Media training Archives - Page 5 of 9

We’ve all seen poor interviewees in the media and let’s be honest, most people won’t be all that terrible. You’re more likely to be indifferent than actively bad.

An indifferent interview, though, is still going to serve you poorly. So here we’ll go through ten tips to make sure you perform better.

Interviewees’ attitudes

It’s worth beginning by checking your view on your interview before you go in. So many of our clients feel they need to answer all of the questions and do nothing else. It’s true that this can be a cultural issue; some of our clients in Eastern Europe get mightily irritated by displays of interviewees changing the subject or moving to a topic that suits them better. Only recently we had an engineer who felt doing anything like that would affect his reputation.

Every rule is going to have its exceptions. Ask yourself this, though: if you’re being paid for your time, your media interview is a business conversation. In any other meeting you’d feel entitled to put your view forward – so why should this change in a press interview?

Trust your expertise and research

You’ll have seen interviews in which the interviewees fluff, dodge a question, are looking for an agenda from the journalist. First, the big secret: the vast majority of journalists are there to tell a perfectly straightforward story. Second, the flustering tends to come out because people may have prepared but they don’t trust their preparation. If you use a PR company (and Clapperton Media Training often works in tandem with such organisations) they will furnish you with information on the journalists, bloggers and other media figures you’re likely to meet; they will anticipate the likely lines of questioning and offer possible answers. Take those elements seriously – they are there to help. Give it only a cursory read-through and you’ll struggle to remember, appearing not to know your stuff.

A related point is that you’re the expert in your topic, you’re close to the market, not the journalist. If the interviewer happens not to know the question that will elicit the most useful fact for the reader, it’s down to you to bring it up.

Know where you’re going

We often use the image of a satnav in our media training as well as our presentation training. The thing about a satnav is that you tell it where you want to go and it doesn’t take you anywhere that isn’t part of the way to your destination.

Interviews will work best for you if you have a destination or aim in mind. Not that we’re suggesting you ride roughshod over the questions you’re being asked; if you get that reputation journalists will simply speak to someone else next time. However, if you have an aim in mind then just as in any other business conversation you’ll find the result will be better when it’s published. Plus you’ll have an idea of whether it’s been a success or not, depending on what you were aiming for.

Slow down

Several times this month we’ve been training in different places, asked practice questions and found people getting lost in the middle of their answers. We believe this is due to two things. First people think they have to speak immediately a question has been asked. This isn’t the case. The journalist or blogger might want an answer quickly but you don’t work for them, you work for your business. Second this leads to the interviewee beginning to speak immediately rather than thinking about where they’re going to finish.

Slow down. Take a breath. It’s your interview. If a journalist doesn’t like that, tough, Tell them you need to think for a second – what are they going to do, get distressed at asking you a question that provoked some thought? If they really press, tell them you don’t want to mislead their reader/listener/viewer. There’s no comeback from that.

Tell the truth…

Yes we know what a lot of people think of media trainers. But no, we won’t train you to lie. It’s a terrible idea; you have to remember which untruth you’ve told to which journalist for consistency. If you’ve told the truth in the first place it’s never going to turn around and catch up with you. The best interviewees are honest but focused.

…but select the relevant bits

Something a lot of our clients try to do in the practice sessions is to share all of their expertise in a short interview. That’s right, they’ve worked in an industry for ten years and they want to share all of that in a five minute warm-up interview.

They do it because they want to help but the more densely-packed an interview is, the more likely a journalist is to lose the thread and do that human thing of making mistakes. Try finding out about the readership and what they’re likely to need, pick a few vital things and focus on those.

Work up some soundbites

At the risk of sounding fake, soundbites can be really useful when it comes to getting a message understood and shared. If you have a memorable phrase, use it and don’t worry about repeating it once or twice.

Tell stories. About people.

