Media Training Tips: Maximizing Your Media Moment

Website design By BotEap.comMedia training is a “must-have” professional development program for any serious leader or manager.

Website design By BotEap.comMedia interview training gives you the skills to deal effectively with the media.

Website design By BotEap.comMedia relations training, with a specific focus on television media presentation training, can be very stressful for beginners.

Website design By BotEap.comHere’s why you should consider taking a media training course and some essential tips from our media skills training courses.

Website design By BotEap.comIf you go to the archives of any commercial television station and pull images from a 1960s newsletter and watch them with a stopwatch, you will find the average quote length (known as a sound snippet or news snapshot) of the person interviewed for the story is about 60 seconds.

Website design By BotEap.comIf you watch commercial television tonight with the timer ready and you measure each piece of sound or news capture, the average length will be seven seconds.

Website design By BotEap.comThat’s why it’s called McNuggett News! It’s fast, slippery, fast, and tasty, but not very satisfying.

Website design By BotEap.comThere are three reasons for this shortening in length.

Website design By BotEap.com1. Increased competition for our diminishing attention span,

Website design By BotEap.com2. Greater variety, noise and disorder in our lives, and

Website design By BotEap.com3. The fusion of information and entertainment disguised as news.

Website design By BotEap.comSo how do you get your message on a complex and detailed topic across the media in seven seconds?

Website design By BotEap.comWell, you need to craft your key message and deliver it smoothly as a media-friendly quotable quote.

Website design By BotEap.comRemember, you only get one chance to get it right. The professional television news crews I work with are constantly talking to me about the people who call them after the interview and say “can you come back, did I forget to say this and that?”

Website design By BotEap.comOf course, the media is so poor on time and deadlines that they never come back.

Website design By BotEap.comSo you only have one chance to maximize your media moment.

Website design By BotEap.comHow do you do this, especially for television? Here are my top 10 tips:

Website design By BotEap.com1. Dress well.

Website design By BotEap.comIn the powerful visual medium of television, you will be judged on your appearance. Clothing patterns and colors will contribute to the impact of your interview in front of the camera. Avoid clothing with many designs or patterns. A dark jacket (blue, black, dark gray, or navy) with a white shirt / blouse always looks good on camera. Follow the example of what TV news readers wear. Listen to my mother’s advice: “It is better to pay more and buy a really good suit than to have a lot of inferior quality.”

Website design By BotEap.com2. Warm up your voice.

Website design By BotEap.comTiger Woods wouldn’t go play a championship round of golf without warming up. You, as a professional communicator and official spokesperson, should never interact with the media without warming up your voice.

Website design By BotEap.com3. Speak with more energy.

Website design By BotEap.comSpeak at a higher volume, range, pitch, and pitch than you normally would. Imagine having a conversation with someone and speaking at a slightly more animated level than you normally would.

Website design By BotEap.com4. Anchor your feet and slow down deliberate movements.

Website design By BotEap.comThe 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 firmly anchored to the ground. It is difficult to appear credible standing on one foot.

Website design By BotEap.comIn the book launch Understanding Influence for Leaders at All Levels, I learned from co-author Des Guilfoyle that slow, flowing, deliberate movements will give you more power of reference, charisma, and personal magnetism.

Website design By BotEap.comTIP: Watch your interviews with the sound off to get a better idea of ​​what your body language is doing in the interview.

Website design By BotEap.com5. Stay calm.

Website design By BotEap.comAssertive, aggressive, and even angry reporters will hurl questions at you, like bullets spit out from a machine gun. Your speech patterns will be intense and fast. Don’t get carried away by mirroring and combining these patterns. In these situations, breathe and speak more slowly than the interviewer.

Website design By BotEap.com6. Memorize your three key points.

Website design By BotEap.comYou should be able to deliver them smoothly without reading notes. First of all, write them down. Writing things down helps to fix them in the mind and seeing them written also helps. Then compose a visual picture of the actual words. Visually place them in the upper left part of your brain. As you remember these points, look to the upper left of your brain and they will come to you instantly as if by magic.

Website design By BotEap.comIn 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 thesaurus is scattered across many separate parts of the left brain hemisphere (Source: The Odd Brain by Dr. Stephen Juan, Harper Collins, 1998).

Website design By BotEap.com7. Never say without comment.

Website design By BotEap.comJournalists will believe that ‘where there is smoke there is fire’. Don’t comment, but back this up with a valid reason.

Website design By BotEap.com8. Drink lots of water.

Website design By BotEap.comStay hydrated and avoid caffeine and milk before an interview. The milk gobbles the acorns of saliva, causing a dry mouth. This manifests itself in the common nervous habit of licking dry lips.

Website design By BotEap.com9. Get into the moment.

Website design By BotEap.comElite athletes talk and practice getting to the zone for peak performance. You need to do the same.

Website design By BotEap.comTry this: relax, close your eyes, and take three deep breaths, concentrating 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 clench your fists. Cover this fist with your left hand. Repeat this process until you can instantly get into a state of peak performance.

Website design By BotEap.com10. Review, evaluate and improve.

Website design By BotEap.comAfter each media interview, always check:

Website design By BotEap.comWhat worked well?

Website design By BotEap.comWhat could be improved?

Website design By BotEap.comWhat will I work on next time?

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