Crisis Communications Tip of Day Avoid Late Night Tweeting

Media tip of the day: avoid late night tweeting, especially after a drink or two.

If your whole brand or identity is all about being confrontational and controversial, saying it like it is without sugar coating it, picking fights, being a real combatant in political and topical issues of the day, then it is good to tweet late at night and be extra provocative.

But for most people in the government, private, sector, or the industry, tweeting late at night, picking a fight, settling a grievance, or letting out some steam may feel good at that moment in particular, but once it has passed and you look at the text the next day and all the reactions of people calling you obnoxious, and foolish, you end up regretting your action.

So that is my tip: do not tweet in anger, do not tweet late at night, and do not even tweet after one glass of wine. Think about what message you are putting out for everyone to see unless your brand is based on being controversial and confrontational.

Don’t Let Technology Squeeze Out Your Video Rehearsal Time

I’m not anti technology guy, but here is my challenge to you: every single week or sometimes every day of the week, someone emails me about an application that can make my presentation ten times better: a projector, a video application and what not. There is more and more tech to help people with presentations.

I am not telling you to stop using this technology. But what I am begging you to do, is before you touch any tech, is to think about what it is that you want your audience to do. Then figure out what ideas are going to motivate them to do that and what stories you have for each point. And lastly, practice your presentation on video until you like what you see. Then and only then is when I think, from a time management point, it is ideal for you to start thinking about the technology you can use to make your presentation better.

In the real world, people get a new website or tech which they use to add a new special effect to their presentation and before they know it, they spend five hours clicking, and cutting, and pasting. Meanwhile, they haven’t practiced once and have not isolated their ideas or stories.

So use technology and stay abreast of the tech trends. But do not let it crowd out what is most important: an interesting and compelling thing to say.

Be the Media

Media training tip of the day: you have to be your own media. Case in point, in mid 2017, DNAinfo and Gothamist, very popular websites with huge audiences and their reporters formed a union. The response from the owner? He completely shut down these organizations. While one of them was making huge profits, the owner simply hated the unions and I don’t want anything to do them and he would rather lose money by shutting the business down. And it is his right. Where is the lesson: if you aspire to be a reporter and want to communicate new facts, ideas, and stories to audiences, my advice is to not count on any media organizations. Newspapers go out of business everyday.

Those who are successful have created their own media. They communicate through Facebook, Youtube, self published books, and blogs. Only then, when other media outlets now want to hire you for gigs and columns, you can do that. But do not put all of your eggs in one basket. These are precarious times of media outlets and you can every easily be axed and eliminated. If you have your own relationship with your audience, you can control your own means of production and stand on safer ground. That is why I use my own media platforms as well. I may not own Facebook or Youtube, and if they wish they can throw me out but I can pop up on any other platform.

Do I do things with major media outlets from time to time? Sure! Have I been hired by networks before? Yes! I have been hired by radios and TV networks for small gigs too. But I don’t trust them as my only means of communication.

Use Other Voices

When I use a different, manufactured voice other than my own, regular, speaking voice to emulate how another person would speak, I am not trying to be funny. Neither am I trying to be a world class mimic that is going to appear on the Tonight Show soon. But I am simply acting out doing someone’s voice by changing it slightly.

My recommendation for you when you are giving speeches or presentations is that every once in awhile, do someone else’s voice, it doesn’t matter if you are a good mimic or impressionist. It simply creates more variety in how things sound. It breaks up the sheer monotony of most speeches.

So do not just summarize or quote what other people say. Try to become them even if it is not the direct mimicry of how they sound. It just helps to break up the monotonous and boring flow and make it sound more interesting.