Why media training is important

Missed opportunities.

That’s what I tell clients you can avoid with media training. Chances are interview opportunities are going to be far and few between. You don’t want to regret or waste those one or two sound bites you’re going to get.

I know many new and seasoned business owners who panic and/or don’t know what to do when a reporter calls–things like return calls promptly and speak on message.

Media training helps you emphasize your key talking points and avoid traps for all types of interviews, including on camera, live, radio and phone. As with any skill, practice and repetition makes perfect.

Here’s a test: Tell me clearly and succinctly what your company does (no slogans, no jargon). You’ll be surprised how difficult this question can be without training. If you think this is tough, imagine answering questions during a crisis!

Good apology by Yahoo! Fantasy Football

Just after 11 a.m. CT Sunday, Nov. 11, I went to the Yahoo! Fantasy Football page to double-check my line-up for any injuries, as I and many others always do. To my surprise, the page didn’t load, and wouldn’t load after many retries. I even tried my mobile app, but that didn’t work either, so I gave up in frustration.

Ken Fuchs, head of Yahoo! Sports, apologized the next day in an email sent to all users. I thought it was well-written: he owned up to the mistake, identified correctly the victims (fantasy football players, NOT Yahoo), didn’t say anything contradictory (e.g. “our servers never fail”) and aligned himself with the victims (“as a Yahoo! Sports fantasy player myself …”).

Two days later, Ken sent another email detailing the problem (new configuration of hardware failed) and offering some compensation (free access to the “Scouting Report” and 20 percent discount to Yahoo! Sports Store).

I was fortunate that the outage didn’t affect me, though I can see how angry some people would be if they didn’t get to set their line-ups prior to the outage. The compensation can’t make up for a lost game, but it can move Yahoo! slowly back in the public’s trust.

My only disappointment was that Yahoo! waited until Monday to say anything. Even some kind of note on Sunday acknowledging that the site was down and was being worked on would have been helpful.

Still, kudos to Yahoo! for how it handled a very tough situation.

When heads roll …

Someone tweeting for @KitchenAidUSA posted “Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president’. #nbcpolitics” during the debate. It was immediately taken down and replaced with this apology: “Deepest apologies for an irresponsible tweet that is in no way a representation of the brand’s opinion. #nbcpolitics”

This is not an excuse, but it’s likely this was an accident. Someone tweeted using the company account instead of their personal account. However, the repercussions are mounting. Within an hour, both Adweek and Mashable had stories on this.

The best thing for KitchenAid to do is explain what happened, then fire the person (or have the agency fire the person) who tweeted it. Someone needs to be held accountable. If no one is punished for this, then KitchenAid deserves to keep getting its ass kicked in the social media world.

No punishment is like KitchenAid saying this incident was acceptable, and that it doesn’t mind insensitive jokes (no matter which side of the aisle you’re on, the tweet was still out of place).

Update:

New tweets from @KitchenAidUSA:

“Hello, everyone. My name is Cynthia Soledad, and I am the head of the KitchenAid brand.”

“I would like to personally apologize to President @BarackObama, his family and everyone on Twitter for the offensive tweet sent earlier.”

“It was carelessly sent in error by a member of our Twitter team who, needless to say, won’t be tweeting for us anymore.”

“That said, I take full responsibility for my team. Thank you for hearing me out.”