People buy from people and they listen to people. Years ago when lead trainer Guy was working with the Guardian’s “Business Sense” supplement, an offshoot of the technology section and focused on small businesses, he was writing about some software aimed at farmers. The Guardian asked what they could use to illustrate the piece and put on the supplement’s cover and Guy said he could get shots of the software’s box or of the screens while it was being used. The design people rightly asked if they could send a photographer up to one of the customers and get a picture of them; the cover just consisted of two people Guy had interviewed looking at the camera and it was infinitely better than a yawn-inducing box of software.

Watch out for silences

You know that trick you use in interviews when you’re recruiting people? You ask a question, they answer and you smile at them, they feel they have to say a bit more and they end up telling you a lot more than they’d intended? Well, journalists are wise to that one too. If a journalist is playing the old silence trick on you, a simple “Does that answer the question?” will force them either to ask something specific or to move on to something else. Don’t feel you have to “fill”!

Get media training

Oh come on, it’s us, you knew that was coming! Lindsay will be pleased to set up an initial chat with Guy if you click here and we’ll find out which of our trainers is best suited to your needs.

Strategy is a word used too often in public relations circles. Actually scratch that. It’s an over-used term in business overall. People make a list of things to do and they say it’s a strategy. It might be a very good do-list but it’s not a strategy.

People sometimes come to us wanting help with their press interview and presentation skills which is fine, it’s what we do. We want to help you (or your clients if you’re one of our colleagues from the world of public relations) to hold on to the agenda and control the messages people attribute to you in public.

Other times they come to us and it becomes obvious they want us to build their sales. Or do some lead generation.

Don’t get us wrong, lead gen and sales are completely respectable things without which most companies – including this one – would be dead in a very short order of time.

If you don’t apply some sort of strategy, however, there’s no point in even trying.

Strategy and your starting point

What we mean by strategy is that your communications (and the people behind it) need an idea of where they’re going and why. As you can see we have put in a not-at-all predictable picture of a satellite navigation system to make the point. The first thing you need for a satnav to work – let’s take “decent maps installed” and “a signal” as read – is a destination.

Surprising numbers of people, in other words “more than none”, come to us and ask to talk about media and presentation training without a destination in mind. Worse, they come in with an unachievable destination they want to reach.

Let’s take an example. Someone might come in with an idea that they want to prep for an interview with the Economist or Financial Times. They might want to sell more of their product offering, let’s say it’s sourdough starter.

Let’s look at that again. They are thinking there are readers out there who will be looking for bread making tips in the FT. To be blunt: no there won’t.

That doesn’t mean the FT’s readers won’t want to know some things about sourdough starters. If you’re a serial entrepreneur who is doing brilliantly selling sourdough starters your story could be valuable. You could use it as positioning if you were looking for investment.

You’re still only starting

Even then, it’s not going to work unless it’s part of an overall whole. “Please invest in my company because I’ve been interviewed in the Financial Times” isn’t going to get the cash flowing in. It has to be part of an overall campaign and strategy and one which goes much further than a communications exercise; the communications element is one portion of it, albeit an important one.

To stretch the satnav metaphor even further, lead trainer Guy lives near Croydon. If he wanted to get to Brighton but insisted he wanted to travel via the North Circular then a decent working satnav would be able to do it but anyone who knew the geography of southern England would confirm that’s quite a diversion and would slow him down rather than help.

Likewise if your wish was to sell more of your product and you insisted to your PR company that you wanted an interview in the Financial Times they would most likely advise against it. Even if they had the right connection and you had the right story to interest the publication (and these are non-trivial “ifs”) the interview would most likely take up a lot of your time and not get you any closer to your goal. Other moves would be better.

Let’s stop talking about satnavs

To everybody’s relief we’re now going to abandon the satnav image. It’s inexact because in reality not every pitch, even to the appropriate publications, will land. Also your goals might change along the way. Over the last few years we’ve seen the pandemic and its aftereffects having dramatic impacts on the business world, what’s achievable and how.

