1. If you are short of breath while being interviewed, could be nerves. Ramp up your cardio exercise to help lungs: jogging is a great tool.
2. Clients asking more + more how to publicize on social media. Newspapers may by dying, but not dead yet! Headline ink still great promotion for your websites and packets.
3. A pet peeve: guest didn't even look to see what time our show started + kept calling to get "prepped" while we were already on air.
4. Twice already this week, 2 guests asked for ongoing segments on our show. Awkward spot-If a network wants you to be a regular, it will ask.
5. If you are on a media tour or a regular, consider having your own IFB (ear piece) made... it's not too expensive + you'll always know whose ear it's been in!
6. If your interview is bumped by breaking news, be gracious and you may get rescheduled on a slower news cycle.
7. For laryngitis before an interview, take Ricola-no alcohol-or Fisherman's Friend. Don't whisper, do drink warm water, and do consider a cortisone shot.
These are concise tips, since Twitter only gives you 140 characters. I've added some information to some of these, but if you have questions, please post them.
Monday, March 21, 2011
More Soundbite Coach Tweet Tips
1. A guest for tomorrow's show called to check in, let me know he's in town + see if there were any last minute details to discuss. Nice touch!
2. A publicist called for Kevin. No Kevin at our station. She said, "So sorry. Let me pitch my client anyway." Not a good 1st impression.
3. When you send "10 Suggested Questions" to interviewer, include meaty questions. Lightweight questions include, "Where can we get your book?"
4. Always be nice to the makeup artist. He or she not only can make you look better, producers ask how newsmakers acted in the makeup room.
5. If you're an author, watch saying "in my book" repeatedly in your interviews. For those who haven't caught the title, it doesn't help much.
6. If you're a novelist, beware of interviewers who give your plot or surprise ending away! Have a response that makes people still want to buy!
7. A good interviewee has equal parts energy or passion and interesting content. Great information without energy puts listeners to sleep.
8. "News is what somebody somewhere doesn't want you to know. All the rest is advertising." Dan Rather
9. Make sure a host really, really loves you before you ask for a recommendation. And don't ask for it on letterhead. To do so is asking a lot.
10. Reporters are using Twitter to find news sources. What messages do your photo and profile send to the news media? You might want 2 accounts.
11. Reporters hate to talk on the phone. Be friendly, but be quick when you call. Don't avoid calls-they're a great way to stand out from email.
12. We had 2 no-show guests this week because publicists gave us the wrong phone numbers. Make sure shows have your correct number + get a back up for the studio.
2. A publicist called for Kevin. No Kevin at our station. She said, "So sorry. Let me pitch my client anyway." Not a good 1st impression.
3. When you send "10 Suggested Questions" to interviewer, include meaty questions. Lightweight questions include, "Where can we get your book?"
4. Always be nice to the makeup artist. He or she not only can make you look better, producers ask how newsmakers acted in the makeup room.
5. If you're an author, watch saying "in my book" repeatedly in your interviews. For those who haven't caught the title, it doesn't help much.
6. If you're a novelist, beware of interviewers who give your plot or surprise ending away! Have a response that makes people still want to buy!
7. A good interviewee has equal parts energy or passion and interesting content. Great information without energy puts listeners to sleep.
8. "News is what somebody somewhere doesn't want you to know. All the rest is advertising." Dan Rather
9. Make sure a host really, really loves you before you ask for a recommendation. And don't ask for it on letterhead. To do so is asking a lot.
10. Reporters are using Twitter to find news sources. What messages do your photo and profile send to the news media? You might want 2 accounts.
11. Reporters hate to talk on the phone. Be friendly, but be quick when you call. Don't avoid calls-they're a great way to stand out from email.
12. We had 2 no-show guests this week because publicists gave us the wrong phone numbers. Make sure shows have your correct number + get a back up for the studio.
Ten Soundbite Coach Tweets
If you're not tweeting, you may be missing a chance to reach some in your prospective audience. I've shared some good stuff, personal stuff and now-dated tweets on my account @soundbitecoach.
Here is a compilation of helpful hints. And remember you always get new and different advice when you subscribe to the Media Savvy eTips. Just send an email to Lorri -at sign- Soundbite Coach - dot- com and put "subscribe Media Savvy" in the subject line.
1. Tension, stress + fatigue can be heard in your voice. Go get a massage.
2. Authors-always take a copy or 2 of your book to the studio. The director may want to shoot it for your interview or you can give it away!
3. Soundbite advice for coaches: take the blame for problems, but give credit for success to the players. Do the opposite + you look like a jerk.
4. Research the reporters/hosts who are going to interview you. You will impress them with conversation starters and commonalities.
