The Media Coach 17th October 2023

Speaking Tip of the week - Seven ways to speak better (OK, eight)

Great speaking is a real business asset. Here are some ways to raise your game:

1. Be original People are fascinated by originality. Your ideas are unique to you, and though they may have been influenced by others, will be yours alone. That's what people want to hear - your take on the world. There are no bonus points for plagiarism.
2. Be controversial Make yourself stand out by going against conventional wisdom, or delivering a rarely-heard point of view. If you agree with everyone else, why communicate at all? There's no need to be critical of others, but giving solid reasons why you take another view is good copy.
3. Give advice, not instruction Pay respect to your audience by giving them suggestions about how they might change, not ordering them to do so. If you tell people they must act in a certain way, a likely reaction is that they will decide not to. Of course, you don't have to take this advice.
4. Provide evidence Always back up your ideas with evidence, and make sure that you quote the source of the information so that it can be verified. If you can't find any evidence, you can either fall back on the old phrase "in my long experience" or drop the idea. I'd advise the latter.
5. Show you care People love to see passion in communication, If you care about something, share your passion and people will respond. Even if they don't initially agree with you, they will appreciate your feelings about the subject, and may even be persuaded.
6. One message at a time I know, there are seven messages here, but it's a list of advice, not a speech. Since your audience will recall only one thing, it makes sense to concentrate on your key message throughout, and repeat it at the end too.
7. Only say it if you really mean it Authenticity is essential to good communication. If you lack conviction, or worse still, don't believe what you are saying, it will be obvious. Stick to content that you are confident about.

Bonus idea (8) Occasionally, try breaking the rules, as I have done in several instances above...?????

Media Tip of the week - I've been misquoted!

Journalists aren't perfect, as you will realise from my words each week. Sometimes I make an error, but I hope only a tiny one. That's something to consider when you see a piece in which you have been misquoted, or in which a fact is wrong. The issue is not whether the article is precisely what you said, or one hundred per cent correct, but whether it matters.

There used to be an old saying "Today's newspaper is tomorrow's fish and chip paper". That's no longer true for several reasons, not least the internet, but it does embody a principle,

News is often transitory, and people forget what they see and hear. It's the cumulative effect that's important, and the impression you create on the media, rather than the detailed content of what you say. That doesn't mean that you should ignore your message (far from it), but it does mean that correcting every error is a fruitless exercise.

Of course, if the error is serious, you should demand both a correction and an apology. You may have to argue quite strongly for the apology to have the same prominence as the original story, but it can be done.

In most cases, however, I think it's better to grit your teeth and sit on your hands rather than to send an angry email because your age was a year out.?????

Social Media Tip of the week - Speed, Structure, Mood

Someone asked me the other day "What are the really good things about social networks?" it made me stop and think. Like you, I use social networks on a regular basis. I make connections, find out interesting stuff, and let others know what I do. I've never really considered why I find social networks so useful. So here are three things that I think are really handy:

1) Speed. News stories often break on Twitter, which is why all journalists have Twitter (or X) accounts, and alerts set up on their topics of interest. However, speed is just speed. It's not analysis. Social media is really useful in alerting you to something that just happened, so that you can look into it on more detail. If you're the kind of person who needs to know stuff first, social media is brilliant. But there's a caveat. Because you don't usually know the source of the information, there may be no validity check. It's probably better to say that social media can alert you to something that may have happened, and you need to find a trusted source to be sure.

2) Structure There's more and more unstructured information flying around the web. Social media tends to facilitate hubs and groups of interest that provide structure to that information. Again, you need to be aware of the possible bias of the curator. However, getting a current view of a topic you don't fully understand is much easier than it used to be.

3) Mood Finding out what people think about an issue is also made much easier by social networks. Online campaigns and petitions are now seen as reliable indicators of the public mood. Once again, the usual warnings apply, but if a few hundred thousand people feel strongly enough about an issue to comment online, there must be something going on.?????