This is why there is a picture of a chess set at the head of this entry. Guy has been playing a lot of bad chess recently (took it up again in middle age and is nearly at the stage he’d reached at about 11). One thing he has picked up is that if you have a plan that’s better than not having one but there are other moving parts. The King, which you’d planned to trap in three moves, might have the audacity to move. A knight might move in to protect it or the Queen could take your piece.

At all times you need to keep that objective in mind – check that King in such a way that there is no legal move out. But the moves needed to do so will change as the game moves on and if you’re inflexible then the chances are you’ll lose. Worse, if you insist on using only your bishops or only your pawns, you’re going to neglect some pretty powerful hitters. The thing to do is to understand the power of each of your pieces and how they work together.

Back to strategy and media

The best way to go about securing the right coverage to take you where you need to go is with the help of an expert. We’re going to put our hands up and say that’s not us; we’re a training company and can support you in developing and honing those presentation and interview skills you’ll need to deliver those messages and not get blown off course. Your strategy will be best handled by someone with an overview, whether they are in-house experts or a full-blown PR company.

But whatever you do and whether you use an external trainer like Clapperton Media Training, never assume that interview/media skills will work in isolation. They’re there to be part of a strategy. Once you know where you’re going and the staging points en route can you really be sure to get to your destination – then it’ll be worth acquiring and honing your interview skills.

Social media is a great place to put your own content. You’ll have realised that by now. No journalists to misinterpret it or put their own spin in place, just your business and its readership. It should be ideal but there’s a problem. You don’t own your social media.

At the time of writing this has become apparent to a lot of people. Some are higher profile than others. One you probably won’t have heard of is a friend of a friend (bear with us, it’s a true story). He has a large profile on LinkedIn and is known for being a little unorthodox (you can translate this as “he swears like a trooper”). He gave out a casual insult (to someone he knows well) in a LinkedIn group.

LinkedIn revoked his access almost immediately. Not just to the group but to the whole of the network. It took weeks to get this looked at by a human being who could see the lack of harm immediately. However there will have been damage in the meantime. LinkedIn is social media and like all of the other networks it’s owned by someone other than its users – in this case Microsoft.

Social media and business

A number of people will say that social networks are too involved in their own power grabs. Twitter in particular has come in for flak since Elon Musk bought the entire business. This comes mostly from people who believe the content has moved further to the right of the political spectrum. It may well have done so; the problem, though, is that people on the right had previously felt alienated.

They didn’t like that it was a largely lower-case-l-liberal playground. It’s now a rather further right playground and it has fewer staff keeping people safe, but this is the point. Neither set of people owned it.

And yet.

People keep using social media as their main marketing platform. Years ago LinkedIn had something called LinkedIn Events (it does now but it’s a different thing). People would sell places on their LinkedIn event and earn a living by doing so. One day LinkedIn decided it no longer wanted to sustain these events for the very good reason that they were not bringing in any cash for the company.

Members complained vehemently. LinkedIn had ruined their businesses, they said. How dare LinkedIn damage their livelihood. You could see why they were annoyed except in one respect. They did not own LinkedIn. None of them paid for it. You might just as well ask: how dare they use a network they didn’t own to promote their vested interests?

Social media and governments

10 Downing Street for social media post — 10 Downing Street

There are other examples in which entire governments have taken against social networks. On the day we are typing this blog entry (we’re very current here) the British government has banned its employees from having Tik Tok on their phones.

What’s that? You make a product or offer a service to teenagers and Tik Tok is the very place you want to promote it? That’s fine, you’re not affected by a government ban but here’s the thing: when the government starts to issue edicts people start to pay attention. Lots of it. If you doubt that then you need to consider the fate of Huawei. It’s a worldwide concern and survived but have a look at its collapsing share of the phone market on that link. Up until 2020 it was in the top five suppliers. Everybody stopped buying it once then-president Trump banned Google from working with it. So it didn’t have access to the Android system any more.

Predictions are dangerous things but suspicion over China could damage Tik Tok’s position on the world stage of social media. The result would be that anybody whose marketing presence depends excessively on Tik Tok would need to look again, rather carefully. Nobody knows what’s going to happen with this one but it’s certainly something to watch.

