Powerful Communication Podcast

It's perfectly natural to feel excited or a bit scared when you're about to speak in public. 

Whether it's a big audience at a conference, a small group at work or that strange sensation that comes with Teams and Zoom, being in the spotlight can feel strange.

Sometimes, this manifests in physical ways. You might perspire. Feel shaky. Or suddenly acquite a washing machine on the spin cycle in your stomach.

In this short episode of C...

The days of 'leaders' or any senior figure in an organisation 'flying under the radar' are over. 

You need to let people in, give them the chance to get to know you, and above all, spend time listening to them. This cultivates goodwill and gives you the benefit of the doubt when the heat's on.

I think some senior figures in organisations shy away from media engagement and speaking in public because deep down inside they believe the...

When you give an interview to the media, you can get powerful results by using a key statistic as a 'hook'.

Journalists are trained to look for these as they can make stories more engaging and give them a sense of urgency.

There's a great example today in the story from Police Scotland about how easy it is for online paedophiles to make contact with childen 'within 30 seconds' of trying.

The use of that tangible number stops the au...

Here's a clip from a recent writing workshop delivered by Comsteria's Colin Kelly.

We love to tackle corporate jargon whenever we encounter it. The trick is always to focus on your audience and challenge any words or phrases that they wouldn't use in every day speech.

There are lots of redudndant, empty phrases uses on websites, social media and in interviews where the writer or speaker - for whatever reason - uses a jargon phrase ...

I've seen a lot of business leaders end up overwhelmed because the comms colleague briefing them before their media interview gives them far too much information.

This is often done with good intentions (better to include too much than risk missing out something important) but it can have negative consequences because the interviewee can't possibly remember everything.

In this episode of Comsteria's Powerful Communication podcast, ...

Comsteria's Colin Kelly outlines his QCARDS system for evaluating AI tools.

If you are thinking of using a particular AI software within your marketing, comms or PR role, consider evaluating each tool against the following criteria:

Q - Quality. Can the tool do the job to a higher standard than I can?
C - Cost. How much does it cost? Explore the limits and potential savings by, perhaps paying annually or accessing the tool via the ...

We're often asked to give advice to clients interested in starting their own podcast.

In this episode, Colin Kelly shares some thoughts around what it takes to find an audience for your podcast and how to make it stand out. 

He also looks at the emerging trend for location or topic based email newsletters, such as the Edinbnurgh Minute on Substack.  Might it be possible that the publishers of these newsletters might be interested i...

00:00:00:09 - 00:00:41:00
Speaker 1
Unlimited inventory is the scourge of powerful communication. Let me say that again. Unlimited inventory is the scourge of powerful communication. You know, it's not PowerPoint that causes death by PowerPoint. There's no problem with PowerPoint. The issue with PowerPoint is you can always add another slight. The problem with your website is we can always add another page. If you're using AI, if y...