Media training Archives - Page 6 of 11

Guy Writes: I’ve been editing the next edition of my podcast, the Near Futurist, and if I say so myself it’s a good one. I take little credit, the interviewee was engaging and really knew his stuff – but I have had to eliminate fillers to make him sound better.

Let’s put it another way: he was one of those people, who, typically of speakers for the last ten years or so, started almost every response with “so”. It’s a good filler to eliminate and it’s worth explaining why.

Eliminate some fillers

First I should make my view clear. “Eliminate fillers” isn’t an absolute command. You can’t take out every “umm” and “aah” and nor should you; if you answered a journalist or podcaster in an interview and got rid of all of them you’d sound unnatural. Most listeners would assume you were reading from a script and that’s never good.

Unless they’re excessive, then. most fillers can stay. There’s an exception though, and that’s “so”. The reason is straightforward: it can actually end up damaging your answer.

I should explain.

Eliminate fillers at the beginning of an answer

Most people who use “so” other than as a conjunction to link two clauses (“I did a big workout so I am tired” is fine) will use it to start an answer to a question. As a journalist I might ask how a company takes its products to the market and the answer might be “So we find the indirect channel works best for us”.

Now ask yourself: would that be stronger or weaker without “So”, as a standalone answer? To me the answer is simple – “so” takes the edge off. In my podcast I’ll try to get rid of it as often as possible and we’ll come to the practicalities in a second. First it’s worth looking at why people use it.

It’s better than “Umm…”

The subhead gives you my best answer. People start with “so” because they feel they have to start speaking immediately and they don’t want to begin “umm…”. In either case it wouldn’t be a comment on their subject knowledge. They just want a second to think and are terrified of silence.

Here’s the big secret: I can cut silence whilst editing my podcast. Radio and TV interviewers can do the same and there’s never any need to worry in a written interview.

But if I’m going to cut it out anyway, where’s the harm? Here’s when it becomes difficult.

An inconvenient stop

“So” tends to flow into the next word. If you start your interview “So I did such and such” and I try to cut “So” out, it can end up sounding like “why did such and such”.

It makes no sense and the listener will soon sort it out in their head but consciously or otherwise they will be distracted. This is why you don’t want “so” at the beginning of an answer – it can make the next word, once “so” is cut off, sound as if it’s starting abruptly. This is why starting with “so” can actually damage your quote; it will sound less natural when it’s removed.

The alternative is better.

I don’t mind listening to you thinking

Your instinct is to start speaking immediately so nobody ends up with silence on their broadcast or podcast. That’s considerate but as we’ve established, we can deal with that. Anyway you don’t work for us, you want to ensure your point is clear and well-made. So here’s what you do.

You take a second. You gather yourself and you think “I’m going to start here and finish there” and then you answer. The result will be the same answer you were going to give – media training is not about lying or removing an honest view from a quote – but better. You’ll have a strong start and a strong finish because you’ve taken a second to plan it.

It’s not a natural technique. We tend to launch into answers immediately, talk over each other a little, stop and start again. It takes getting used to.

It’s more useful to you, though, than starting everything with “so”. If you can get rid of that habit it will pay you handsomely.

Need a hand with your presentation or media interview skills? We can help – email Lindsay and she’ll set us a time for an initial chat.

Press releases have been very much on lead trainer Guy‘s mind as he is about to help a communications company with writing them. There will be elements in the course on targeting of course, and making sure you know who you’re talking to. There will also be a little bit on language and some of the rules.

Many of these are utter baloney. Let’s have a look at a few.

I before E except after C

Press releases need accurate spelling but is this one really a rule? We’ll be asking the younger delegates whether they still have to learn this nonsense. It was drummed into previous generations as a rule of spelling. Guy’s own teacher in the 1970s tried adding “I before E except after C and when the sound is ‘ee'” because some bright spark aged eight had pointed to the word “weird”.

Nobody should blame the teacher for trying to rearrange reality so that the rule still worked. There are indeed examples in which an “ei” construction is there and sounds like “ee”. The difficulty is that there are also words like “neighbour” and “feint”, and we are now (in the UK) living during Charless III’s “reign”.

There are too many exceptions to this rule for it to make sense. It’s suitable for the bin only.

