all it takes to judge you sometimes because people’s initial reaction to your brand is an emotional one. Be prepared to impress and know what you want to impress upon people.
So, if you want people to feel trust, peace of mind, and a sense of calmness with you, then you bring that in your messaging and in your presence because in those first moments you want people to connect with you in that way. But if you want people to feel energized and feel your passion and just be like, “Oh my gosh, I need more of this person in my life,” then that’s the energy that you bring, and that’s the kind of messaging that you bring, so your stories and your examples are geared around that.
And that’s just the beginning of the story!
Watch the episode for the rest of the story and more golden nuggets of advice!
You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”
About My Guest
Azadeh Yaraghi is an insightful brand strategist, marketing expert, speaker, #1 bestselling author, and performer. With 15+ years of international experience, she’s worked at top agencies in Paris & NYC, built remarkable brands, and earned several marketing awards.
Azadeh is passionate about supporting purpose-driven clients who want to grow their business and ultimately leave behind a positive and lasting legacy. She works with entrepreneurs and organizations who want to get to the heart of their brand so they can attract their ideal clients, build trust, and accelerate growth.
She is the past President of CAPS (BC Chapter), 1st Canadian team leader of the WestCoast Alliance with NSA, and a proud mentor at Futurpreneur. In her free time, she enjoys flamenco and salsa dancing, and taking long walks along the seawall with her loving husband in spectacular Vancouver, Canada.
Click here to connect with Azadeh on LinkedIn!
Click here to learn more about Azadeh’s business!
Want to learn more about branding? Check out “How Speakers Can Create a Dominating Brand Position”
