Sources For Your Educational Material Content – What You Have Already Written

I took my chapter from the book, Marketing for People Not in Marketing, which I co-authored in 1998 and found that I had introduced four concepts in the 3,000+ word chapter. When I filled in the details behind each concept, I had over 8,000 words—and new sections of my manual.

One 300 word article I wrote for NSA’s Professional Speaker magazine in May 2000 became an entire manual, Speak 4Profit. A book agent read the original article and asked me if I had ever considered writing a book about the subject of using free speaking to generate paid speaking. (I hadn’t)

Just a few paragraphs of that article became a full manual. I sat down and asked myself, “What would someone have to know if they were to become an expert in using free speaking as a marketing strategy?” Here’s the list I developed:

- exploding the myths of free speaking

- who should speak free?

- deciding where to speak free

- criteria for selecting ‘free speaking” audiences

- competing in non-competitive environments

- creating your own speaking opportunities

Then I just took each concept from the list above and wrote every thing I knew about the concept that could make someone an expert. All from a small section of a short article in a magazine.