You need your own playground

The problem with using someone else’s playground is that you end up needing to play by their rules. Let’s say Clapperton Media set up its own social network. This is a stretch, and a bigger stretch is: let’s say it really took off and that you wanted to use it.

Now let’s say Guy had some stupid idea to make it distinctive (this is less of a stretch) and decided everybody had to have a rabbit in their avatar picture. He also decides that you have to refer to rabbits somewhere in every post (OK, this is back to “a bit of a stretch”).

If you want to take part in our network you have no choice. As long as we’re policing our own network adequately it’s our playground and works to our rules. Users and others in the community can object as much as they wish but the bottom line is that if you don’t like it, you don’t have to be there.

Ditto LinkedIn if you want to go a bit rogue with your tone. It’s the same with Twitter if you don’t like Elon Musk or the promoted Tweets you’re getting or indeed Tik Tok if you agree with various governments about security risks pertaining to China.

Effectively you need your own playground which is why we worry about companies, particularly on the smaller side, throwing everything into a particular network and neglecting their own website.

You need the other playground too!

This doesn’t mean social networks are unimportant. You need to claim your own company name on all of the networks to ensure nobody else does, say an unscrupulous competitor. Also never forget that the first place a journalist will look when preparing to interview you is LinkedIn. You might well find they actually go to Google first but LinkedIn’s search engine optimisation is so good that they’ll find your entry there as well.

However, this is a bit like having a market stall in someone else’s market. It might serve you extremely well but you’re always going to be bound by the rules of that particular market and if the owner decides to start imposing new rules, charging or anything else, you might be without a place.

Always, always keep your own site in order as well as communicating on someone else’s site.

Last week we took a look at producing your own media. You might not want to go through indirect channels, you might have a base of customers and prospects that will respond to the direct approach.

There is a lot to be said for the indirect route. You produce your own podcast, fine, but it’s going to contain whatever you want. You get someone else to interview because you’re interesting and the listeners will know you’ve been sanity-checked. It’s like the difference between a traditionally-published book and a self-published effort. A self-published volume might be excellent but it might also be full of typos. The traditional version will have been accepted by a publisher and had an editor looking over it to ensure it follows in a logical order and the spelling and grammar are OK.

If you’re convinced you have enough to say, however, why not try? There are many ways to run a podcast so we’re going to use Guy‘s “The Near Futurist” as an example.

Image of the Near Futurist podcast cover — Guy’s podcast – you can tell he’s not a visual person, the writing and logo are squashed when this appears on a phone screen

What is your podcast about?

It might sound obvious but the first decision to make is going to be the topic of your company’s podcast. “It’s going to be about my company” is unlikely to succeed. There are a number of reasons for this. Primarily the things that interest you in and about your business might not be all that thrilling to someone else. A small glazing business once came to Guy for thoughts on its website. It had started the copy (with changed names): “Ben and I had been trading independently for ten years but we thought, recently, let’s be serious – so we incorporated as a limited company.”

Nobody in the history of glazing has ever had “but are they a limited company or partnership?” as the first thing they want to know. Some need to understand whether the glazier is experienced. Many want to see pictures of windows they have installed. Probably all want to see testimonials.

Your podcast is the same. Making it about your business just won’t work. Guy’s effort, for example, could have been about journalism. Only other journalists and PR people/spokespeople (OK, that would be the readers of this blog, we grant you) would listen. So he decided to make it about the near future, taking advantage of 30+ years as a technology journalist .

So you need to decide what it’s about. Maybe there’s a niche within your own business that you can exploit.

An aside: the business purpose

The business purpose was and is different from just entertaining people, although he likes doing that too. Guy wanted to ensure he wasn’t one of those media trainers who had done some journalism years ago and whose counsel was therefore likely to be out of date. He wanted people to hear he knew how to interview people, to have a platform for his voice so if people wanted to check him out for some corporate voice work there was a current source, and perhaps a secondary source of income – which, thanks to a small amount of sponsorship, it has produced. Your own podcast needs to have a reason behind it as well.

