A short live-stream talk by TJ Walker giving practical advice for media interviews. Walker identifies common “false” goals (seeking comfort, answering every question, winning a reporter’s favor, controlling the interview, focusing on length or friendliness) and argues the true goal is to get the exact message and word-for-word quotes you want into the final story while appearing confident.
Chapters
Everyone wants to be successful when it comes to conducting their media interviews and being interviewed. But it begs the question, how do you define success? What are your goals? And are you certain you don't have false goals? So I have clients, prospects come to me all the time. They'll say, tj, teach me how to be comfortable in front of the media. Well, I do that. But that shouldn't be your primary goal because, after all, you can be incredibly comfortable and say stupid things and ruin your reputation, or you can completely fail to communicate the message you want. So simply being comfortable shouldn't be your primary goal? Yeah, you should be comfortable in the same way that you want to have correct spelling when you're writing an important letter. But just having correct spelling doesn't work if none of the words make any sense. Another false goal that I see people have is they want to make sure they answer every question. It's not that we want to dodge questions from reporters, but you can answer every question thoroughly, logically, in great detail, and never get quoted. What good have you done? Or you might get quoted on things that are completely irrelevant to you, that might even confuse the audience you care about the most. So your goal can't be to simply answer all the questions related to that. It shouldn't be to make the reporter think you're smart and like you, you're not looking for a new best friend when you're doing a media interview. Those are not the right goals. Also, your goal isn't to control the interview. I've never met a reporter who was serious about their job and wanted to be controlled and let anyone control them. Here's the good news. You don't have to control reporters. You don't have to control the interview. All you have to do is control what comes out of your own mouth. It's what gets out of your mouth that gets you into trouble, not what the reporter asks or doesn't ask. Typically, the next thing people waste time worrying about is the length of time. Let's make it a short interview. You can still say something stupid in 10 seconds. The interview can be over and your reputation is destroyed. On the other hand, the interview can go for two hours. If you have great messages and great sound bites, and you have tons and tons of quotes, you've only helped yourself. People also waste a lot of time trying to make sure it's a friendly reporter or smart reporter. Again, I've never found any correlation between how friendly a reporter is, how smart a reporter is, and the client actually getting his or her message. Into the final story. Now, there are all sorts of fake, phony, false goals people have when it comes to their media interviews. The sooner you get rid of those and focus on what really counts. What counts, what your goal should be, is to get the message you want and the exact word for word quotes you want into the final story. And along the way, of course, you want to look comfortable, confident and relaxed. But don't lose sight on what's really important, communicating your message. And if it's live TV or radio, communicating it regularly throughout the interview. If it's any sort of edited interview, and most interviews these days still are, then it's getting the exact quotes you want on the message you decided into the final story. That's your goal. If you don't know it's your goal, there's no way you'll ever succeed. If you're focusing all your energies on fake, phony goals, you can't be successful. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining us. If you'd like more information on this, if you'd like to actually get trained, you can go to the website link below for our online training. You can also call us if you're interested in live online training through Skype, video or in person workshops. Thanks.
