Go Local

Local newspapers are not as numerous as they used to be, but they are still read by millions of people. Local radio has a more loyal audience than national TV. Local TV is sometimes restricted to news bulletins these days. but they struggle to fill their broadcast time. Many people dismiss local media as a waste of time, but on the contrary, it's very valuable.

There are a number of reasons you may want to appear on local media. Firstly, you may have a product or service that people in your area will buy (duh!). Secondly, a good story that is featured on local media will often find its way onto national media, due to the efforts of a stringer (a reporter who gets paid for each job they do, rather than being employed by a news outlet). Thirdly, it's a good way to hone your media skills.

Whenever you believe you have something news-worthy, look for the local angle. Every story has one, whether it is the number of local people affected by an issue, or a well-known local person (maybe you) who is part of the story. Get to know your local reporters, particularly those who feature stories about your type of business. Offer them help and advice, and be available when they call. You will soon find that you become a trusted source of quotes, and your profile will rise.

Take charge of the room

The sight of empty rows of seats when you are giving a speech is a serious drain on your energy, and a constant distraction. It will also make your audience members think "why didn't everyone else turn up?". The problem is usually caused by enthusiastic organisers who want to ensure that everyone will have a seat, and therefore not only put out far too many chairs, but also provide much too large a room.

That's why you need to arrive early, and ask the organiser how many people are expected. Then count the chairs (yes, do it yourself). If there are obviously too many chairs, request that some are removed. Point out the disadvantages of a half-full room, and the fact that chairs can easily be added at the last minute. If you are able to, it may be possible to switch to a smaller room, or to change the layout from theatre-style to cabaret-style (circular tables with about ten chairs around each). In addition, a few people left standing shows how popular your talk is, which will reflect well on the organiser.

You might also wish to change the layout to remove a central aisle (one thing I always do if I can). Most importantly, you should take charge of the room, so that you and the audience feel comfortable, and have no distractions while you are speaking.

If you can't make any changes, try putting any handout material on the front rows only, and/or have people escorted to their seats at the front. If you end up with a tiny audience, ask them to re-arrange their chairs in a half-circle in front of you. Never, ever make an excuse like "I don't know why so few people turned up". Simply present your speech as though the audience is exactly what you expected.

Be kind to a cliché - leave it alone

Clichés are sensitive creatures, and are best left alone to fend for themselves. Picking them up and putting them into your blogs does them no good at all. Over-use (or in some cases any use) can do them, and your prose, serious harm. Just say no to clichés, particularly the following, which are in grave danger of over-exposure. For the sake of clarity, I have suggested some alternatives.

- It's not rocket science (It's simple)
- Thinking outside the box (Being creative)
- Tastes like chicken (Can't describe the taste)
- It's a no-brainer (It's obvious)
- If you can dream it you can be it (Actually you can't, so this is a lie as well as a cliché)
- A bad day at the office (A bad day)
- It's a marathon, not a sprint (It takes a long time)
- Change is the only constant (More nonsense. Sometimes things stay the same for ages)
- Young and old alike (this adds no meaning at all, so may be dispensed with altogether)

So please be an enlightened blogger and leave the poor clichés alone.

Thank you.

Deliver a story with mileage

The best publicity (from your point of view) comes with a story that keeps going, hour after hour, day after day. Once a story reaches the point where there is nothing new to be said, it dies. The news media talk about stories that still have "mileage" in them, and will keep using them if they still appeal.

So when you put out a statement about an issue, always think several moves ahead, as you would in a game of chess. You will probably be able to predict the response from your competitors. Have a response to that already prepared, so that you can keep the story alive. Better still, challenge someone by name (or by company) to respond in your original statement. That will virtually guarantee extra coverage. For example, a pressure group might accuse a corporation of some serious misbehaviour. There will inevitably be a reply, although "no comment" is also useful to the cause.

In order to give your story as much mileage as you can, make sure that you are always available for a comment. If the story breaks at 10am, give the reporter your phone number and make sure your phone is by your side (yes, even on the bedside table) for at least the next 48 hours. Many stories die because the main players can't, or won't make further comment.

A really big story can be revisited on its anniversary, or when something happens to a company mentioned in the story. Keep an eye out for opportunities and give your story as much mileage as possible.

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".

Is it the medium or the message?

Marsahll McLuhan was wrong, in my opinion, when he said "The medium is the message". OK, he may have been right at the time (1967), but he's been quoted so many times since, his phrase is regarded as a truism.

These days, many people (me included at times, to be honest) are focusing on tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ecademy, and many others. There are races to get large numbers of friends or followers, or a campaign to get only "quality contacts".

