Here’s our media trainer Colin Kelly with some quick advice you can implement next time you’re speaking to newspapers, radio or television. Some of this will also work if you’re not dealing with the media, but speaking to your own colleagues or clients perhaps via your own social media channels.
- Consume more media with intent
If you want to better understand the media, spend time consuming it. What matters here is not the newspaper you read, or the particular radio staton you listen to. It’s about your audience. You might not read a newspaper at all and you might get all your news from a particular TikTok channel. So put yourself in your audience’s shoes and make a point of consuming the media they consume. Try buying a different Sunday newspaper each week. Or listen to a few different radio news bulletins across a day. Pay attention to the different broadcast styles they use, the stories they cover, how long the bulletins last, how much space is devoted to particular stories. Ask yourself how you think that story got there. Why is that particular organisation being featured? Is the coverage positive or negative? And where are the opportunities for you. What names come up again and again – can you identify journalists who seem to be on the rise and making a name for themselves? Gathering media intelligence will prove very useful. - Develop no more than 3 key messages
We discuss this in more detail in our half day and full day media training courses, and we can help you establish what your key messages are if you don’t have them already. The key messages will vary depending on the particular circumstances around the interview and should relate to overall business objectives. I often advise clients that one key message is probably going to be your website. Using the interview to drive the audience to your website can bring significant benefits. There, they can access much more information and everything is laid out exactly as you want it. You can measure the web traffic and attribute it to the interview you’ve just done. And it provides a ‘get out of jail card’ in that if you can’t remember all the information or are worried about getting something wrong, you can point people to the website where they can receive the detail they’re looking for. Don’t over rely on the website – journalists and audiences still expect you to know your stuff, but when additional information is needed, it’s useful to signpost people towards it. It’s important to guard against saying too much in an interview. I’ve seen lots of spokespeople get confused and cluttered when various parties in their organisation keep asking them to add more and more information to their key messages. 3 is really the maximum and keep them simple. - Carefully choose the media outlets you deal with
Publicity for the sake of it doesn’t really serve everyone. There can be severe reputational damage when a media outlets twists a story and it ends up working against you or the coverage doesn’t mention the key messages you wanted it to include. This can be avoided by thinking carefully about who you deal with. Don’t court everyone. Newspapers don’t operate within the same regulatory framework as broadcasters – newspapers don’t really need to be balanced, for example. In general, it would be fair to expect better treatment from television and radio broadcasters and our training helps you practice these interviews in a safe space, along with our feedback and coaching to help you improve. Some outlets have a reputation for twisting the truth. Or exaggerating. Or politically, their view of the world might be quite at odds with yours. The media intelligence you gather in Step 1 above will help you decide who to deal with, and who to stay away from. - Keep your answers short
A pre recorded TV or radio news interview will look to use clips of your answers. Each clip is likely to be around 15 seconds long, perhaps even shorter. In our media training we’ll put you through various interview scenarios – some where you’ll be asked to provide answers or around 45 seconds to 1 minute, others where we want the same information but in a much more concise soundbites. being able to adapt and deliver answers of various length is a great skill to develop. A live interview on BBC Radio Scotland’s ‘Good Morning Scotland’, might be allocated 4-5 minutes and you’ll have time for longer answers. But no-one wants to hear you speaking non-stop for 2 minutes at a time. Split things up into manageable, bite size chunks and prioritise the level of detail you provide. - Watch or listen back to the interview
It’s easy now with watch and listen again facilities on websites. I always find our clients tend to be their own harshest critic and you’ll make progress really quickly if you watch or listen back to your interview. Take a note of what you think has gone well, what didn’t go so well and what you’ll do differently next time. A key element is to look at whether the questions you were asked by the journalist were the questions you were expecting. How did what happen align with the briefing you were given by your comms team or press office? If there’s a difference, you need to take note and factor that in next time you deal with the media.
I hope you’ve found these quick tips useful. For more, speak to us about media training and presentation skills training courses from Comsteria.
