I’m ready for my close-up now, Mr DeMille

Your heart is racing. There are little beads of sweat on your brow. Your mouth is so dry you could scrape a match along your tongue and it’d light up (don’t try that at home, folks).

In two seconds, you’ll be appearing on live TV. You thought you could handle it. You thought it was a waste of money employing a professional to help you to prepare. Now you’re wishing you’d listened to your colleagues and not thought you knew it all.

Your head is now an empty place with tumbleweed blowing around and you’re grasping around for any words that you can string together to make rational sentences. What will they ask me? What can I answer? Who am I and why am I here?!

This is a familiar position for people who are asked to take part in interviews for the media, whether on TV, radio or for an online platform, who haven't prepared properly. Your performance in front of the cameras or on the radio can mean the difference between getting your messages across succinctly, on point and professionally, or rambling incoherently, losing the plot and damaging your reputation. Which would you prefer?

It’s a no-brainer - get professional training. 

Here are some of the benefits:

•  You'll find out who's the best person to use
• You'll learn how to prepare, visualise and rehearse
• You'll get skills to get the job done effectively
• You'll learn how to calmly deliver key messages
• You’ll look the part and feel more confident
• You’ll know what the journalist is looking for
• You can raise your brand awareness
• You'll understand what soundbites are and how to deliver them
•  You'll keep your cool in a crisis
•   If relevant, you'll grab the opportunity to turn a negative into a positive

Choosing the right location is important too

To find out more about our media training courses and bespoke in-house training for your company, check out Chimera Courses.

Our trainers are industry experts with many years of relevant media and training experience, not novices or copycats. We’ve handled press and crises in-house for small to large companies and not-for-profits, as well as been media interviewers, journalists and producers, so we know what we’re talking about. 

Altogether in our team, we have around 200 years of experience in PR, sales and marketing. That makes us very old or very knowledgeable, our clients judge which. 

Hint: none of us are collecting our pensions just yet…

Epic photography for business

People engage more through a powerful image than text. That’s why you should use the best possible photography for business. It’s a no-brainer yet it’s amazing how many people use out-of-focus, badly lit and unclear images.

Oops!

Impactful photography is crucial to promoting your business especially with the power and immediacy of social media. That means using relevant images.

It’s also essential to have an approachable, professional-looking photograph of yourself so your potential customers can see the face behind the business, making it more personal. People are more likely to do business with someone they know and trust which is why you should have an image as your avatar on social media, rather than the default ‘egg’.

Your products and services should have fantastic professional-looking photography too although sometimes you might not have sufficient budget to hire a photographer.  Well taken photos will enhance your organisation’s PR whether it’s online or on printed media. Flyers, exhibition material and leaflets are much more likely to be read if they are covered with eye-catching imagery.

With the advent of mobile devices with good camera facilities, you can create good photos yourself although for high-level corporate work, you should still try to find budget for a professional photographer if you can.

You can get stock images from the internet but beware copyright and licensing laws.

If you decide to take your own photos, you need to consider subject, lighting, composition, quality etc and be aware your brand reputation might be tarnished if you don’t do it well.

Please don’t assume images you find on Google are free to use. From the time an image is created it is automatically protected by copyright, which is protection provided by the law applying to all images. To use an image without having permission or purchasing a licence is known as infringement. 

Infringement of copyright can be very costly and result in lawsuits, legal fees and even criminal charges. There are ways you can be found out if you think your use of an image from the internet can’t be tracked, so beware!

Now that local papers particularly have fewer staff photographers, they’re on the look-out for creative images to be sent in … but only if they’re good quality, in the right format and size, and tell a story.

To find out lots more about this subject, check out our #ChimeraCourse photography session: www.chimeracomms.co.uk/courses.php

Think of the damage limitation involved if you get it wrong!

Training? Bah humbug!

Giving your teams the skills to do their jobs properly is good for your business and good for everyone.

Training and development improves your business through performance, profit and staff morale. 

Naturally anyone who’s tasked with doing a job needs to know how to do it, yet firms often give people an additional remit but don’t train them. It’s as if there’s an expectation they’ll suddenly know how, which means that probably the job will get done badly or not at all. Wasted time, possibly damaged organisational reputation and certainly a frustrated team member.

Key benefits of giving your teams the training they need:

·         better customer service through better communication

·         improved productivity and profit

·         people who feel up-to-date on latest technology or industry best practice 

·         better loyalty and retention as people feel you’ve invested in them

·         retention saves you money

In addition, your people will have valuable new skills, increasing their contribution to the business and building their self-esteem. The training they do can take them into other positions within the organisation, positions with better prospects and/or better pay and which help your business. And they have fresh skills to do new and different tasks, which keeps them motivated and fresh.

So if you think training is a waste of time or resources when people should be at their desks, think again. If you don’t train your teams to communicate better, your key messages won’t be getting to the right customers or potential customers. That could be wasting the money you might already be spending on PR and marketing, and damaging your organisational reputation.

What if they take the training then disappear to a competitor, you ask. That's life. As I always say, it's the real world. Stuff happens. Deal with it but don't dwell on it.

If you’re using so-so photography to promote your business, you’re wasting time and money, and giving your competitors the edge.

If your personal brand doesn’t match that of your organisation or business, you’re potentially damaging your chances of success.

And if you want to know how to use social media to promote your organisation effectively, don’t just assume everyone can do it. It could all go horribly wrong!

Check out #ChimeraCourses – a range of training sessions with skilled, experienced and knowledgeable industry experts not copycats or wannabes www.chimeracomms.co.uk/courses.php

Don’t be a training humbug. Skills are for life, not just a sweetener!