Managing Media: Should you train your internal people or outsource your media management?

Large corporations often grapple with whether it’s better to have a team of in-house people trained to talk to media or outsource media management when needed.

There are pros and cons to both approaches. However, I know from experience that you will see additional benefits when you train a team of people within your organisation.

Enhancing Communication Skills 

Amber Daines Media Training has a media focus, but at its core, it is about effective communication.

And while we do ensure that your people know how to prepare a media policy and plan, are trained to manage media in a crisis, learn how to develop and communicate in “sound bites,” and take control of a media interview, amongst other things, underpinning all of these strategies is how to communicate much more effectively.

Benefits across the entire business

As a by-product of our media training, your people will develop strong, confident communication skills transferable across all business areas.

You will experience a positive difference in how people who have completed our media training lead teams, engage stakeholders, make presentations, conduct interviews with potential hires, increase sales, minimise misunderstandings, miscommunication, and mistakes and deal with conflict resolution.

I’m often fond of saying that my time as a journalist was fun, interesting, and adventurous … but also a great training ground for life.

I learned invaluable communication skills I might not have discovered in another profession. And I’m passionate about sharing these skills, particularly now, as businesses embrace the digital age.

As we do more business online and less face-to-face, communicating effectively is more vital than ever before. Businesses must, whether they like it or not, embrace short video promos, podcasting, a regular social media presence, and an effective website … and back it up with solid customer service to stand out in the global marketplace.

Building better business relationships

Everything boils down to how you communicate with customers and clients, from when they first start researching you to making the sale and developing a longer-term relationship.

The same goes for your staff, suppliers, and partners, too – excellent communication is at the heart of all successful business transactions.

It makes sense to train your people – you will immediately see a return on the investment.

Media Training for Corporates 

We offer a range of media training options for corporates, depending on need, budget, and time allocations. You can opt for face-to-face training, although our online media training is becoming increasingly popular because it allows much more flexibility when people’s schedules are busy.

You can choose from the following Corporate Media Training Packages:

• One-on-one communication skills coaching
• Small group communication skills training
• Media Essentials forums (up to 20 people), and
• Refresher media interview sessions ahead of a major PR event or particular interview topic.

Because we tailor the training to your organisation, we can work with actual scenarios the business might face to provide meaningful context to the theory. Doing this gives your team a sense of how things could play out in a crisis or how they might approach media with a new innovative product or service.

Mock interviews, mock press conferences, mock live crosses and even surprise on-the-spot interviews give your team an experience that’s as close as possible to the real thing, so they can feel prepared when the time comes. And we tackle the tough stuff – handling rapid-fire questions, how to answer questions you might not know the answer to, and reframing negatives, all while staying cool, calm, collected, and ‘on message.’ We also make it fun!

The additional benefit of training your people is that you can choose who you want to have ready and prepared to front the media – while the CEO or the Chairman of the Board is typically the apparent choice, consider specialist subject experts too, and department heads who have some seniority and credibility.

Some organisations also train their HR and Marketing people because they are generally the ones who are developing internal and external communication messages for a range of reasons and audiences, and increasing their ability to communicate across a range of different mediums makes good business sense.

The media landscape is changing rapidly – stories can go viral in moments for all the wrong reasons, and it only takes one public mishap to damage your reputation. Be business savvy and get your people ready. Even if you don’t have to face the media imminently, your business will benefit from upskilling your people.