-ize is an Americanism

A lot of press releases come from America and it’s reasonable that they have American spellings. The popular conception is that if a word finishes “ize” when it could finish “ise” then it’s an Americanism and should be changed.

Now check the Oxford English Dictionary. Both are acceptable. The trick is to be consistent. Also if your client has a particular take on this (and they should) then make it consistent. It’s technically wrong to suggest “-ize” is American only but it’s so ingrained by now it doesn’t matter, we just do what the client says.

You should never use a preposition to start or finish a sentence

Press releases need clarity. And that means listening rather than picking at every archaism. OK, you knew we were going to start a sentence with an “and” or “but” immediately you saw the sub-heading. But it works and makes sense. You knew we were going to start a sentence with “but”, too, didn’t you.

Companies are always referred to in the singular

In most cases this is true, although at the time Guy became a journalist the Wall Street journal would refer to IBM and others as “they”. That’s stopped now but it really doesn’t matter whether you refer to companies as singular or plural as long as you stick to a house style; the fact that we haven’t been able to find a major source that uses plural suggests you’re safer with singular.

EXCEPT when you’re referring to a sports team. Football commentators and journalists will always, at least in the UK, refer to “they” when talking about a team.

Never split an infinitive

That’s the “to do” bit of a verb. Of course you can, as Star Trek proved all those years ago – “To boldly go…” might have sounded neater as “To go boldly” but the writers wanted “boldly” closer to the beginning and it made the right impact. The trick is to ensure you don’t put too many words between the “to” and the “go” bit. “To boldly go” is fine; “To boldly, but not so urgently that you haven’t got time for a cheese sandwich to take the edge off, go” is deliberately terrible but you get the idea. The reader will have forgotten the “to” bit by the time they get to the main point of the sentence.

There are other examples of course. But those are a few Guy will be pointing to this afternoon.

Does your team need help with press release writing? We are available – drop Lindsay a note by clicking here and she’ll set up a time for an initial no-obligation conversation.

Newsjacking is something you’ll have seen. You might not be aware of the term but you’ll be familiar with the principle. You take a current event and you twist whatever announcement you want to make to fit it.

There was a lot of it about a couple of years ago. Journalists had press release after press release that would start “As we emerge from Covid…” or “In these difficult times”.

You can see why people do it. They want to seem current and relevant and newsjacking is a good way to do it. Today (Wednesday 19th July 2023 just to date this piece when you read it) we’ve read one person’s newsletter/tip sheet that includes leadership tips taken from Novak Djokovic’s tennis style. There are still a lot of people making tenuous links to Ukraine when they write about leadership or adversity.

Lighter examples might seem less risky. A few weeks back speakers were talking about wheeling out your best stories rather than relying on the new stuff and linking it to Glastonbury. We were almost tempted to suggest blur made quite a statement by kicking off their Wembley gigs (where our lead trainer Guy took the picture at the head of this blog, you might have wondered about its relevance) with a song from the new album rather than playing it safe.

There is a drawback to newsjacking though. It’s what stopped us.

Newsjacking needs to stand out

When we go into one of our regular clients to help with their new intake of PR people our focus is to help with pitching skills. One of the exercises we do is to get people to read out a pitch they’ve sent to journalists, which we then critique.

A year ago or so most of the pitches started off, as we’ve outlined above, with something about Covid.

This will have seemed an excellent idea when the writer was putting it together. It drew on shared experience. Everyone went through it. Everyone had a view. In the same way, maybe not everyone is a tennis fan but most people will have been aware of the Wimbledon tournament. So these young PR people set about relating their pitches to emerging from Covid…

…and in doing so threw all of their chances of standing out away with a few keystrokes. Sitting on the other side – and Guy still produces his podcast (relaunching in September, thanks for asking) so he does get pitches – we’d seen about five “Covid” pitches before we’d even come into the office.

Likewise if you scan Linkedin from the last couple of days you’ll find quite a bit on tennis. In a few weeks’ time as the women’s football world cup enters the more advanced stages you can expect to see a lot about teamwork. Extended cricketing metaphors are going to abound over the next few days.

And from the journalist’s point of view all of these pitches are going to look the same. None will stand out.