Where do you start?

A theme you’ll get used to with us is the satnav image. You don’t start with “who do I interview” or “what microphone do I use” – you start with the business purpose. That’s your destination and like a satnav, the route you take has to be the best one to get you there.

It’s particularly important to be realistic with that destination. Few people are going to listen to a podcast and think “I’ll go and buy some of that item/service immediately”. You’re much more likely to achieve branding and thought leadership as long as you have a strong enough idea; this means putting obvious self-promotion to one side and focusing on issues that will resonate with your target client. It’s important at this stage to speak to a few of them!

You’ll need to decide some of the basics. Some podcasts are an hour long. Some are ten minutes. How long will your listeners listen? Ask them!

Guy Clapperton takes up the story:

My own podcast was relatively easy to formulate because the idea was to act as proof that I could interview people rather than just tell them about being interviewed – it’s a proof point. It’s also subtle proof that whether I’m more or less in my late fifties or not, I’m not put off by newer technologies – you hear a lot from marketing people about ‘over 55s’ as if we’re an alien species and I was keen to kill that stone dead.

Having those aims in mind it made complete sense to take advantage of my contacts in the IT PR industry and get them to supply me with some guests. I did so and it became easy to start building up a set of shows. The mechanics are surprisingly simple.”

Record and publish your podcast

When Guy is out interviewing people he doesn’t bother with an intimidating mic or other IT set-up (we get that you’re going to cry “we know, we’ve heard it”. Instead he uses his phone – just voice recorder on the iPhone or the equivalent on your Android phone. In terms of recording remote interviewees he uses Zoom although here he does use an external mic; the Blue Yeti was very good until he dropped it; the Blue Snowball does just as well. It connects to your computer like any other USB device.

He arranges the time for the interview and sends some topic areas over and records. He then uses a copy of Audacity (you can download it free of charge) to take out the umms and aah’s, his own and those of the interviewee. It’s worth leaving a few in so that you don’t end up sounding fake.

He then adds music, again using Audacity and he downloaded this music from Audiojungle – always use music for which you’ve paid a small amount so you can be sure you’re allowed to upload it. Other sources of music and of course other editing software is available.

Getting it out there is the next stage and here someone advised Guy to look at Libsyn, short for Liberated Syndication. This is an inexpensive way of uploading your edited and complete podcast; you can add “cover” artwork and show details.

It’s up there but nobody knows

At this point you’re published but nobody knows about it. This is where Libsyn has some clever workarounds; once you’ve filled in some details and selected some sources it will push your podcast to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Acast, your own website, just about wherever you want.

Then it’s up to you to publicise it.

Caveat: lies, damned lies and statistics

There are two things to beware of here. The modern version of Libsyn has two sets of figures you can look at. One is “Unique” and for a long time, Guy looked at these. What he didn’t realise was that it would register every time someone scrolled past a Tweet mentioning his show prompting it to start automatically. The fact that someone clicked off immediately was not, apparently, a problem.

The figure to look for is the IAB figure which is easy to select. This will be lower but it excludes accidental starts and other “non-listens”. Guy is now quite happy having 2-3000 downloads a month of his podcast.

The other thing to watch out for is your own time spent on getting your word out there. A small section of people reading this article might have ambitions to be full time podcasters in which case, great, go for it. However, most of you won’t, and it’s all too easy to put so much time into your podcast and publicising it that you might as well have taken it up as your sole occupation.

Always remember in the case of this or any other sort of marketing, it’s great as long as it’s doing its job. If it doesn’t perform or starts to suck all of your spare time out of the equation, it’s not doing you any favours – try something else!

And good luck – if your podcast attracts attention you can become a permanent fixture in your ideal client’s ears. This will make it all the more likely that they’ll come to you when they need a service like yours.