3 Things That Can Kill Your Next Media Interview

A few days ago, I started to do my annual year end-type business activities and I realized I've been doing media training for 16-years. When I started my business in 2008, I didn't know what to expect, but here we are.  

I've now done media training for thousands of people and I've boiled down their mistakes to three simple things. They need to find confidence, get prepared properly and be a little selfish too.

Here's what 16-years has taught me.

Confidence

Far too many people I work with when I do media training, predict they’ll bomb when we do practice interviews. I hear things like “I’m going to say something I shouldn’t”, or “I’m going to make a mess of this interview. I just know it”

Frankly, if that’s how you feel about it, it could very well happen.

I tell everyone that they know far more about the story they’ll be interviewed on than the reporter does. They’re the subject matter expert after all. That’s why they’re being interviewed. Since they have the knowledge, if they prepare properly (see below), chances are they’ll do a solid interview, so relax and just do it.

Much like an athlete who lacks confidence and thinks they’ll put in a bad performance, the mindset a person has before an interview with a reporter is extremely important.

Remind yourself you know your stuff, you’ve done everything to prepare properly and now comes the easiest part - simply saying what you want to say.

Get Prepared

There are only two things you can control in a media interview – the preparation you do before the interview and what you say during the interview. The reporter controls everything else. As a result, you need to control what you can control and not worry about you can’t.

The mistake many people make is, they review the information they’ll be interviewed on so they know and understand it. That’s a great first step, but there’s more. Much more.

Once you’ve done that, now the real work begins. Try to figure out the questions the reporter will ask and then determine your answers to those questions. If you know what you’ll be asked you’re halfway home. Answering those questions becomes so much easier.

Identifying the questions also begins to shape the interview in your mind. You’re taking a bunch of information and starting to put it in an interview format. You can now “see” the interview in your head.

You’re still not ready because you haven’t practiced yet. Practice how you’ll answer those questions. Get somebody to play reporter. Have them ask the questions and give your responses.

What you’re aiming for is an environment where your preparation is as close to the real thing as possible. When you do the actual interview, you’ll feel like you’ve been there before and now you just need to execute.

Be Selfish

I know being selfish isn’t a good thing in most cases, but being selfish in a media interview is where your mindset needs to be. Let me explain.

Far too often, a person being interviewed by a reporter dutifully answers the reporter’s questions. That’s great, but that’s not really the goal here. You want to not only answer the questions, but make sure what you want to say comes up in the interview.

Some media trainers will tell you not to answer the question that’s been asked, but instead answer the question you wish you had been asked.

That’s crap. You sound elusive and stupid when you don’t answer the question. However, during the interview you need to find ways to talk about the things that are important to you.

Let’s use this example. Something unfortunate has happened and as a result a child has been injured. The reporter will obviously want to you to talk about that, how and why it happened and who should be blamed. You need to answer those questions, but you also need to find a way to talk about the positive steps you’re taking to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Each time you share information about what happened, you need to move to what you really want to talk about and those are the changes being made. The reporter might not ask you about that, so you need to steer the conversation there. You could say “As a result of this, we’re making the following changes to try to ensure this doesn’t happen again”, or “You’ll be interested to know we’ve made two changes to lessen the chances of this happening again. Here’s what we’re doing….”

Never assume the reporter will ask the question you wish they had asked. Be selfish and talk about what you want to talk about. Just make sure you answer their question first.  Answer first and explain second.

Your interview is really a blank canvas. You can do with it what you want. Just get properly prepared before you start painting that masterpiece.