It's all about.........timing

If you have control over when you release a news story, you need to give it some careful thought. The days have gone when you could hide an embarrassing story under a blanket of news about something else (that tactic is always spotted, and makes the bad news even more prominent). However, you can, and should, consider when to release what you hope is a positive story.

If you are staging a "press event", plan it in the late morning to catch the attention of the early evening news bulletins. If the event has a visual element to it, this is even more important. There's no need to give broadcasters more than a few days' warning, since they work to short timescales. Do make sure that you look ahead to any other events that may clash, and take the assembled hacks somewhere else. For example, it would have been madness to stage a product launch in the City of London at the same time as the G8 meeting was taking place. But guess what? Somebody did. You won't remember who it was, since no press turned up.

If you're aiming for coverage in a monthly magazine, you need to deliver the information to them several months in advance. The Christmas issues are created in the summer, so it's no good pitching a new range of tree decorations in October. Weekly journals are finalised a couple of days before publication, but daily papers, radio and TV can squeeze items in at a few hours notice.

It's all down to planning. If you're too late with your news, it may never appear.

Whose story is it anyway?

The best presenters are often good storytellers. There's nothing that people like better than a good yarn well told, provided it has some relevance to them. Think carefully about how you can use stories to illustrate a point, or demonstrate a technique. If possible, find an image that goes with the story to provide some visual interest.

But there's one thing to beware of. Whose story are you telling? I've heard speakers tell other people's stories as though they were their own. Even worse, I've heard some people tell what are effectively folk tales as though they were involved. For example, on an overseas trip several years ago, I was standing in the wings, listening to the previous speaker. He began a story "On my way here this morning, I passed a building site, and met three bricklayers..." Oh dear. I knew that he was about to tell the story where one says "I'm laying bricks", one says "I'm building a wall" and the third says "I'm building a cathedral". That story is as old as the hills. OK., maybe the audience hadn't heard it before, but for the speaker to present it as "his" is a lie.

It seems to me that it's fine to tell the occasional fable to make a point. Make it clear that it's a story, not your story. And never, ever, tell someone else's personal story and pretend that it happened to you.

You even have to be careful with your own stories sometimes too. I once attended a presentation by a well-known adventurer. He illustrated his talk with pictures of his latest trek though the snowy wastes around the South Pole. As about the thirtieth slide hit the screen, there was a groan from the back of the room, and a voice called out "Not another bloody penguin".