| Building and Protecting your Reputation |
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Thanks for being in my coronavirus bubble, albeit virtually.
The rules seem to change on almost a daily basis, depending on interpretation, geography and health advice. At the moment, in my role as the chair of a school governing body, I'm working with the head teacher and senior staff to try to figure out a safe way to get as many children back to school as possible.
It's not as easy as it sounds, and it doesn't even sound easy.
One thing that's become very clear to me is how hard teachers and other school staff are working to keep educating the children in their schools - whether they are physically present (as with children of key workers and with vulnerable children) or at home.
No-one should be under the impression that school staff have had a break. |
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I hope you won't mind a bit of family pride, but my wife Heather Waring has just received delivery of paperback copies of her first book. "How Walking Saved My Life". I'm biased of course, but it really is a great read.
She has a special offer until midnight west coast USA, Sunday June 14th where it is the same price as the Kindle or very close to - so get yourself a bargain and grab yours now.
If you do buy one, I hope you enjoy it. Heather would really appreciate a review on Amazon. A truthful review of course - it’s about helping others who may go to check the reviews before buying. And you may want to check the reviews yourself.
Many thanks! |
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Olga Geidane is a successful businesswoman, adventurer, insane traveller, and also an international speaker. Her official title of day-to-day work is "ReInvent Mindset Coach"
She is very passionate about transforming people's lives at every level: relationships, work and business, health, confidence and finances.
She offered some great tips about the opportunities open to people during lock down, as you can hear in The Media Coach Radio Show.
There's also a fantastic if not quite appropriate, song from Mick Wilson |
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The MediaMaestro is the Reverend Al Sharpton.
He comes from a long tradition of preachers who know how to deliver great rhetoric and stirring ovations.
For example, his use of the phrase "Get your knee off our necks" at the funeral of George Floyd was both a brilliant summation of the issue, and a call to action.
As you know, I am a huge fan of classical rhetoric, and to listen to a speaker in full flow, using ancient techniques and ringing phrases, is something I very much admire.
Perhaps the most moving moment of the eulogy, was when he singled out several individuals and asked them to be recognized. Each shared a burden with the family of the man being buried, Sharpton said, explaining, “They wanted to be here to be part of this because they understand the pain better than anyone, because they’ve gone through the pain.”
“The mother of Trayvon Martin, will you stand?” he said. “The family of Pamela Turner, right here in Houston, will you stand?” “The father of Michael Brown from Ferguson, Missouri, will you stand?”
He named several more.
As the clapping grew in intensity, Sharpton added, “All of these families came to stand with this family because they know better than anyone else the pain they will suffer from the loss that they have gone through.” Then the entire congregation of 500 stood and applauded.
Remarkable. |
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The MediaMug is an un-named software team creating systems for Android phones.
Gaurav Agrawal, a scientist and amateur photographer living in San Diego, couldn't believe it when he suddenly started seeing a photograph he took last summer popping up on the news.
He took it at St Mary Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana, one "magical evening" in August 2019. He shared it on Flickr and thought no more about it. However, a glitch meant that when the image was set as wallpaper, it caused some Android phones to fail. The handsets would switch on and off repeatedly, requiring a factory reset which meant all data on them was wiped.
Ken Munro and Dave Lodge from security firm Pen Test partners have an explanation of what went wrong. "As digital photographs have improved in quality, phones need to check what the image 'colour space' is to work out how to display it properly. The phone crashes because it doesn't know how to deal with it correctly, and the software developers probably hadn't considered this might happen."
Don't worry, the image with this story has had the problem removed! |
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| Speaking Tip - Pace yourself |
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Winners aren't the ones who set off at a hundred miles an hour and then run out of steam. Nor are they people who start very slowly and then work like mad at the end. They are people who know how to pace themselves steadily through an event, so that they finish with a flourish, but are always in the race.
One of the most common faults that I notice in inexperienced speakers is the tendency to speak too quickly. That may be due to nerves, or to a wish to get the speech over as quickly as possible. The trouble is, you may be speaking faster than your audience is thinking, which means that your message will not get across.
You need to consider the pace at which you deliver your words. Here are a few tips:
Always rehearse your speech out loud before delivery Include enough material to take up 80% of your allocated time - live speaking always "expands" If you finish a few minutes early, no-one will mind If you stumble over words or phrases, you're going too fast Vary your pace to maintain interest Build in gaps, such as images or short videos If your audience looks confused, go back and explain. You have time If you look likely to run out of time, drop something, don't speed up Never rush through slides. Learn how to skip them. Finish slowly and clearly. |
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| Media Tip - Practice your dismount |
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Competitive gymnasts perform some extraordinary routines, and it's quite beyond me to judge how well they are performing. However, along with you, there's one part of the routine that I can make an assessment of, and that's the dismount. It's clear that their landing has to be as solid as possible, without a step forward or back, and especially without falling over.
The end of a media interview is a bit like that. It's something that everyone listening and watching can take a view on. If you're hesitant, or mix up your words, people will notice, and form an opinion accordingly. No matter how well you perform in the rest of the interview, if you mess up the ending, much of the impact will be lost.
Practice of course is the key. You need to have an exit line that you can deliver powerfully without hesitation. You may have only a few seconds, so your message needs to be short and punchy. It also needs to resonate with the audience, so should be a repetition of the main point of the interview. |
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| Social Media Tip - If this, then that |
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Anyone with a programming bent (and they are so hard to straighten) will tell you that "If" statements are very useful. Back in the dark days of the early 1970s, I used to punch a series of holes in cards to say something like "If A is less than B, move C to D", or some such nonsense. I'm much better now. Anyway, this tip is about a rather cool application that will do clever things for you "if" something happens.
Perhaps an example will help. Every time you post a new blog, you want to mention it on Twitter. You can do it manually by clicking a couple of times, but sometimes you may forget. This handy tool does it all for you. It's called (wait for it) "If this then that", and you can find it at ifttt.com
Once you have set it up with permissions to use your social media channels, it will perform tasks for you in the background. Some nice people have already set up hundreds of tasks that you can use, such as getting a tweet every morning with weather information, or updating your Twitter profile picture when you change it on Facebook, or - well. you get the idea.
I'm not a fan of sending automatic tweets thanking every follower, or automatically following back (both of which you could do with ifttt), but for some regular tasks, it's quite brilliant.
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| Need some remote speaking tips ? |
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| 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." |
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