Ep 119 What are the Rules for Using Skype for TV Interviews and Meetings April 28

So what's the best way to prepare for a media interview using Skype video? And how do you prepare for meetings through Skype Video.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media at work and in Life. Speaking with T.J. walker.

This is a question that comes from one of our colleagues over at the media training blog. This is a WordPress blog, by the way, Ed Barks is the head honcho over there a real media training expert and he does a whole column the other day on etiquette for Skype media interviews. I would urge you to check it out. I agree with most of his points and I wanted to share some of mine as well. These days it's never been easier to do TV interviews on major networks without leaving home or your home office. You can do it through Skype video. Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You're like, yeah, but tj it always looks horrible. You can always tell someone has a camera sort of looking up their nose. You see lights above their head, the audio's awful. All, all of those things are true. But guess what? They don't have to be true. It's pretty simple and easy to come across looking and sounding professional when doing TV interviews on Skype video if you just follow a few basics. Now, I do TV interviews with major networks all the time, right through my home TV station, right where I am coming to you right now. And apologies to those listening on the audio podcast today, I am going to occasionally reference some video elements. So this one time you may want to switch over to our YouTube channel where you can see the video version of this show. But as those of you who are watching, you can see, I'm in a studio. You see my graphics behind me and my satellite imagery special effects. I use this when I'm doing a TV interview because it just makes things look more professional. Or I'll put a video loop of a newsroom behind me. Because quite often when I'm asked to do Skype interviews, it's because I'm analyzing someone, a politician melting down his speech or his media interviews or crisis communication issues. So I have the TV room to newsroom to make it look appropriate. Let's cover the basics. The number one reason most Skype video interviews look bad, it's because you have the camera on either a laptop or a computer, 6, 8, 10, even 12 or 14 inches below your eyes. So because of that, the camera is shooting up your nose. That is the least flattering angle for anyone to be photographed or for there to be videotaped if you've ever seen someone getting their wedding pictures done, quite often you have the photographer climbing up on steps or a ladder getting much higher than the wedding party because it's just more flattering when people are looking up a little. So the first big tip Put your video camera an inch or two above your eyes. I have a video camera mounted on my wall in a closet right now where I'm recording this, but it's just a couple of inches above my eyes. But that makes the whole thing look more like a network newscast, a broadcast. By the way, virtually everything I'm talking about now applies to when you're doing meetings through Skype video. Maybe the stakes aren't as high, but no one's going to be upset that you look better and sound better. Now here's a quick, simple tip. Just if you're using a laptop for your Skype meeting or Skype interview, just get a stack of books and stack your computer on top of the book so that the camera is now at your eye level or an inch or two above your eye level. This does several things. It just makes everything look better. It's not a distorted image going up through your nose. Plus, now you're not going to see the lights on your ceiling. The problem with most angles for Skype video is because the camera is so much lower when it's aimed at your face. You see all the bright lights on the ceiling above you, so your face is all darkened out. That solves the problem. The next problem most people have is the backdrop. If you have a window behind you, then the light from that window is really going to mess up the camera and it's going to focus on that light. So your face is going to get all darkened and hard to see. It's going to look fuzzy. Big problem. You want more light in front of your face than behind your face. So if you have a window behind you, put the blinds down or turn your computer around so that you have some other backdrop. Now you don't have to have a video screen the way I do. Main thing is you don't want anything too distracting. You don't want to see dirty laundry and things from a bedroom and you don't want a bright light. More in just a moment.