It’s like a game of chess (we are enjoying our tenuously-linked images today). You might think of a move that looks good to you. You might think “That’s good enough, it’ll do”. Only…everyone else will have anticipated it. Your story, no matter how good, is just going to look like one of the many. So, as you might if you wanted to improve your chess, look critically at your first move or first draft of your pitch – and if it looks too samey, see if there’s a better one.

Details of our pitching masterclass for public relations executives are on this link.

On-camera confidence can be difficult to acquire. This isn’t because the camera or the TV journalist is out to get you; this is often far from the case. The camera professional will want to make their work look excellent and they’re not going to do that by making you look foolish.

Indeed, part of the trick is to make you look even better than you are. Some people still find it intimidating, though and this is a pity. So many media outlets now incorporate video into their offerings that if you’re a spokesperson, whether a chief executive or a manager, someone is going to ask you to go on screen very soon.

Here are some ideas to help you overcome your fears.

On-camera confidence on Zoom

If you’re hosting a video conference you need to look attentive. This can mean doing the counter-intuitive thing of not looking at the faces of the people on the screen but at the camera. It will then look to the listeners as if you’re looking them in the eye. You can buy a camera that sticks to the screen so the eye line is right – our lead trainer Guy has one – but make sure it’s stuck on properly before you start. If it falls off half way through then you will look as if you’re in the middle of an earthquake!

Think also about livening up any Powerpoint or similar presentations without going berserk. Making individual bullet points on a slide appear individually rather than all at once can be a subtle way of making it more engaging. You might consider putting animations in. Bear in mind that people on slower connections might see them looking very jerky. Also if you’re going to use stock images make sure they’re good ones. The same old image of people shaking hands is dull, dull, dull!

On-camera confidence in a studio

Our main camera operator Paul offers a couple of good tips in our promotional video:

If you don’t have time to watch it, the first thing he says is that if you talk with your hands then tell the camera operator – you’ll look better if they line up a shot with your hands in it properly rather than a tighter shot in which the focus is on your face alone with the odd thumb wafting into view.

We offer media training sessions both with and without a professional camera rig. Each of our camera experts offers so much more than pressing the buttons and operating the equipment; there is no substitute, if you’re likely to go out on video, for sitting under proper lighting in front of a professional-standard rig with an award-winning documentary maker like Paul offering counsel.

More basics

There are other basics to learn as well:

Paul Angell and Sophie Aldred at a Clapperton Media Training session

Look at the interviewer rather than the camera. It always looks more sincere and you’ll find it easier to talk to a single person rather than thinking there are thousands watching on the other side of the lens. If the interviewer is elsewhere and you’re doing “down the line” then you look at the camera.
Do as the camera operator suggests – they know what they’re doing. If they make you uncomfortable, though, maybe getting you to perch on a desk when you’d be happier standing or on a proper chair, say so. It’s your interview.
That said, if you’re in a studio and someone advances upon you with make-up, let them do their job.
If you’re going to be seated, avoid swivel chairs – you’ll spend too much time concentrating on not swiveling.
Also on chairs: if you can avoid chairs with arms, so much the better, you don’t want to look hunched on the TV.
Remember people’s attention more or less falls off a cliff when you’re on video. If you can get your points in quickly, even if you have to say “I’ll get to that question in a second” and get them in first (but do come back to the question), you’ll be sure to get your points in.
Remember that a good soundbite will be played over and over again. So will a bad one!

That last point is a good cue to remind yourself that the basics count for a lot whichever medium your interview is for:

Prepare – you’re allowed to forget a figure or not have a fact to hand but make sure you know your stuff.
Try not to be too salesy. If the audience feels you’re just after their money they won’t like it.
If a journalist is unusually aggressive or insistent when you can’t answer a question, be polite. The viewers will see you’re being reasonable.
Be succinct and keep it as simple as you can. The more brief and memorable your point, the less likely it is to become confused later on.

Finally remember one thing. In spite of all of the horror stories you hear, journalists are unlikely to be out to get you. Unless there’s something seriously wrong (and crisis management is something else), the audience will listen with interest

Do you or your clients need help with your media interactions? Our team is here to help. Contact Lindsay or Guy to arrange an initial chat.