Using Blended and Multi-Media Communications

How do you use a blended communication strategy? How do you use a multimedia approach? Well, let me take you behind the scenes of how I conduct my own business here at Media Training Worldwide. And forgive me for being a little self promotional here, but this is the only thing I've said even remotely self promotional. There are no ads on this podcast that you've heard so far. There's no constant name dropping of clients and the sort of client I'm after. So let me just tell you how I use multimedia for my own training. Client prospects call me and they say, TJ, we need either a day of media training, two days of media training, or a day or two of public speaking training, PowerPoint presentation training. We pick a date, could be two weeks from now, could be two months from now. Then I send an email that's a text communication to the trainees, asking them to pick a time for a conference call. That's a spoken form of communication. Or I'll do it through live video, Skype video, or Google Hangout. So we have a meeting where I'm speaking to them about the goals. I then give them homework. I give them either two public speaking books or two media training books. I ask them to go through that. I give them either access to an online public speaking course that's video based, that has more than 100 videos, or access to an online media training course that's got more than 100 videos. So I asked them to go through the online course to do the homework and then they're supposed to send me a video. They've got to either do a speech or a media interview where they come up with their messages and sound bites. But here's the kicker. They have to practice on video, watch it, critique it, keep doing it until they are happy with either their speech or their media skills, how they're coming across, and then send it to me for my critique. So now I have them typing up messages, speech outline, but then speaking out loud, recording themselves on video, listening to the audio and watching the video and emailing it to me. I'm looking at it. I have had clients practice their speech as many as 107 times before they send it to me. They might have spent dozens of hours in preparation for the day of training or for the two day training session. So when I walk into the room with them, their first comments are off. Oh, tj, I've already learned so much and I've spent relatively little time, almost no time with them so far. It's because I've used a multimedia approach. Books, newsletters, online video, interactivity homework sessions for them, sending video back this way, when we spend our time together for the day of media training or presentation training, it's not a bunch of lecturing for me. Now, I love to lecture, but that isn't how people learn these skills. So because they've done the homework, they have the intellectual concepts down already. The whole day, the whole two days is spent them either giving speech after speech after speech with me videotaping it, critiquing it together, or media interview after media interview with them being video recorded, critique, getting better and better and better. So after the training, the multimedia experience continues with all of my clients. If they've gone through a day or two of my official in person training, they have the right to do a rehearsal before any media interview or speech with me through live Skype video. There's no extra charge for this. So that's yet another medium that's being involved. It's live, it's video, it's speaking, it's pretty much everything. And that way they're prepped right before they go to their interview. Plus, I send them half a dozen new training videos and audios every single week. So it's a blended for the next year. So it's a blended multimedia experience that's designed to help me communicate to them how to speak more effectively, either to the media or to live audiences. So it's not just me giving a speech, it's not just me standing up, lecturing during a day of training. It's using every single format available. YouTube, online training platforms, PDFs, books in the old days, CDs and DVDs, in person training, video in every application. Put it all together and it's a much more powerful set of communications. I urge you to, if not do all of those, think about all the different ways you can use tools to communicate.