Public Speakers: Ignore The New Rules Of Speaking At Your Peril

In 2007, the National Speakers Association, the major trade association for public speakers published a major survey about the public speaking industry.

One of their conclusions was that "NSA speakers are involved in many types of speaking engagements" including: Seminars, Training Events, Breakout sessions, Keynotes, Consulting

The top two audience types for their work was corporations and associations.

Then in a "perfect storm" of circumstances, the economy tanked and wiped out all of the reliable business models in the public speaking industry. The reason for that, in my view, is that professional public speakers ignored the new rules.

Back when the economy was strong, speakers main focus was to pursue speaking engagements, then they would show up and deliver their talk to whomever was in attendance. Some made extra income from the sale of books or other products while others offered consulting or training services to the companies in attendance.

Most speakers spent little time thinking about the attendees who were passionate for the topic being presented, and building relationships with them. Instead they focused on the companies that were there and on getting more speaking engagements. They never thought that the companies or associations could cut their budgets and reduce their speaking opportunities forcing them to need a new way to sell their products and services.

Adhering to the new rules may have been a major help to those speakers who have really struggled in the last year or so.

The new rules tell us that speaking is merely a way to distribute content to those people who are hungry for information on the topic we speak on. In that sense, we're not speakers, we're publishers.

Some great news is that through the Internet, we can find and attract a perfectly targeted audience anywhere in the world. We're not likely to ever speak in all of countries where we have followers and fans, but they'll read our information, buy our products and hire us to deliver our services.

While the market for speaking engagements is sharply reduced and may never return to what was, there is a hunger for information that is stronger than ever. So take on the role of publisher, seek and build relationships with those who are passionate about your topic and offer them information (content) in multi-media formats.

The first step is to have a video of your presentation made, then re purpose the video into an audio, transcribed into a book, distributed as a series of articles, some blog posts and more. If you'd like some help getting started, let me know. My new professional speaker training program will make it easy for you to do.

Professional Speaking Mentor Scott A Dennison is exploringthe future of Professional Speaker Training at his website. You are also welcome to claim a copy of his newest report "Public Speaking is Dead!" and a series of Public Speaking Tips for free. Don't reprint this exact article. Instead, reprint a free unique content version of this same article.

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