TJ Walker breaks down the biggest media mistake: showing up unprepared. He walks through how to research your interviewer, nail your top three message points, and craft sound bites that actually get quoted the way you want them to.
Chapters
So what's the most common media blunders that people make? It may surprise you. It's not the saying something stupid or the career ending gaffe. The biggest blunder most people make is simply not preparing interesting messages and interesting sound bites to bring their messages to life. They decide to wing it. And then they do the interview and one of two results happen. They get no quotes in the story because they just didn't have anything interesting enough to say, or they get quoted. Doesn't end their career. Nobody's upset, but it was a quote on something they really had no concern with. It wasn't of strategic importance to their organization, their business, their campaign. It was just kind of a random quote, lost opportunity. That is far and away those two blunders, those results are the most common blunders people make because they don't take it seriously. They'll say, oh, well, it's just a newspaper interview. It's not national tv. I don't have a lot of time. Let me just take the phone call now. No, you should treat interviews the same way, and that is find out what the topic is, find out who the reporter is, what organization, find out the deadline, and then tell the reporter, I can't talk to you now, your deadline is at 2. Okay, I'll call you at 12. And then brainstorm on message points. Narrow it down to your top three. Brainstorm on sound bites. And a reminder, there's a previous episode on sound bites in this series. Plus, if you email me tjediatrainingworldwide.com I will send you a couple of media training books of mine that give you detailed analysis of how to create sound bites. So that's what you need to do in order to be prepared. This way, when you do the interview, you've got your messages, you've got your sound bites. You're going to get quoted. It's on the message you want and it's the sound bite you want. That's always the goal of an interview. So don't make the mistake of saying, well, it's not a tough, nasty interview. It's not a confrontational topic. Let me just wing it because it's a lost opportunity. It's essentially throwing money down the drain when it comes to building your own brand. And you're frankly not building a better relationship with the reporter because you're not giving them refined, interesting insights and quotes.