There are many experts, including some of my good friends in here, who are helping people to learn how to use these tools. They're doing a good job too.

But I'm increasingly feeling that there's something missing. Having gazillions of followers, or being linked to global communities of potential customers, is all well and good. However, you need to be able to offer them something they need, in a way that they appreciate.

There seems to be very little focus on the message right now. Knowing how to use the tools is no use unless you have the right message.

Don't get so busy using the tools that you forget what you do.

Gordon Brown - is it just a communication issue?

With one bound he was free. Well, free for a while. Gordon Brown escaped relatively unscathed from his meeting with the Parliamentary Labour Party last night. However, some of the MPs who were at the meeting have emerged to tell the press that "Gordon will be changing his presentation style". Well I never. He's been in politics for most of his life, reached the highest office in the land,and it now appears that his presentation skills don't pass muster. His fellow MPs seem to think that better communication is the answer.

As a professional speaker, I look at speeches with a critical eye. There's no doubt that Gordon Brown is not a great orator. Comparisons are always invidious, but Barack Obama has won justified praise for his speeches and delivery. Unlike many of the great orators of the past, he often uses an autocue, and is still not completely comfortable "off script", but he's head and shoulders above Gordon.

The prime-minister-in-waiting, David Cameron, is a reasonable speaker, and I'd place him somewhere between Brown and Obama. Cameron's famous "no notes" speech to the Conservative Party Conference a couple of years ago was actually a piece of clever TV editing by the local director (every time there was a cutaway to the audience, Cameron consulted his notes). Nonetheless, his style is much better suited to delivering a message than Brown's.

Politics apart, Brown is a poor speaker. But I don't think communication training can save him now.

Susan Boyle - victim or heroine?

Like a third of the UK population, I watched the final of "Britain's Got Talent" on Saturday night. The eventual winners, Diversity, probably came as a bit of a shock to the organisers, as evidenced by Sunday's press conference at the headquarters of Sony Music. Clearly, they were expecting a singer. According to reports on the BBC, Simon Cowell did not appear at the press conference.

The story of Susan Boyle has generated astonishing publicity, showing how social media can now spread fame far and wide in an instant, particularly when combined with a rags-to-riches story. However, instant fame can also disappear instantly. It looks as though Susan is caught up in a media whirlpool that has left her senses reeling. I'm not in the least surprised that she needs to take a few days out of the limelight.

Far be it from this old hack to sniff a PR stunt. However, the headlines on the UK papers today are about Susan Boyle, not Diversity. As I write this, she is top of the trending topics on Twitter. When she emerges from her sojourn in hospital, I suspect her fame will be enhanced. Provided she can cope with the publicity roller-coaster, and is treated sensitively by her PR minders, her story will run and run.

Do you know what you're talking about?

Forgive me for being so blunt, but I have a very simple view of speeches. Imagine two circles on a page. One contains all of your knowledge. The other contains everything that your audience is interested in. If those circles overlap, then you should deliver a speech to that audience, on the topic(s) in the area that overlaps. If the circles don't overlap, you shouldn't even consider delivering a speech.

Of course, you wouldn't be as foolhardy as some speakers I've heard, who have no connection with their audience at all. I'm sure you only speak when you have a topic that is of interest to your listeners. However, problems can arise if you stray out of that overlapping zone, and start talking about things that you don't really understand, in order to please (or rather in an attempt to please) your audience.

From time to time, all speakers can suffer from the "edge effect", where they reach the borders of their expertise, but then stray over the line because the audience seems to like it. In fact, it's being disrespectful, and could lead to disaster, especially in any Q&A session. The best way to avoid the problem is to ask the event organiser to give you contact details for a few likely audience members, and have a chat with them a few weeks beforehand. Then base your speech solely on the overlap of your knowledge and their interests. It works every time.

It's not who you know, it's who they know

Social networking is not just about who you know. It's much more about who they know. My good friend Jan Vermeiren points out in his excellent book "How to Really use Linkedin" that it's your second level contacts who can really help you. When you have a mutual, trusted friend in common, it is often very easy to effect an introduction. And assuming an average of just 200 first-level contacts, your second-level contacts will number 40,000, which is a large pool of potential business partners, employers or clients.

It's the same on Twitter, although the numbers are even larger. For example, I have around 2,500 followers. Assuming an average of 500 followers for each of them, I can reach over a million people in two steps. It's this, in my opinion, that is making Twitter the "collective brain" of the planet. Once, I used to turn to Google if I had a question I couldn't answer. Now I turn to Twitter. In the last week alone, It has helped me find the source of an obscure quote, located a cosy bed and breakfast in Sedona, Arizona, and allowed me to set up an interview with an innovative PR company. All of the responses came back within ten minutes.

