If You're A Public Speaker - New Rules Are In Effect

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

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

The top two audiences for a speakers 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.

Paying attention to the new rules of public speaking may have helped 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.

Because of the power of the Internet, we can market to a targeted audience in countries all over the world. While we're not likely to speak in all of these countries, we can still serve our followers and fans everywhere who'll read our information, hire us to deliver our services and buy our products.

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.

You can start by having a video shot and then turn your new video into an audio, transcribed and printed as a book, offered as a series of articles, posted to your blog and more. If you want help with this, contact me and let me know what your needs are. My professional speaker training may be all you need or perhaps you will want to access some one-on-one help.

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