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So we've covered that. You need to have your camera at eye level or a few inches above. You don't want light behind you. The next let's focus on audio. One of the problems with Skype interviews when you see someone on tv, local TV station or a broadcast network or a cable network is their audio sounds really tinny and echoey. And that's because they're quite often using the built in microphone on their laptop, their computer or their cell phone. And if it's an emergency, I understand that it's fine. But if you are planning on doing interviews and certainly if you're in any kind of a professional organization, even a one person shop, it doesn't cost a lot of time or money to dramatically improve your audio. Now, I'm not going to be recommending any particular brands and I'm not an affiliate of anyone you can see a For those of you watching this program Today on the YouTube channel, I have a lavalier mic on. Now this is maybe a $200 mic, but if I'm traveling and I'm doing Skype video from a laptop, I'll take maybe a $15 microphone with me. Just go to Amazon and type in lavalier mic clip on mic and then you can plug it into your laptop or your computer and your audio will be dramatically better. Because now the microphone is only a few inches from my mouth. You'll sound much more like the professional broadcasters who might be interviewing you on on the other end. Again it's, you don't have to be some technical genius, you don't have to hire an audio production team, just and I say Amazon. I'm not an Amazon affiliate, it's just really convenient. But there's any other store you prefer. But just type in lavalier microphone or clip on microphone and you want to make sure it has a plug that plugs into your computer and that's it. And you will sound dramatically, dramatically better. Now something else that does have an impact on the audio quality is feedback and echo. So what I do when not necessarily in a meeting, but if I'm doing a TV interview rather than have speakers on and having the reporter or the host who's asking me a question, having that bleed back into the microphone, I'll put a headset on. Again, apologies. I try not to do this very often out of respect to our podcast listeners. I'm holding up an ifb. This is an earpiece and this cost, I think it costs less than $20. It's a simple earpiece. The beauty of it is I put it in my ear, it clips on the back of my jacket, runs along behind me so nobody sees it when I'm doing the video broadcast. This is what all the network newscasters use on NBC, abc, cnn, BBC, around the world these days. Again, you can get it very inexpensively on Amazon, IFB or earpiece for broadcast. Plug those words in and for 25 bucks or so, you then plug it into your speaker and now you can hear the person talking to you through Skype. And you don't see, you don't have to wear a headset. Just to me, it looks ridiculous. When people have their white iPhone headset on when they're doing a TV interview. It looks cheap and in a pinch, in an emergency, fine. For a typical business meeting, fine. You're just doing a job interview, okay? But if you're going to be in front of tens of thousands, possibly millions of people watching a major broadcast, spend 20 bucks or so with an earpiece and the sound will be better. You'll look much better. And here's the thing, if you're trying to get more publicity, if you're trying to get on TV more, the TV producers are much more likely to use you. Not just because they like what you said, but because you had a professional look and feel to your Skype interview. So it didn't scream out, this is cheap Skype. So you can actually increase the odds of getting asked back to do more and more interviews. Now, pretty much everything I just said applies to doing meetings through Skype video. I'll often meet with clients through Skype video. Certainly I meet with prospects this way. Their first reaction quite often is, whoa, that's impressive, tj. Now, I'm a media trainer, so people hold me to higher standards. They also perhaps give me a few more points for everything. Looking professional, you might not care about that, but if you're any kind of a professional business, why not give a little better image for yourself rather than just you're at your desk and it's, everything's a mess and they're looking up your nose and the lighting is bad and the audio is bad. You know, if you're selling high level consulting services and you're putting out proposals that are six figure proposals, why not spend a hundred bucks or so making your Skype meetings look dramatically better? The next piece, if you really want to boost it a notch or two, what I have behind me is a TV screen. It's just an old TV and it's not even particularly a big TV. It's maybe a 36 inch TV these days. You're talking about something like that being dramatically less than $800 and then use a video clip, put it behind you. Now the one that I have on now I did pay for, that was devised and created just for me, but I've used generic ones before where I had the rights to them, bought the rights for $49. So it doesn't have to be expensive. You just have to put a little thought into it. The world is always going to crave face to face connection. The number of meetings and conferences and speakers talking live in front of people has only gone up. But the ability to reach people all over the world through things like Skype video is also going up. There are days when I do multiple TV interviews with networks all over the world, Skype meetings with people, actual trainings with clients, and three continents. And I never had to step out of my home. Those are good days. I wouldn't want that to be the only situation. But those are good days. I hope you can have some of them as well. So if you're not doing Skype video interviews yet and you're doing regular TV interviews, the other thing to think about is it saves you massive amounts of time. So, for example, I live 30 miles out of Manhattan in Long Island. So for me to do an interview in Manhattan is really five hours out of my day. By the time I've got to travel, do all the connections, leave my house, get there, get to a studio, sit around, do makeup, come back, it's really five hours. Whereas if someone calls me and says, tg, can we do a quick interview? I. I can do that in 10 minutes. Now, if it's Good Morning America or the Today show or prime time in a major news network, I'll spend the five hours. But for many, many interviews, foreign networks, local TV news, I'm happy to give 10 minutes. I'm not going to spend five hours. It's massive, massive time saving. So that's the other huge benefit of having a basic Skype set up for yourself. That's professional. I'm T.J. walker. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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