Ep 54 Use for an In-House TV Studio - Media Training Feb 23 16

So what's the best way to get use out of an in house TV studio at your corporation or organization?

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

So frequently when I'm at a large or even mid sized corporation or financial organization or government agency, their director of communications will say well TJ we have a brand new TV studio or it's going to be finished in a month. Any advice? Well, I do have advice because on the one hand I'm happy you've got a new TV studio. On the other hand, I very sad about how often these things just grow. Cobwebs.

Technology, insights.

So folks, I think we're not far away from the day when everybody has a TV studio. Now these can be very expensive. Some of my clients have studios built for excess of $100,000 and that gives you full broadcast capabilities. T1 lines, connections to camera operators in other cities, Very high quality cameras, the latest of everything. Some of my clients have very, very simple Skype studios that may be put together for less than a couple hundred hours. Now I'm in a TV studio right now, but it's really just a large closet in the first floor of my home where I do have studio quality. Lights, backdrop, professional camera. But I want to share with you how to really get the most use out of your studio. Whether you do have a six figure studio or if it's a just converted closet that you've spent a couple hundred dollars on. Here's why. Most organizations get them because they want to save time. They are, let's say a big bank, a mutual fund financial organization where their CEO is in demand going on cnbc, Bloomberg, Fox Business News. And even if they're around the New York area by the time you have gotten in a car and navigated your way to Fort Lee where CNBC is based, or into midtown Manhattan for Fox. If you're coming from Connecticut or New Jersey, before you know it, it's a couple hours here, you're there a couple hours back, before you know it, you've lost half a day. And for many top executives, it's just not worth it. So by having your own in house studio, it's a 20 second walk down the hall. You do the interview for 10 minutes and you're back in your office. Net loss of time, maybe 15 minutes. So that's what often generates the demand for building an in house TV studio. So I understand it perfectly and it makes perfect sense and I encourage this. Here's the problem Sometimes you can have a whole flurry of interview requests, but then something changes in the market. You don't get any for six months. Now the studio is just sitting there dormant, collecting dust, wasted investment. Or the CEO, the top executive, is traveling so much that even though you have your own in house studio, they're not there. And you don't have anyone else authorized to do the interview. So how do you really make the most out of this investment? I want to give you a couple of very, very specific tips. Number one, don't think of it as just a TV studio to do in a reactive way when a major TV network calls you. Lookatit is a great place for you to create ideas in a video format and communicate on a regular basis. So here's a tip that many people just don't think of. If you are invited to give a speech someplace and they're not paying you your normal fee or any money and you're busy, what most people do is they say, hey, I'd love to, but I'm not going to be in Des Moines, Iowa and I can't really spend two days going there. So I can't speak to your business school. What you can do is deliver the whole speech from your TV studio. Nice light, put on a mic and away you go. You can do your whole speech talk for 20 minutes, take some questions and you do it all through Skype video and then you're back in your office after 20, 25 minutes. So instead of a two day investment flying to another part of the country or another country somewhere to give a 45 minute or 30 minute speech, you just walk down your hall and deliver the speech through Skype video. And you can have the backdrop of whatever your logo is for your corporation or your organization or your business or your non profit or your government agency. So this way, instead of saying no to the vast majority of your speaking opportunities, especially to nonprofits and groups that can't pay, or to smaller groups that wouldn't make sense as justification of your time. Now you can do it, but on your own terms. You can say, okay, I can talk to your group, but it can only be for 15 minutes and it's going to be through Skype. Now you can say yes to more and more speaking opportunities. The next big thing I believe that you should use your own studio for is your own crisis communications system. Anytime there is a big issue scandal, there is food poisoning at your restaurants, there is a fire somewhere, there is a mass class action suit against you, I believe you should get your CEO in your studio and have him directly speak to the public, investors, customers, clients, and tell them exactly what the message is. Don't just put it out in a text press release. That's cold. Makes you look like you're hiding. Makes you look like you have something to hide. So having the studio there is a huge asset during a crisis communication situation. The next area where I would use the studio is creating ongoing content. Now, the easiest way for a corporation, a government agency, or a nonprofit to create content is not to script out word for word and have it someone reading on a teleprompter looking scared and flat and nervous. The easiest thing for most organizations to do is to have one person interview or have a conversation with another person. So it could be your product manager interviewing an engineer about the latest product. And this way, neither one of them has to memorize anything. They're not trying to read a teleprompter. They may have a few talking points on a table, a few basic questions they've agreed on, but they're not trying to memorize anything. They're simply having a conversation. And this way you can be creating content on a regular basis. There's more video for your website. There's video for your YouTube channel. There's video to accompany every single press release. I mean, don't even get me started. This day and age, why someone would put out a text press release and not put a video with it is beyond me. But most people still do that. So that's one thing I would do. Another area where I would use a studio is to simply create useful content for your customers. You can do it in a question and answer session. You can have various subject matter experts within your organization just looking to the camera. Now, there are a number of insurance companies that do a great job of just providing tips to homeowners. Let's say they sell homeowners insurance. They just provide tips to homeowners on how to protect their homes from fire and from the pipes freezing. Simple, straightforward, useful information. And that's another way of leveraging this TV studio they have. With the TV studio, the lights, the microphone, all this technology is getting commodified. It's getting cheaper and easier for people to use. The hard part, increasingly is just taking the initiative, just thinking, what messages do I really have that I want to communicate with to my customers, my clients, the media who follow me? That's the hard part, is to actually initiate because it's much easier to just sort of sit back and react. Great communicators don't Just sit back and react. They're constantly initiating. Now, some organizations tell themselves, well, T.J. we'd love to, but we're a highly regulated industry. We're in financial services, so we're not allowed to do baloney. Keep telling yourself that. Keep the lying to yourself. I'll keep telling myself I have thick, beautiful feathered hair. Okay, we'll see how long that works. For those of you listening on the audio, I do not have thick feathered hair. Okay, Major, major banks, the Morgan Stanley's of the world, the Fidelities, they are creating high quality video on YouTube and iTunes. If they can do it, so can you. So my mantra with TV studios, whether you're a big company and you've invested 100,000, whether you're a mid sized organization and you've done a less expensive one, or even if you're a one person shop and it's just a closet, is use it. Use it for communicating with your customers. Use it for communicating with your clients, with your prospects, with the media who follow you. Anything you do with text, you can and should do with video. If you got your own studio now, you need to have it set up where you just push a button. You go. When I want to create a daily video podcast, video show for YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, I flip one switch, my lights come on, the camera comes on, the computer comes on, I get behind it and I hit record. It's really not that complicated. It's easier in part because I'm putting out at least one show every single day. This is the kind of thing, the more you do it, the easier it gets. It's actually easier to do one show a week than it is once a month. It's easier to do one a day than it is once a week, frankly. So that's the other thing I would urge you to do. Come up with an editorial calendar, essentially of an output that you're trying to create. Don't use it just to react to interview requests from cnbc. If you do that, unless you're getting invited three times a day by the major networks, if that's happening, fine, you don't have to mess with all the other stuff. But until you're getting three invitations a day from major TV networks, my recommendation is create your own media and do it on a regular basis. Okay, it is time for. Well, before we go to questions, a brief commercial word.

