The MediaCoach

Hi John,

So the Beast from the East has visited. I must say, here in London, it was more like a slightly miffed hamster. Still, it was good to see snowmen being built, snowballs being thrown, and a blanket of white over the less picturesque parts around here. As ever, snow is loved by the headline writers, who can't wait to put out "The Big Chill" or "Snow Joke", or "The Snow must go on", or my own personal favourite "More snow on the way - grit your teeth!"

In this weather, it can be difficult to get to speaking gigs, so virtual speaking, via Skype or Zoom, becomes a valuable way to deliver your material. This week, I shared a few tips in my Monday Video. I'm obliged to my good friend Jeremy Nicholas for sharing it in his excellent weekly ezine too.

I am now in Birmingham working in the mixed zone at the World Indoor Athletics Championships. That's where the athletes meet the journalists for post-event interviews. Since there are over two hundred journalists here, managing the scramble for access to athletes who have won a gold medal is rather like holding back the crowds as the doors open at a department store January sale. But somehow, we manage to make sure that everyone gets the quotes they need.

My radio guest is a great musician who I've seen many times - Rob Corcoran. I caught up with him just before a show at the Alfred Hitchcock pub in Wanstead, East London (you knew Hitchcock was an East Londoner?), where we clinked glasses and talked about music. Listen to our chat in the Media Coach Radio Show. and there's also a superb tune from, obviously, Rob Corcoran.
Go to the iTunes Archive of the MediaCoach Show
Follow me on Twitter

The MediaMaestro this week is film director Lewis Gilbert, who has died at the age of 97. He directed many classic films, including Alfie, Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine, and three classic James Bond films, You only live twice, The Spy who loved me and Moonraker. Lewis Gilbert was what he described as an unfashionable director and considered this to have been why he survived for so long in the film industry. "I've never been known for any one kind of film. So, I'm really somebody like a doctor who you call in when you want the patient to live, as it were." Unfashionable he may have been, but he was a magnificent stalwart of the British film industry.

The MediaMug is a Chinese technology company called Haier. They make a range of products including kitchen appliances and consumer technology. This week, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, they launched a bulky smartwatch with a unique feature. It projects an image onto the back of your hand. Not only that, but you can bash your hand with a finger to control apps. Given that watches can have screens you can look at, and you may end up with bruises, it seems an odd development. However, if you use the mapping application, you can deliver your own punchline.

INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS

I've been chatting to a few of the national team coaches here in Birmingham. They are more than happy to talk about how they work with athletes to ensure they are performing as well as possible, and the phrase that came up often was "incremental improvements" - those small changes that when added together make the difference between first place and fourth place. So of course, I thought about four things everyone can use to make their speeches a little better.

1) Tweak your stories. Our stories are the backbone of our speeches, and ideally they should be based on our experience, and reflect what really happened. However, in order to really hammer home a point, it may be necessary to slightly change the sequence of events, tweak the dialogue, and embellish the detail. The important thing is to keep the truth of the story, but make tiny changes to ensure it is really powerful.

2) Update your evidence. In order to really be on top of your topic, you need to keep an eye on current research. Quoting a recent study is more valuable than one that took place 20 years ago - unless it disproves your message, in which case your message has to change!

3) Give local case studies It won't always be possible to find local stories to include in your speech, especially if it is the first time you have spoken there. If you make a habit of collecting stories wherever you go, you will soon be able to deliver a yarn which has a local flavour, to the delight of your audience.

4) Do something new every time If your speech never changes, it will become stale, and you will be bored delivering it. Try to work in a new element every time you speak - an anecdote, a quote or an image. Don't throw away all your good material at once, but allow your speech to evolve, improving all the time, like an elite athlete.

ARE YOU A TEAM PLAYER?

I'm currently part of an amazing team. We are responsible for getting journalists in a position to get quotes from the athletes competing at Arena Birmingham and making sure that everything happens quickly. Nothing would have happened unless we'd functioned as a tight-knit, efficient operation. We have colleagues taking athletes to and from drug testing, to and from medal ceremonies, and to and from team hotels. We haven't lost an athlete yet.

When you are interviewed on TV or radio, is not just about you. It's very much a team effort. You need to work with the journalist, the floor manager, the runners and the transport staff. In your organisation, you need to be briefed, you need to co-ordinate your message with other spokespeople, and you need to report back afterwards so that records can be properly kept.

Many media disasters are caused by people thinking they can handle everything alone. They fail to do proper research, try to make policy on the spur of the moment, and may contradict a previous statement from a colleague. Even if you're a sole trader you will benefit from taking the advice of a trusted friend or communication specialist. That's why you should always try to buy time if suddenly contacted by a reporter. Never go into an interview cold. Make sure you have a core message that you've checked with someone else, and after the interview, debrief with someone who has seen or heard it. Media is a team game.

GO THE DISTANCE

If you're a regular reader, you may recall that my favourite film is Field of Dreams (for very personal reasons I won't go into here). The title of this week's tip is a critical quote from the film. The film's hero, Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) hears a voice telling him to "Go the distance" at a critical point in the story when he is close to giving up. The same voice may also have been heard by the extraordinary athletes I've been speaking to this week.

Social media is a long game too. There are few instant results, and you need to stick with it before you will see the benefit of your efforts. That's one of the problems with trying to overlay a return on investment (ROI) on a social media campaign. It's certainly possible to achieve a financial return from social media activity, but more often than not, the return is less tangible.

If you or your organisation embark on a social media campaign, consider your objectives carefully, and the ways in which you will measure results. It's better to look at building a community than making a quick profit. You need to invest time, and you need to keep it up. If you're a social media manager, you'll need to hold your nerve when the finance director (FD) asks for your profit and loss figures. Fortunately, even hard-nosed FDs are becoming aware that you need to keep engaging with customers month on month, year on year before you can measure the returns.

If you build it, they will come, but only if you are prepared to go the distance.

If HAL9000 from 2001 was really Alexa...

Don't worry, I can help you protect your reputation.

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."