Pamposh Raina

The goals for any workshop have to be tailored to the needs of the trainees. If it’s an online training it should not go on for too long because the attention span online generally tends to be limited and so is the opportunity for interaction between the trainer and trainees. However, in case of in-person training sessions it’s easier to lengthen the training by including some group activities that would benefit the trainees. For example, divide the trainees into groups and challenge them to come up with a solution to a workflow problem. Sometimes such activities can be developed based on the pre-training surveys that the trainer might have access to ahead of the training.

It is very important to create a feedback loop, whether trying to reach out to a new target audience or delivering new skills/knowledge to your existing audience. It is extremely useful to have a feedback form ready to share with the audience following a training session. Ensure that this form is designed to align with your training goals, especially if you are looking for specific feedback; once you have this information it can be very useful toward understanding the specific needs of your audience and those inputs can be used to create training sessions that are most suited to the needs of your audience.

In my experience it’s very useful to have a diverse set of examples and exercises built into a training module so that there is something in it for every attendee. Gather as much information about the training needs of the group ahead of the training session through a questionnaire so that you can prepare accordingly. Make the trainings interactive so that everyone gets an opportunity to contribute to the session and feels involved. Most important, never underestimate the intelligence of the trainees, try and ensure that the tone of the training session is friendly and respectful; ensure that there’s room to ask questions and exchange ideas through a constructive debate in the training session.

First off, it’s very important to have a clear understanding of what message you want to convey to your audience through the story? Make sure that the demographic you are targeting through your product/service is represented in the story; eg: if your product/service is for a housewife in her 50s, make sure the characters in your story reflect that. Identify the media/format that is best suited for your target audience and the most effective distribution strategy; eg: if you are producing a blogpost or a video what is the ideal length?; should it be distributed through social media, radio, closed-messaging apps, podcasts, or television?

Source attribution: If you are telling a story as a journalist, it’s important that you don’t compromise on your facts— a smart reader/listener always wants to know how you know what you know. It’s important to establish what is the source of the information that you are presenting to your audiences, especially when there’s rampant #misinformation as well as #disinformation circulating. Sometimes journalists include statistics and numbers in their video explainers but do not include the source for those numbers/figures, which can confuse the audiences if they find another statistic for a similar context, this can impact the credibility of the journalist. Besides, responsible storytelling can also aid media literacy.

I absolutely agree that posing the right questions to the target audiences is a useful way to get feedback. Specific questions can be posted at the end of a blog post or a story; even with podcasts and videos such questions can be posted on the platform that’s hosting the content. If a media outlet ends up incorporating the audience feedback to improve their storytelling, there should be a way for them to acknowledge that to their audiences —to keep them more informed, engaged, and to create a level of trust with them.