It's not who you know, it's who they know (and what they know, too).

A huge PR gaffe - MP's expenses affair gets worse

The Daily Telegraph has been having a field day with its revelations about the minutiae of MPs expenses. Although the revelations are hardly of a scale to prompt resignations, they are embarrassing for the Government. Note that the opposition parties have kept fairly quiet on this issue, since their MPs have no doubt been claiming for similar trivia. Of course, the Telegraph is more interested in Labour-bashing than "outing" the Tories. Maybe the next few days will see things change.

The sensible thing, in PR terms, would be to ride out the storm, point out that nothing illegal happened, mention that all parties have used the same system, and promise to change the rules.

However, sensible behaviour is not a hallmark of politicians at present. Now the matter of how the expenses were leaked has been referred to the Metropolitan Police. A Commons spokesman is on the radio blustering about "serious offences" and "a possible breach of the Official Secrets Act". What idiocy this is. No-one cares how the Telegraph received the details, and no-one is denying their authenticity.

As an example of how to make a PR drama into a crisis, this is a classic. When you're in a hole, you should stop digging.

Is it Spin, or is it Media Mastery?

No-one likes a spin doctor, but everyone admires a good communicator. Is there a difference? Maybe it depends on your point of view. Politicians of all persuasions try to ensure that their audiences, and particularly their supporters, know what they stand for.

So how do politicians ensure that they really do deliver a clear message, and what can we learn from them? Like him or loathe him, George Galloway MP demonstrates communication skills of the highest order. His advice for interviews? “Know exactly what you want to get across in the interview, and don’t be diverted or put off in any way by the questions that you are asked. In a very real sense, it doesn’t really matter what the question is. You have a few moments on the media, and you want to make the most of that opportunity, to get across the message you want to deliver. Now, if you can make it fit the question, it is much better, since the message will be better received and understood, but don’t be sidetracked by an interviewer trying to take you down a siding you don’t want to go down, because then you will lose the opportunity of getting across your unique and important message.”

Jo Swinson, the UK’s youngest MP, adds “When doing an interview, it is important to control your nerves. I always take a deep breath and smile, even on radio. When I appear on ’Any Questions’, I have one-page briefing sheet about the issues, and at the top it says in big letters ‘Slow down and smile’, since I do have a tendency to speak rather quickly. You also need to be authentic. If it’s something that you aren’t passionate about, or don’t even care about, are you the right person to do a media interview? Particularly in politics, but also in business too, if you are passionate about something, people will engage with you and relate to what you say”

So much for those in the front line of politics. But what about those in the background? Political blogger Iain Dale says that a sense of humour comes in handy during tricky interviews. “Often if David Cameron is asked a tough question by John Humphries or Jeremy Paxman he dismisses it with a laugh. The questions can get quite personal, but he doesn’t get upset, he just giggles. Nick Clegg on the other hand, will do the same interview and he’ll start getting tetchy at the tough questions. At home, the listener or viewer will see him start to lose his temper. Whereas Cameron doesn’t let himself get riled.”

So it’s all down to technique. Whether you laugh it off, slow down and smile, or use the question as a prompt to deliver your message, the important thing is to know what you are doing. Very few of us are natural communicators, but learning a few simple strategies can make us sound like one.

Mind Your Language

You may find yourself speaking in a country where you are not too comfortable with the language. If you are at an international conference, then sessions will probably be conducted in English, or simultaneous translation will be provided. Whatever the circumstances, you may wish to include a phrase or two of the local language in order to "please" your audience. If you do, then make sure that you practice and deliver it accurately. US President John F Kennedy, on a visit to Berlin during the cold war, uttered the memorable phrase "Ich bin ein Berliner". In fact, he meant to say "Ich bin Berliner" ("I am a Berliner"), since the former phrase means "I am a doughnut". However, being who he was, he got away with it.

Your audience may not be so forgiving. Talk to a locally- based colleague to find out what would be a useful phrase, and what behaviour is acceptable. I can tell you from experience that having advance knowledge of a culture is a tremendous help when faced with a roomful of foreign dignitaries.

If you use an interpreter, here are a few tips -

* Meet the interpreter in advance
* Find out whether the translation is simultaneous or consecutive
* Avoid idiomatic phrases, such as "right on the money"
* Talk to the audience, not the interpreter
* Speak in short sentences
* Avoid humour