Blog

Case Study: Long-term Video Partnerships with Comsteria

At Comsteria, we know video is one of the most effective ways to share your message. When you work with us on long-term projects, we get to know your organisation inside out. This means we can create videos that truly connect with your audience and help you communicate complex ideas in an easy-to-understand way. For communications teams in charities, trusts, and businesses, keeping up with regular video content can be tough. It’s even harder when Read more

By Emma Baker, ago
Introduce yourself on podcasts and at conferences

How to introduce yourself

We produce a lot of podcasts at Comsteria. Many of them feature academics and other experts who’ve been invited on to talk about their work. Our clients often like to begin each podcast with an introduction for each guest. The guest will either lean into the mic and verbally introduce themselves, or, they’ll provide text in advance and the presenter will say it for them, (think Fiona Bruce on BBC Question Time). It’s the same Read more

By Colin Kelly, ago
Professional Scottish Voiceover Colin Kelly showreel thumbnail

Voiceover for videos – new showreel

Clients enjoy working with Comsteria on video production projects because we’re able to offer many aspects of the creative process without having to outsource. This allows us to keep prices low. One particular area of interest is voiceovers. We have our own VoiceOver studio and our Managing Director Colin Kelly is a highly experienced professional VoiceOver, having spent many years working in radio and television broadcasting. Over the years, all sorts of organisations have used Read more

By Colin Kelly, ago
Media Training - picture of a video camera.

Media training doesn’t have to be scary!

At Comsteria, we deliver media training to build you up, not trip you up. Somewhere along the line, it seems media training, and perhaps presentation skills training as well, have acquired this reputation as being a rather painful experience. We know some of our competitors favour an old fashioned approach and we hear phrases such as ‘knock you down and build you back up again’. We think there’s another way. It’s quite possible to build Read more

By Colin Kelly, ago
Improve your reputation

How do you respond when someone applies for a job at your organisation?

Powerful Communication is about much more than press releases you issue, what you do on socials and how you come across in television interviews. It’s everything. From your pricing structure, to the greeting I get from your receptionist when I arrive for a meeting and the ‘404 error’ page when I click a dead link on your website. I see many organisations going to great lengths to make their recruitment processes accessible and engaging only Read more

By Colin Kelly, ago
Corporate apology advice

When apologies go wrong

Tim Davie, BBC Director General and Team GB equestrian star Charlotte Dujardin have both issued apologies this week. Both lack specific reference of the issue they’re apologising for. As a result, they’re continuing to receive criticism and risk the issue growing and causing them more damage over the long term. Comsteria’s founder and crisis communications specialist Colin Kelly has advice on what they should have done differently, and what you can learn. Watch the video Read more

By Colin Kelly, ago
Instagram shadow bans

Instagram Content Restrictions – Advice

We’ve become aware recently of a quite concerning double standard across Meta owned properties, specifically Instagram, with users facing restrictions (sometimes called ‘shadow banning) on their accounts for sharing what the platform considers to be ‘sexually explicit or erotic’ content. There’s never any clear definition of what is actually defined as ‘sexually explicit or erotic’. Many of us will have quite clear definitions in our heads but in practice it seems a lot of innocent Read more

By Colin Kelly, ago
Comsteria - About Us

Comsteria – What we do and how we help

Comsteria’s Managing Director Colin Kelly shares the full story of how Comsteria came to be, what we do, who we work with and why we’ve got the edge over our competitors. Since 2012 we’ve been delivering more than 200 corporate communication training sessions to clients throughout Scotland and beyond each year. From media training to smartphone video production, crisis comms and presentation skills – we’re Scotland’s Powerful Communication champion, and we’re ready to work with Read more

By Colin Kelly, ago
Podcast editing tip

Podcast Editing Tip

Editing a podcast can be time consuming and frustrating. A particular challenge is when a podcast guest runs several words into each other and sentences don’t end cleanly. This is part of natural speech patterns but presents a problem when you’re trying to lift ‘clips’ out of a sentence, perhaps to use in an intro sequence. Or where the speaker goes on to talk about a separate topic and you need to ‘cut’ what they Read more

By Colin Kelly, ago
Get started with blogging - on demand training

Get started with blogging

You can enjoy on demand training from Comsteria right now with our blogging live stream from earlier this week. Colin Kelly presents this 2 hour session explaining how blogging can help your business, how to get started and more. This is a taster session – get in touch if you would like more tailored support for your business, or take advantage of our blogging ghost writing service where we’ll write blogs for your business. Press Read more

By Colin Kelly, ago