Ep 132 Review of new Public Speaking and Crisis Communications Apps May 11, 2016

Two new apps have come out to help you communicate more effectively. But do they work?

Speaking the show about Effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Folks, apologies. I do not like negativity in general and I don't like self serving speakers. I apologize in advance if I sound overly negative or self serving today, but I just have to play it straight with you. There's a new app that's getting some attention called Ummo. Ummo. This is an iOS public speaking app. You tap on the microphone you present and then it gives you feedback on when you use phrases like like. And you know. This is an itunes app. You can purchase it for $2.99 and I just wanted to give you my free $0.02 worth on an app like this. I think it is an absolute, complete, utter waste of time. And this has to have been developed by somebody who knows nothing about public speaking. Folks, I've been in this business for 32 years. That just means I'm old. It doesn't mean you should really say anything or agree with anything I say because of that. But I can tell you when I ask people who are the best speakers you've seen in the last year, the last five years, last year, 10 years, your lifetime. And that's a question I've asked thousands of people over the years. Nobody once has said, oh, I remember this speaker last year and he didn't say a single like or you know, that's not what people remember. The maker of this app has erroneously concluded that that is actually something important. I would contend it is very, very minor what you really need to do if you're going to practice your speech and record it, listen to it and see if it's interesting. In my experience, you can say ah, er, you know, and like if you present an idea that's interesting to your audience and useful and memorable and they will love you and forgive you of your verbal tics. On the other hand, you can be completely devoid of ums, ers, you, knows and likes. If you stand up and you bore people and you give them a data dump and it's unmemorable and there's no stories or examples, they won't remember you and they won't like you. So why in the world are we spending all this time downloading an app, recording an app to pinpoint something that is probably less than 1% of what's important for this speech. And sorry if I sound frustrated, but this also relates to probably once every three weeks, some graphics art Developer will send me a so called infographic on how to be a better speaker and it's always filled with bad advice. They are experts at graphic arts and creating graphic arts and infographics that look pretty, they're captivating to the eye. People want to look at them but they never actually call me or write me or as far as I know communicate with any speaking expert before they make this. They just want to assume they know about public speaking. Well, that's kind of like me giving a whole speech on graphic arts and just saying, well I'm a good speaker and I'm going to give a speech so I can just speak about graphic arts and I can start lecturing people about. Well, you always want to use capital letters because it's easier to see. Well, something tells me a graphic artist would listen to that and say, wow, TJ's really stupid. He doesn't know anything about graphic arts. Why is he telling people that make everything in capital letters? Well, it's because I don't know anything about graphic arts and that's why I don't give speeches on that subject. So buyer beware folks. When it comes to apps that are going to solve a particular problem, I think that's a complete waste of time. Now the self serving part, I have a hundred courses on public speaking and media training. They're all available on Apple Udemy and they're all available for your cell phone if you want. If you go to udemy.com that's letter u d e n y dot com and I'll be give you full disclosure. They're a complete waste of time unless you're willing to do the homework. The homework is you have to record yourself speaking, look at it, listen to it until you love your speech. If you're just going to listen to an app, watch an app, complete waste of time. Please don't spend your money on it. Now let's talk about the next app. This one is interesting because this was not put together just by technologists. This was put together by people who know a thing or two about the subject matter. Ogilvy public relations. Huge, huge firm, great reputation. They've been around forever. They're well known here in New York City. They partnered with Rock Dove Solutions to come up with an app for crisis communications. Now that sounds good. You have a huge PR firm that deals with crisis communications. They know a lot about communications, public relations. Signing on with a technology company and they have this new app. It is, and I've just downloaded is on itunes and it is all about helping you prepare for crisis situations and a lot of different situations. So if you Google Case of Crisis, that's the name of the mobile app. Excuse me, In Case of Crisis, that's the name of it on. I shouldn't say Google. If you go to itunes and and in the search put In Case of Crisis, you will find this app. They do have a free version as well that you can check out. I'm going to give you my assessment of this in just a moment.

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So here's the humorous thing. There's a story in PR Week, which is the leading trade publication for the public relations industry, their target market. It pulls some of the information about this, gives them kind of a nice plug. But here's the bizarre thing. In the end of the story, it says the reporter reached out to people at Ogilvy and Rockdruv for more comments and for more statements about their app, and they said they couldn't get a hold of them. Now you're in the crisis communication business, where everything is about you got to be instant, you got to be instant, you got to be instant, you got to be there right away. Here's a reporter from the leading trade publication in the world on your industry. And when I looked at the publication date, this story had been up for two days, for more than 48 hours. It'd been up for two days. And the reporter is saying, I can't get a hold of these media people who are experts at getting back to the media in a timely way. I just find that highly ironic and a bit ridiculous. And I'm sorry to seem like I'm stereotyping. My experience with really, really large PR firms is quite often they are so bureaucratic. Ever trying to get somebody on the phone can be extraordinarily difficult. To me, that's counter to the whole concept of what crisis communications is about. Crisis communications is about a reporter needs you. Boom. They can get your cell phone and get you on the phone in about two seconds, not two days. Now, let's say the reporter made a feeble attempt, called you, left a voicemail, or let's say they didn't even leave a voicemail. If nothing else, you should be checking your Google alerts to see that your name was mentioned. And when you see a story with your name mentioned, you then write to the reporter saying, hey, I see you were trying to get a hold of me here's a nice sound bite you can put in the story to make it better for your readers. That obviously didn't happen. And if Ogilvy. If you did all that and the reporter messed up everywhere, fine, let me know. I'll be happy to offer a correction, but it just seems truly bizarre to me to be peddling expertise as a crisis communication manager and yet reporters seemingly can't even get a hold of you. Truly bizarre. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. May all of your presentations and media interviews in life be a success.

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