| Building and Protecting your Reputation |
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Twenty-five years ago, the UK won the Eurovision Song Contest with a song called Love Shine a Light, by Katrina and the Waves. I managed to track down the writer and co-perfomer of the song, a lovely chap called Kimberley Rew, as you can hear in my web radio show.
I realise that the annual song-fest is not to everyone's taste, but I love it. Whether it's the spectacle, the unity of nations or the bizarre voting patterns, I find it all fascinating. Of course, Ukraine will win this year, for obvious reasons, though the UK entry may get a few points too. |
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It's Mental Health Awareness Week this week, and the theme for this year is loneliness, which sadly has affected many people, especially through the lock-downs.
I was listening to an interview about the campaign on the radio today, and one of the recommendations was to get involved in volunteering. If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that I volunteer at a lot of events, and it's an incredibly worthwhile experience, as well as being huge fun.
There are hundreds of opportunities to volunteer with charities, sporting organisations and one-off events.
As a starting point, it's worth looking at https://volunteeringmatters.org.uk/. They bring together hundreds of schemes. |
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| As I mentioned, I was lucky enough to speak to Kimberley Rew this week. He wrote and co-performed a winning Eurovision song for the UK 25 years ago. Now he's touring with his wife and musical partner Lee Cave-Berry, and they are turning out great music. We had a fascinating conversation about touring, songwriting and Eurovision.
Hear our chat in the Media Coach Radio Show. |
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| Of course, there's a great song from Kimberley Rew and his wife, Lee Cave-Berry |
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| MediaMaestro, MediaMug of the Week |
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The MediaMaestro is Robert Morgan
He has been an air traffic controller for 20 years, and was on his break Tuesday afternoon reading a book outside after switching shifts with a colleague, when he received an emergency call that a passenger with no flight experience was trying to land a flight safely after the pilot suffered a medical emergency and fell unconscious.
He quickly decided to print out a layout of the cockpit, which he used to guide the passenger through the steps of flying and landing the plane as he struggled with the navigation system.
The so far un-named passenger, with no previous flying experience, landed the plane safely and saved the lives of himself and the pilot.
What a remarkable piece of communication. |
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The MediaMug is a after-dinner speaker Bill Copeland.
I very rarely call out a fellow professional speaker, but I am going to in this case because of his conduct recently at an event in Scotland.
He made a series of what people called 'sexist, racist and homophobic' jokes at a football awards ceremony that honoured Sir Alex Ferguson. - the Scottish Football Writers' Association (SFWA) awards in Glasgow.
People walked out of the event in protest at his material and he has already been dropped by the speaker agency who booked him.
In a statement, the SFWA said: 'The Scottish Football Writers' Association apologises to anyone offended or upset by material from one of our after-dinner speakers at last night's annual awards dinner.
'We have agreed unanimously that this will act as a catalyst to review and improve the format of our future events to make it an enjoyable and inspirational event for all.'
Good for them. Speeches of that kind are no longer acceptable. |
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| Speaking Tip of the week - The Voice |
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Your voice carries a message from your mind to the minds of your audience members. True masters of the podium are those who have harnessed the power of their voice – from inside out. Here are nine voice tips:
Your voice is a delicate but highly versatile instrument. It needs a good warm-up before your speech. The quality of your voice can turn a good speech into a great one. Vocal delivery is one of the most neglected areas of a speech – and it can make a big difference to yours if you prepare your voice properly for action. When you speak clearly, people can hear what you say. This might seem logical, but seems to elude many speakers Inflection and emphasis bring warmth and expression to your words. Your voice tends to take on a particular rhythm depending on the context. Record a few minutes of your speech and rate yourself in this important area. Could you be doing more? Your pace of delivery is critical if you are to be in total control of what you say. Slowly and clearly is best, with appropriate pausing so that your audience can take in what you say and you can order your thoughts. In the absence of a microphone, it is important to focus on projecting (without shouting) so that everyone in your audience can hear you clearly. If you have a good microphone, it will do the projecting for you, but you still need to speak clearly and with expression. When using a microphone, test it out in advance so that you know what it will sound like and where to switch it on and off. This is vital – trust me on this. Having an accent can be quite charming and often is. So don’t think your audience is going to judge you harshly because of it. If you’re in any doubt, slow down a tad, then give a great speech and knock their socks off with your charming delivery! Look after your voice properly. Treat it with respect and it will perform beautifully for you on the day. |
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| Media Tip of the week - Making your Mind up |
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Whenever you appear on the media, you need to make your mind up what you are going to say. Yes, that means regardless of the questions you are being asked.
That doesn't mean you should ignore the questions - far from it - but it does mean that you should have a clear message in mind that you will deliver several times during the interview.
You will already have a good idea about the interview topic, so you should create your message in a clear, simple phase beforehand. When you answer the first question, try to get your message out immediately, perhaps by using a bridging phrase such as "before I come to that, let me make an important point".
Of course, you should also use your core message in your final answer, especially because then there is no opportunity for the interviewer to come back. Here you can use a phrase like "may I repeat what the most important issue is.."
Make your mind up what to say, or you'll find you didn't deliver a message at all. |
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| Social Media Tip of the week - All kinds of everything |
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Twitter is a place where you can find all kinds of everything.
Of course, that's part of the problem. It's a haystack full of content, and it can be hard to find the needle.
That's where the advanced search function of Twitter comes in. Most people know about the basic search, which is useful.
However, few people seem to know about, and fewer still seem to use the detailed advanced features.
For example, you can search over date ranges, which is invaluable for finding tweets from years ago. You can specify from accounts or to accounts. You can search by the amount of engagement, by likes or by retweets. And there's more. In short, you can very easily find information that you remember seeing on Twitter, but can't remember exactly when or how.
You can even find tweets that you deleted (yes really) by entering your username (without the @ symbol) under the “From These Accounts” field. Under “Dates”, input your start and end date search parameters, then click “Search”, and Twitter will display all the Tweets from the time period you chose. This will include those you deleted.
Try the advanced search. You will find it useful and fascinating. |
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Even if you're not planning to be on the Eurovision song contest, you may still need some Media Coaching |
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| The information in this ezine may be freely re-used in any online or offline publication, provided it is accompanied by the following credit line - "This information was written by Alan Stevens, and originally appeared in "The MediaCoach", his free weekly ezine, available at www.mediacoach.co.uk." https://em-ui.constantcontact.com/em-ui/em/page/em-ui/email# |
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