Media training is a ‘must have’ professional development program for any serious leader or manager.
Media interview training gives you the skills to deal with the media effectively.
Media relations training, with a specific focus on television media presentation training, can be very stressful for beginners.
Here’s why you should consider taking a media training course and some essential tips from our media skills training courses.
If you go to the archives of any commercial television station and pull up footage from a 1960s news bulletin and view those footage with a stopwatch, you’ll find the average quote length (known as a sound bite or news catch). of the person interviewed for the story is around 60 seconds.
If you watch commercial television tonight with your timer set and time each sound bite or news catch, the average duration will be seven seconds.
That’s why it’s called McNuggett News! It’s fast, skillful, fast and tasty, but not very satisfying.
There are three reasons for this shortening of the length.
1. Increased competition for our shrinking attention spans,
2. More choice, noise and disorder in our lives, and
3. The fusion of information and entertainment disguised as news.
So how do you get your message on a complex and detailed topic across the media in seven seconds?
Well, you need to craft your key message and seamlessly deliver it as a quotable media-friendly quote.
Remember, you only get one chance to get it right. The professional TV news crews I work with constantly tell me about people calling them after the interview and saying “can you come back, did I forget to say this and that?”
Of course, the media are so time-strapped and deadline-obsessed that they never return.
So you only get one chance to maximize your media moment.
How do you do this, especially for television? Here are my top 10 tips:
1. Dress well.
In the powerful visual medium of television you will be judged by your appearance. The patterns and colors of the clothing will add to the impact of your on-camera interview. Avoid clothes with lots of patterns or patterns. A dark jacket (blue, black, charcoal, or navy) with a white shirt/blouse always looks good on camera. Take a cue from what TV newsreaders wear. Heed my mom’s advice: “it’s better to pay the extra and buy a really good suit than to have a lot of inferior ones.”
2. Warm up your voice.
Tiger Woods wouldn’t go into a championship round of golf without warming up. You, as a professional communicator and official spokesperson, should never engage with the media without warming up your voice.
3. Speak with greater energy.
Speak at a higher volume, range, pitch, and pitch than you normally would. Imagine having a conversation with someone and speaking at a slightly more lively level than you normally would.
4. Ground your feet and move slowly and deliberately.
The more you move, the more your body language will distract from your message. Doing stand-up interviews, even radio interviews, will change your entire physiology and give you more energy and authority. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and planted firmly on the ground. It’s hard to sound credible standing on one foot.
At the book launch of Understanding Influence for Leaders at All Levels, I learned from coauthor Des Guilfoyle that slow, fluid, and deliberate movements will give you more referent power, charisma, and personal magnetism.
TIP: Watch your interviews with the sound turned off to get a better idea of what your body language is doing in the interview.
5. Keep calm.
Assertive, aggressive, and even angry reporters will fire questions at you rapidly, like bullets fired from a machine gun. Your speech patterns will be intense and rapid. Don’t get carried away by mirroring and combining these patterns. In these situations, breathe and speak slower than the interviewer.
6. Memorize your three key points.
You should be able to hand them in smoothly without reading notes. First, write them down. Writing things helps fix them in the mind and seeing them written also helps. Then compose a visual image of the actual words. Visually place them in the upper left part of your brain. When remembering these points, look to the upper left part of the brain and they will instantly appear like magic.
In technical terms, brain experts have shown that the left side of the prefrontal cortex (just behind the forehead) experiences increased blood flow as new information enters our episodic memory. In fact, the brain’s thesaurus is scattered over many separate parts of the left cerebral hemisphere (Source: The Odd Brain by Dr. Stephen Juan, HarperCollins, 1998).
7. Never say without comment.
Journalists will believe ‘where there is smoke there is fire’. Don’t say any comments, but support this with a valid reason.
8. Drink lots of water.
Stay hydrated and avoid caffeine and milk before an interview. Milk clogs the salivary glands and causes dry mouth. This manifests itself in the common nervous habit of licking dry lips.
9. Live in the moment.
Elite athletes discuss and practice getting into the zone for peak performance. You need to do the same.
Try this: Relax, close your eyes, and take three deep breaths, focusing on clearing your mind. Then visualize a time in the past when you felt very motivated and very confident. Capture this moment in your mind and anchor those feelings. Place this mental image inside your right hand and shoot into a fist. Cover this fist with your left hand. Repeat this process until you can instantly put yourself in a state of peak performance.
10. Review, Evaluate and Improve.
After every media interview, always review:
What worked well?
What could be improved?
What will I work on next time?