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

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 two main 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.

What am I trying to say? Just that when the economy was good, speakers focused on getting speaking engagements, then showed up and delivered their message to whomever was in attendance. Some of them sold their books or other products from the back of the room while others positioned themselves for consulting or training work with the companies in attendance.

They spent little time thinking about building relationships with those attendees who were passionate for the topic being presented, instead they focused on the companies that were there. They never considered that if the companies or associations budgets were cut and speaking opportunities reduced significantly that they would need a different 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 we’re not speakers, we’re publishers. Speaking is merely a form of distributing content to the audience that is seeking information on the topic we present on.

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.

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.

Public speaking expert Scott A Dennison is exploringthe new rules 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. Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory