The MediaCoach

Hi John,

I don't know if you have been talking to anyone under twenty five recently, but if you have, there's a good chance that the words "Love Island" may have entered the conversation. Just when you thought reality shows were on the wane (did you realise there is another set of housemates in the Big Brother house right now?), along comes a show that has been pulling in millions of viewers to ITV2. Of course, I've only been glimpsing it occasionally while my 20 year old daughter is watching it, but I have noticed that Camilla has had a rotten time, so she'll probably win the £50,000 prize.

Meanwhile the reality show that you couldn't make up continues in Westminster. Enough said about that. The Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, has said male MPs will no longer have to wear ties in the chamber. Maybe the time for ties has run out, but then that was said about beards once.

Great management is sometimes hard to analyse. Alex Ferguson was undoubtedly a great manager. Who better to speak about him, and how he managed, than one of the great players who turned out for him - goalkeeper Garry Bailey. Hear his recollections in the Media Coach Radio Show. There's also a fantastic song from Jim Boggia.
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I mentioned Glastonbury as the MediaMaster last week - this week it's someone who was at Glastonbury - Jeremy Corbyn. He walked on to the pyramid stage in front of an audience of over a hundred thousand, who appeared to really enjoy his speech. Regardless of his politics, he's a fine orator, with the ability to engage a crowd. Of course, he was largely preaching to the converted, but I thought he did an excellent job. I'm not sure he will ever outsell Ed Sheeran though.

There was someone else at Glastonbury who was apparently not nearly so careful with his words as Mr Corbyn. Channel 4 presenter Jon Snow had, in his own words, a "very pleasant time" at the festival and danced and sang his way through the weekend. However festival-goer Danny Millea tweeted: "Boss that Glasto. Having a dance with Jon Snow and hearing him shout f*** the tories is what dream [sic] are made of". The tweet was rapidly deleted. Mr Snow has claimed to have forgotten the incident. I'll send him a MediaMaster trophy to remind him.

KEEP IT SHORT, PLEASE

There's no need to try to impress audiences with the length of words that you know. Consider the following paragraph from Richard Dowis, author of "The Lost Art of the Great Speech";

"Short words can make us feel good. They can run and jump and dance and soar high in the clouds. They can kill the chill of a cold night and help keep us cool on a hot day. They fill our hearts with joy, but can bring tears to our eyes as well. Small words of love can move us, charm us, lull us to sleep. Short words give us light and hope and peace and love and health - and a lot more good things. A small word can be as sweet as the taste of a ripe pear, or tart like plum jam."

Every word in that paragraph is a single syllable, yet they still have the power to evoke feelings and emotions. Speechwriters know that short, simple words are often the most powerful elements of great speeches, and brilliant speakers know that too. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson : "An orator is never successful until they learn to make their words smaller than their ideas"

When you prepare a speech, look at the words you are using. Could they be simpler? Is there a way of expressing your ideas in shorter words? You may well find that the impact is more powerful when you trim it down.

WHAT'S YOUR MEDIA STRATEGY?

Journalists love unprepared guests. It means they can keep the upper hand, and can lead the hapless interviewee into making indiscreet remarks. However, you won't fall into their trap, because you will have a cunning plan. You think carefully before you engage with a journalist, because everything you do will be geared towards achieving the objective of your media strategy.

You do have a media strategy, don't you? Don't confuse a strategy with tactics. A strategy is an overall aim, such as building awareness about a new product, or doubling your number of customers. Tactics might be contacting journalists by phone, holding press conferences, or setting up publicity stunts. Everything you do should be in support of your carefully thought-out strategy.

Most importantly, you need to be able to measure whether your strategy is working. If you can't measure it, you won't know if your tactics have been effective.

But what if you just want to "raise awareness"? How can you measure that? The most obvious way to check is to conduct a survey before and after your campaign, to find out if more people have heard of you. However, surveys can be expensive, and the margin of error may be more than the increase in awareness that you are trying to measure. Other measures that you might use include website visitors (as long as you count "unique visitors" not "hits"), increases in sales, phone calls or enquiries. Whatever you decide to measure, make sure that you can attribute the effect to your campaign, by making an allowance for other factors. Just get yourself a strategy...

RECYCLING YOUR CONTENT

Social media is not like a library. Tweets disappear, Facebook posts slide down the news feeds, and LinkedIn posts just seem to get lost. What people see is a snapshot and a few moments of a live feed while they are checking their social networks.

Your carefully-crafted message is as ephemeral as the morning mist when the sun rises. It's literally here today and gone tomorrow. That's a problem, but obviously also an opportunity. You can re-post links to your content hours apart, safe in the knowledge that few people will notice, and more people will take notice (if you see what I mean).

You can also re-use blog content and update it to fit in with current events. You can change your reference points and stories in articles. You can add to your "5 ways" to make it "7 ways". You can increase the length of your pieces, or break them down into smaller sections. In short, you can recycle your content.

Abba never played with Van Halen. But if they did, this is what would have happened:

The next Exceptional Speaker Masterclass will be on October 18th at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Only ten places will be available.

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."