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Okay. As always, I do recommend taking your questions. I urge you to send your questions. This whole show is devoted to answering your questions. That's what we're all about to do. So here's the way.

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Okay, today's question. One of the questions comes from Alejandro Field. He writes in. He's one of our online course students. TJ what is the importance of physical appearance in public speaking and videos and what should we do or not do to improve it? Alejandro it is important, but it's not the most important thing. Remember, with all communication, it's always about your style and substance. If I send you the most beautifully written resume for a job in your organization, but my resume has no experience, even no matter how well written my cover letter is, you're not going to hire me. I've never had a job before in my life. On the other hand, if I have the perfect golden resume, but the COVID letter I send you is filled with typos, misspellings, and I use no capital letters. You're probably going to just throw my resume in the trash can because my style will overwhelm my substance. So whether you're weak on style or weak on substance, you're not going to get the job. It's exactly the same thing, I believe, when you are speaking to the media or giving a speech. Because if you have something that is confusing people or distracting people, that's the only thing they're going to remember. Forgive me for those of you listening to the audio podcast, I've now pulled up my jacket and I've pulled my tie to the side. If I did my whole video like this, those of you watching on video would be confused. Like, why is he like that? Did he just come in from a hurricane? Is he trying to be cute? Is he trying to be fashionable? What's going on? It would confuse people. And that's why I take the time to not have my jacket sticking up and I pull the tie down so it's more or less straight. It's not that everyone has to be conservative all the time and it's not that you have to have a specific look, but you want something that represents who you are and what you're about and doesn't confuse people. And that's why people have asked me about Donald Trump's hair. Personally, I think it's a travesty, but it somehow works with his brand. It's sort of bigger than life. It's gaudy, it's a little bit tacky, it's brass colored. It's all sorts. It's attention grabbing. So in that sense it is 100% consistent with his brand and what it's about. So I guess you could say his hairstyle, his appearance works for him now. Also, you may have been speaking of Donald Trump since he's in the news a great deal here in early 2016. He always dresses in a way that's flattering to him. Now, he's not trying to be mean here. I'm overweight sometimes. He is a big guy, fairly overweight, but you will never see him with his button jack, his jacket buttoned where it's tight and pinching. He generally leaves his jacket unbuttoned. He leaves his tie very long to cover his belly. He always has a fitted Brioni suit. I mean those cost $20,000 off the rack if he's not wearing a handmade tailored suit. So his ties are solid, they're not distracting. His shirts are solid, they're not distracting. So he's wearing things that say, I'm a big, rich, successful businessman. He's not wearing anything that's too tight around his neck or buttons about to pop or anything like that. So to that extent, his appearance is consistent with what his brand is and isn't distracting. Although I understand people who say they can't even focus on what he's saying because of his hair. So, Alejandro, I hope that gives you a few insights. By the way, we do have entire episodes of this podcast available on how to look your best on TV and for speeches. Plus I have online courses that are just about the visual aspect, so I hope you'll check those out. Well, thanks for writing and please keep the questions coming. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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