Hi John,

I'm away at one of my favourite events of the year - the annual convention of the Professional Speaking Association.

It's an opportunity to re-engage with my speaking pals, to meet new and aspiring speakers, and (believe it or not) to listen to a number of speakers on stage.

You'd think that those of us who speak for a living would have had enough of conferences, but this one is different. It's where we get to spend time with our tribe, in what can be a fairly solitary existence at times. I also have a bit of fun deciding which badges I'm going to sport on my lapel each day.

I'll be interviewing some of the world-class speakers at the event as you'll hear in my web radio show over the coming months.

As you probably know, I provide a one-to-one speaker coaching programme for a limited number of speakers who wish to grow their speaker business. It is for speakers who wish to make a full-time or part-time income from speaking, and it is suitable for speakers anywhere in the world.

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All programmes provide customised coaching around all aspects of a speaking business, including fees, getting bookings, working with bureaus, creating websites and show-reels, marketing strategies and of course creating killer keynote speeches.

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The programme starts in January 2024 (or earlier if you wish). Places can be reserved now.

If this suits you, let’s discuss it. The coaching and mentoring is delivered via Zoom, until and unless we can get together. The monthly sessions can be split into two sessions a couple of weeks apart if desired. There is work to do in between sessions, and the programme includes reasonable ad-hoc calls for advice and guidance at no extra cost.

My guest in the web radio show this week is Ian Cleverdon, who has had careers in retail banking, higher education and is now a freelance audio producer and podcaster.

It's no surprise that we found a great deal to chat about in terms of music, people we know in common and mostly our adventures in podcasting.

We had a fascinating talk. Hear our chat in the in the radio show.

Go to the Apple Podcasts Archive of the MediaCoach Show

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And there's a superb song from Ian's band, The Huers, with his bandmate Phil Caffrey

The MediaMug of the week is the Easy Group, owner of a number of "Easy" brands including Easy Jet.

They have used their considerable legal muscle to force a pop group, Easy Life, to change their name. They filed a trademark action in the High Court against the Leicester-based band.

The band will not defend the high court lawsuit, saying the financial burden of doing so would be too high. They have not announced a new name.

“We simply don’t have the funds to access a fair trial in the high court. Not to mention the fact that this would likely rattle on through to 2025, and with this hanging over us we wouldn’t be able to release any music in the meantime. Our careers, and indeed our lives, would be on hold.” they said in a statement.

So there you go. I can't see any reason why anyone would confuse a pop band with a huge corporate organisation, but that's what their lawyers claimed. Ridiculous, in my view.

Great speaking is a real business asset. Here are some ways to raise your game:

1. Be original People are fascinated by originality. Your ideas are unique to you, and though they may have been influenced by others, will be yours alone. That's what people want to hear - your take on the world. There are no bonus points for plagiarism.
2. Be controversial Make yourself stand out by going against conventional wisdom, or delivering a rarely-heard point of view. If you agree with everyone else, why communicate at all? There's no need to be critical of others, but giving solid reasons why you take another view is good copy.
3. Give advice, not instruction Pay respect to your audience by giving them suggestions about how they might change, not ordering them to do so. If you tell people they must act in a certain way, a likely reaction is that they will decide not to. Of course, you don't have to take this advice.
4. Provide evidence Always back up your ideas with evidence, and make sure that you quote the source of the information so that it can be verified. If you can't find any evidence, you can either fall back on the old phrase "in my long experience" or drop the idea. I'd advise the latter.
5. Show you care People love to see passion in communication, If you care about something, share your passion and people will respond. Even if they don't initially agree with you, they will appreciate your feelings about the subject, and may even be persuaded.
6. One message at a time I know, there are seven messages here, but it's a list of advice, not a speech. Since your audience will recall only one thing, it makes sense to concentrate on your key message throughout, and repeat it at the end too.
7. Only say it if you really mean it Authenticity is essential to good communication. If you lack conviction, or worse still, don't believe what you are saying, it will be obvious. Stick to content that you are confident about.

Bonus idea (8) Occasionally, try breaking the rules, as I have done in several instances above...     

Journalists aren't perfect, as you will realise from my words each week. Sometimes I make an error, but I hope only a tiny one. That's something to consider when you see a piece in which you have been misquoted, or in which a fact is wrong. The issue is not whether the article is precisely what you said, or one hundred per cent correct, but whether it matters.

There used to be an old saying "Today's newspaper is tomorrow's fish and chip paper". That's no longer true for several reasons, not least the internet, but it does embody a principle,

News is often transitory, and people forget what they see and hear. It's the cumulative effect that's important, and the impression you create on the media, rather than the detailed content of what you say. That doesn't mean that you should ignore your message (far from it), but it does mean that correcting every error is a fruitless exercise.

Of course, if the error is serious, you should demand both a correction and an apology. You may have to argue quite strongly for the apology to have the same prominence as the original story, but it can be done.

In most cases, however, I think it's better to grit your teeth and sit on your hands rather than to send an angry email because your age was a year out.     

Someone asked me the other day "What are the really good things about social networks?" it made me stop and think. Like you, I use social networks on a regular basis. I make connections, find out interesting stuff, and let others know what I do. I've never really considered why I find social networks so useful. So here are three things that I think are really handy:

1) Speed. News stories often break on Twitter, which is why all journalists have Twitter (or X) accounts, and alerts set up on their topics of interest. However, speed is just speed. It's not analysis. Social media is really useful in alerting you to something that just happened, so that you can look into it on more detail. If you're the kind of person who needs to know stuff first, social media is brilliant. But there's a caveat. Because you don't usually know the source of the information, there may be no validity check. It's probably better to say that social media can alert you to something that may have happened, and you need to find a trusted source to be sure.

2) Structure There's more and more unstructured information flying around the web. Social media tends to facilitate hubs and groups of interest that provide structure to that information. Again, you need to be aware of the possible bias of the curator. However, getting a current view of a topic you don't fully understand is much easier than it used to be.

3) Mood Finding out what people think about an issue is also made much easier by social networks. Online campaigns and petitions are now seen as reliable indicators of the public mood. Once again, the usual warnings apply, but if a few hundred thousand people feel strongly enough about an issue to comment online, there must be something going on.     

One of my favourite funny speakers was Jeanne Robertson. She knew how to tell a story in a way that everyone loved and laughed at. Here's one of her best...

A reminder to look no further. Just get in touch. 07986 852621

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."