The Media Coach

Hi John,

Firstly, and most importantly, may I wish you the happiest of Christmases and the most wonderful of New Years. I thank you for your continued readership and support, and hope that you have found the advice useful this year.

I won't be bothering you next week, so I'll speak to you next in 2024.

I'm always keen to hear from you about what you liked, what you weren't sure about, and what you'd like more of, so feel free to drop me a line with your comments. I look forward to hearing from you.

I celebrated my birthday last weekend with a family meal at Ivy Asia. I'm always grateful to my family, and my wife Heather in particular, for making sure that I have a proper birthday celebration, and that it isn't swept up into Christmas events. Thanks!

Not all of the coaching sessions I gave away last week were taken up.

The three people who applied will each get a free session.

I'm giving away two more half-hour coaching sessions for anyone who needs any help with their speaking. I'll pick two at random from any emails received up until the 31st of December.

To respond, simply email me at alan@mediacoach.co.uk, with the subject line "Free coaching". Good luck!

My guest in the radio show this week is HP Gundersen, leader of The Last Hurrah (!!)

With a career that stretches back to 1973, The Last Hurrah (!!) has been HP's main activity since 2020, when the start of the pandemic saw him leave the city of Bergen and move to a former fishing village in west Norway with his pianist wife Cecilie Leganger.

Setting up a studio in their basement, a new era began when, despite the cessation of normal social activity, a close circle of musician friends who suddenly had a lot of free time on their hands visited frequently to jam and write songs.

It was a fascinating discussion about music and an idyllic lifestlye.

Hear our chat in the in the radio show.

Go to the MediaCoach Show

Follow me on X (Twitter)

And there's a great song from The Last Hurrah (!!) too.

The MediaMug of the week is Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, which suffered global outages for just over an hour on Thursday.

The hashtag #TwitterDown started trending within minutes of reports of the outages emerging.

But the outage was short-lived, with users able to access the platform again after just over an hour.

Since Elon Musk bought the platform, it has been suffering from a loss of advertising revenue. At an event in New York last month, he accused companies that have joined an ad boycott of the site formerly known as Twitter of trying to blackmail him.

"Go [expletive] yourself," the billionaire said in an interview.

He has also been accused of allowing antisemitic posts next to advertising.

Not looking good is it?

Now is a good time to think about dumping parts of your speeches. Why? Because things change. Audiences don't age, but you do, which means that your references slowly lose their connection with them. Also, your topic changes. There's new research, which may contradict or amend what you tell people.

I review all of my speeches in the first week of a New Year. I dump at least a third of the stories, references and ideas. I add in new material, and sometimes change the message in the light of new research. One of the easiest ways is to Google every assertion you make. That's what your audience will do. If you find reliable (key word there) information that is different to what you say, then you should alter your speech.

Last year, I was speaking at an event with an expert on change management. I asked her how long she'd been doing exactly the same speech. "Ten years" she said. I made no comment, but you can guess what I was thinking.

Don't be like that. Take a long, hard look at your material when you have a little down time, and be ruthless about removing out-of-date information.

"is my two front teeth" as the old song goes. OK, you are too young to remember the ditty, so take my word for it. However, if you asked a TV or radio producer what they want for Christmas, the response will very likely be "A guest to talk to".

Over the Christmas and New Year period, the media still operates, but guests are hard to find. It is often the easiest time to get on air, and because the audiences tend to be large, it can be a very good time too.

So, if you receive a call from a journalist, asking if you might be available for a chat in the next few days, say "yes" - even if it means missing a couple of hours dozing on the sofa in front of a repeat of that comedy show that you never really liked anyway.

It's the season of love and goodwill. Rather than promoting your products and services on Facebook, LinkedIn and Insta, why not try giving a little love to build online relationships? Here are ten ways

Of course, the more love you give online, the more you will receive.

Things don't always go according to plan at Christmas

A reminder to look no further. Just get in touch. 07986 852621

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."