Many of you out there promoting your businesses or serving as spokespeople will hopefully be doing more and more press and informational interviews. PR is a core tactic in your brand building strategy and you want to ensure you are further conveying your brand messages when you are on camera, on the radio or in print.
The best advice I can share is whether you are a beginner or have been at this a while is to get media trained. We featured top tips in our Ask the Expert interview with Bronwyn Saglimbeni a while back from her work in media and presence coaching. Even if you just do a refresher every year, this is a great idea to ensure your messages are coming across in the media exactly as you desire. Interviewers can be wily and time is short so you need to know about presence, polish and soundbites – and how to avoid getting dragged down a rathole – in order to get the most bang for your PR buck. You may never get that kind of audience again, so leverage it well.
Many of you reading this also have blogs or radio shows that you use to promote your business, so you need to be wise to the ways of effective interviewing. It may not be your core business or competency, but if you have a listening or viewing audience, you need to serve them to the best of your ability or risk tarnishing your own brand in the process.
Katie Couric gave some great advice applicable to both interviewer and interviewee in this video. Check it out and ensure you are on point no matter which side of the mic you are on.
