Training Archives - Stacey Meadwell

Starting points for writing good thought leadership

Thought-leadership or opinion pieces are great content and good for visibility when approached the right way.

They are an opportunity to present your take on market trends or topics that are useful and interesting to your clients.

You can pitch them to B2B publishers and business news outlets or use them for client newsletters or on your own website to help build authority.

hand metal music musician — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

They’ve been part of my working life for many years.

As a freelance, I ghost-write them for clients who don’t have the time or find writing them tricky. When I was features editor on a B2B magazine, I used to commission and edit guest columns.

Common mistake

The most common mistake when ideas for thought leader pieces were being pitched was a lack of opinion or viewpoint.

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B2B media, Training, What journalists want

The reason some people get quoted more by journalists

Even before Boris Johnson became Prime Minister he was a journalists’ dream. Why? Because as soon as he opened his mouth a colourful quote would come out.

Close up image of a desk with a smart phone and a hand holding a pen writing in a notebook — Photo by Chivalry Creative on Unsplash

Regardless of what you think of his performance as Prime Minister or London Mayor he has a way with words. And OK so it can backfire on him – often spectacularly – but there is a lesson here.

It isn’t always about what you say, it’s how you say it.

Back when I was B2B property journalist, there were popular market features for which it wasn’t difficult to find industry experts to comment.

In fact, you’d find that a lot of people wanted to give their view on what was going on.

Deciding who to quote

The challenge, for me, was deciding who best to speak to or quote – there was always a limit.

For example, I might have two people who said something like: “Deals are taking longer to conclude at the moment”.

And then another who says: “Getting deals over the line is like kicking a mattress up a hill.”

Who do you think I would quote?

The point is, you can stand out from the crowd by not just saying something interesting but saying it in an interesting or colourful way.

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Interview tips, Training

How to rock Zoom and podcast media interviews

The pandemic has made video and audio interviews more commonplace.

Being confined to working from home has accelerated the use of video calls and opened up a new, easy and accepted way for the media and businesses to create video content.

Similarly, podcast interviews can be recorded online with participants sitting anywhere in the world.

Many of the UK’s biggest broadcasters have switched to online recording as safe way to produce content instead of in-person interviews.

Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s Ways To Change The World podcast (a favourite of mine) is just one example.

What all this means is the likelihood of being asked to do a video or audio interview is increasing.

But do you know the dos and don’ts so that you look and sound your best?

Here are a few key pointers:

Zoom video interviews

Camera position: Have your computer’s camera (or external camera) at eye level so you are looking directly at it, rather than down or up. (It’s generally a more flattering angle too.)

Interview tips, Training

‘Will a journalist correct my grammar in a quote?’

When I do my media training sessions a common question is about how the journalist will quote you.

There is a fear that what you say will appear verbatim regardless of repetition, verbal ticks such as using ‘like’ and slips in grammar.

What you have to remember is that very few of us speak with the sort of grammatical precision you’d see printed.

Live news presenters are perhaps the most polished but they are highly experienced and they still don’t always speak perfectly.

We all repeat ourselves, stutter and stumble over our words occasionally. We speak in incomplete sentences or miss words, say ‘um’.

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Training

Do you target your content pitches and press releases appropriately?

multiple arrows being fired into a wall — Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash

Earlier this year Hubspot surveyed 500 journalists about PR tactics for pitching stories that were counter-productive (link to piece at the bottom).

That’s the polite way of saying they drew up a list of what irks journalists.

I’m sure there won’t be anything on the list to surprise seasoned PR’s – and this isn’t a post about dos and don’ts* – but there is one broader lesson: ‘Know the audience’.

Research the audience

When pitching to journalists this means not only knowing their patch but also understanding the publication/website and who its audience is.

I’ve worked with many brilliant PR’s over the years but the one who regularly sent me stories about window boxes wasn’t one of them.

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