I’ve been struck recently by a number of conversations with insiders in the speaking world. Over and over again what comes up is the unevenly distributed and asynchronous nature of information in our world despite the Internet, despite the small relative size of the industry, and despite the gregariousness of the people in it.  (We are heavily extroverted, and that’s probably a good thing – not to diss introverted speakers; they are among the best, as I wrote here: https://publicwords.com/2021/07/06/who-makes-a-better-public-speaker-an-introvert-or-an-extrovert/).

But overall, this is an industry driven by incomplete, or completely lacking, information.  Despite heroic attempts by some great people and startups, it is not easy to find out answers to such pressing questions as, how much does the average speaker get paid?  How many speeches are given each year? What is the range of speaking fees? How big is the free speaking business?  Where is the central database of all the paid speaking opportunities each year (alas, it doesn’t exist)? A database of all the conferences and meetings for all the associations, industries, and corporations in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia (including Australia) would be nice – can I put that on my holiday gift list?  You notice I’m leaving Antarctica out.  I’m willing to wait on that continent.

Information about public speaking opportunities is hard to get.  It’s especially hard to get it when you need it.  Finding out about that great speaking opportunity after the fact is painful.  Knowing about it a year ahead would have been priceless.  Various organizations in the industry hold pieces of the whole.  But no one holds all of it, or even close to most of it.  That means that speakers are left to sleuth on their own.  What are the implications of this nettlesome fact?

First, networking is essential, and good information is gold.  It’s obvious if you’ve been in the business for a while, but if you’re a newbie, make it part of your business plan to connect, connect, and connect some more. Everyone in the business is a potential expert on their corner of it and needs to be listened to with respect and reciprocity, the two most important elements of good networking.  Read Chris Tuff’s book on not being an ‘askhole’ if the act of networking doesn’t come naturally to you.

Second, your own marketing should be so clear that you can explain why you are an essential speaker in 30 seconds or less.  Preferably in one phrase or sentence.  Everyone in this business is working very hard to connect in the right ways with the right people, so don’t make that work hard for them.  Speaker bureaus will need to be able to grasp your unique selling point quickly and easily and replay it back to inquiring meeting planners without breaking a sweat.  That’s particularly a challenge for speakers who are experts in an esoteric field of one kind or another.  Are you in AI? Or applied math?  Or ancient history?  What does that mean, to the non-specialist, in a phrase or sentence?  And why will it rock an audience’s world to hear from you?  How you describe yourself is how you will be perceived, for the most part.  As Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”  For the most part, we simply don’t have time to do anything else. It’s up to you to make your difficult expertise easy to understand!

Third, focus your marketing efforts on creating incoming demand.  It’s simply going to be too difficult, frustrating, and slow to land one gig at a time.  Your job is to get a conversation going about your topic and what you think about it.  Find your niche and begin to talk to the people in it who are as passionate as you are.  From there, you can branch out to more and more people.  But first get the conversation going amongst the die-hard fans of your corner of knowledge.  Those are the people who will help spread the word about your expertise and presence in the field.

What have you found works best for marketing your own speaking?