5. Imagine your company's worst nightmare happens. What do you say to the press? Did you have safeguards? Could you have prevented it?
6. Practice interviewing. Get a friend to ask you questions about your topic. Chances are the questions from a reporter will be similar!
7. Take a camera when you are an in-studio guest. Then email the photo with hosts to them. They will be flattered + may put you on website.
8. When a reporter asks you a question that can be answered "yes" or "no," he or she wants more. Say yes or no "and this is the reason why..."
9. Appearance tip: No matter your skin tone or coloring, you look professional on TV in navy blue.
10. What is the biggest mistake newsmakers commit? Saying "no comment." Get your side of the story out there!
Here is a compilation of helpful hints. And remember you always get new and different advice when you subscribe to the Media Savvy eTips. Just send an email to Lorri -at sign- Soundbite Coach - dot- com and put "subscribe Media Savvy" in the subject line.
1. Tension, stress + fatigue can be heard in your voice. Go get a massage.
2. Authors-always take a copy or 2 of your book to the studio. The director may want to shoot it for your interview or you can give it away!
3. Soundbite advice for coaches: take the blame for problems, but give credit for success to the players. Do the opposite + you look like a jerk.
4. Research the reporters/hosts who are going to interview you. You will impress them with conversation starters and commonalities.
5. Imagine your company's worst nightmare happens. What do you say to the press? Did you have safeguards? Could you have prevented it?
6. Practice interviewing. Get a friend to ask you questions about your topic. Chances are the questions from a reporter will be similar!
7. Take a camera when you are an in-studio guest. Then email the photo with hosts to them. They will be flattered + may put you on website.
8. When a reporter asks you a question that can be answered "yes" or "no," he or she wants more. Say yes or no "and this is the reason why..."
9. Appearance tip: No matter your skin tone or coloring, you look professional on TV in navy blue.
10. What is the biggest mistake newsmakers commit? Saying "no comment." Get your side of the story out there!
Walter Cronkite on Liberal Journalists
"I believe that most of us reporters are liberal, but not because we consciously have chosen that particular color in the political spectrum. More likely it is because most of us served our journalistic apprenticeships as reporters covering the seamier side of our cities -- the crimes, the tenement fires, the homeless and the hungry, the underclothed and undereducated.
"We reached our intellectual adulthood with daily close-ups of the inequality in a nation that was founded on the commitment to equality for all. So we are inclined to side with the powerless rather than the powerful. If that is what makes us liberals so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism -- that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased. That clearly doesn't apply when one deserts the front page for the editorial page and the columns to which opinion should be isolated.
"The perceived liberalism of television reporters, I am convinced, is a product of the limited time given for any particular item. The reporter desperately tries to get all the important facts and essential viewpoints into his or her piece but, against a fast-approaching deadline, he or she must summarize in a sentence the complicated story. That is where the slippage occurs, and the summary too frequently, without intention, seems to emphasize one side or the other.
"(The answer to that problem, as with much else in television news, is in more time for the dominant evening newscasts. In our ever more complicated and confusing world, those newscasts need an hour.) Incidentally, I looked up the definition of 'liberal' in a Random House dictionary. It gave the synonyms for 'liberal' as 'progressive,' 'broad-minded,' 'unprejudiced,' 'beneficent.' The antonyms it offered: 'reactionary' and 'intolerant.' I have always suspected those fine folks at Random House of being liberals. You just can't trust anybody these days."
Walter Cronkite
"We reached our intellectual adulthood with daily close-ups of the inequality in a nation that was founded on the commitment to equality for all. So we are inclined to side with the powerless rather than the powerful. If that is what makes us liberals so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism -- that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased. That clearly doesn't apply when one deserts the front page for the editorial page and the columns to which opinion should be isolated.
"The perceived liberalism of television reporters, I am convinced, is a product of the limited time given for any particular item. The reporter desperately tries to get all the important facts and essential viewpoints into his or her piece but, against a fast-approaching deadline, he or she must summarize in a sentence the complicated story. That is where the slippage occurs, and the summary too frequently, without intention, seems to emphasize one side or the other.
"(The answer to that problem, as with much else in television news, is in more time for the dominant evening newscasts. In our ever more complicated and confusing world, those newscasts need an hour.) Incidentally, I looked up the definition of 'liberal' in a Random House dictionary. It gave the synonyms for 'liberal' as 'progressive,' 'broad-minded,' 'unprejudiced,' 'beneficent.' The antonyms it offered: 'reactionary' and 'intolerant.' I have always suspected those fine folks at Random House of being liberals. You just can't trust anybody these days."
Walter Cronkite
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