How Many People Can Take Media Training?

"The key thing to remember is, when you hire a media trainer, try to get as much out of the session as possible. Even though your key people will do practice interviews, everyone can learn more about the organization’s brand, marketing and policies. "

Here’s a question often asked by organizers planning a media training workshop – how many people can take media training at the same time?

There are really two answers to this question.  I tell people they can bring as many people as they want to the first portion of the day, but the portion of the workshop when practice interviews are done is a different story.

Most media trainers will do some kind of a presentation to talk about how to deal with the news media and then talk about issues specific that organization during the media training workshop. It really doesn’t matter how many people are involved in this portion of the day, within reason. I often say to organizers, the more the merrier because various people in the organization can learn something from media training.

The key question I always ask the organizer is, how many people do you want to do practice interviews? Practice interviews are ones that media trainers do with people who are, or plan to be spokespeople for the organization. They normally take roughly half of the time in a media relations training workshop.

I normally like to have between five and eight people doing interviews. If it gets more than that, I feel the workshop is being rushed because it’s important to give people two practice interviews.  It’s been my experience almost everyone does the second interview better because they get some experience and confidence from the media training workshop.

I also find if people are given the option of doing practice interviews, there will always be some who will decline.  As a result, there could be a dozen people taking a media training workshop, but only seven or eight need, or want, to do interviews.  The others can watch because they can also learn by watching.

If an organization wants 15 people to get experience doing media interviews, I normally suggest two days of training are booked and the group is split into two. Media trainers will typically give a break on the price for a second day of training, so the final cost for two days of training isn’t normally twice as much as one day.

The key thing to remember is, when you hire a media trainer, try to get as much out of the session as possible. Even though your key people will do practice interviews, everyone can learn more about the organization’s brand, marketing and policies.

Next up: How Much is Media Training?