Almost anyone with any media experience will know the basic questions to ask before agreeing to do a media interview. Who is the audience? What messages do I want to get across? Who else will be in the report? These are all useful questions to ask. However, there are other, less obvious, considerations that you should take into account if you’re going to do a successful media interview.
1. Why are you doing it? This might sound like a very basic question – but for that reason it’s also essential. And it’s often overlooked. Deciding what you want to say in an interview is very important but asking why you are doing it is even more important.
So, think about a call to action. Are you trying to sell something? In which case you’ll have to do it carefully and subtly. Do you want your audience to make a financial contribution to your charity or organisation? Do you want them to sign a petition or take part in a campaign? As well as thinking about your key messages, think carefully about the “takeaway,” in other words what exactly you want your audience to do and therefore why you’re doing this interview.
2. How do you want your audience to feel? “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” said the writer Maya Angelou. Journalists are always seeking to create an emotion among their audiences. That emotion might be fear, anger, indignation, joy, excitement, anxiety or any other feeling.
The best and most memorable interviewees also prompt emotions. These emotions can be used to persuade audiences to give money, to take action, to support an idea or even to buy a product. Stimulate emotions in your audience by using striking human examples and case studies. Powerful, simple - even poetic - language will also stir up sentiments in your audiences. Your personal feelings about a subject are another way to introduce an emotion into your comments and make your audience really feel something.
3. What effect will it have on your online presence? These days almost anything you say to a journalist, be it print, radio or TV will end up online. Newspapers, magazines, radio stations and TV shows all have their own websites which are easily accessible for Google searches.
Whenever someone is searching for your organisation or a subject that you have spoken about, the chances are that one of your interviews will come up on that search. Google particularly likes newspaper, magazine and TV websites.
Think about how your messages might resonate with social media. How will the comments you make prompt people to respond online or to blog about what you’re saying? Especially in print interviews, think about the key search terms that your search engine optimisation people have included in your website and use these in your answers.
4. How will it fit into the narrative of your organisation? Stories and narratives are a great way of helping people to understand an organisation, an individual or even a product. How did your organisation come about and where is it going? What products are you now offering the market and why? What ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs has your organisation undergone over the years and what does that tell others about it, about its leaders and about its products?
So, you need to think about how any interview fits into this narrative and continues it. How does it continue and develop the story of your organisation and help the rest of the world to understand its journey. Thinking about this will help you to develop the key messages, the examples and the tone and style of your interview.
5. What else can you supply the journalist with after the interview? Once you’ve finished speaking to the journalist there are still other things you can do to improve your showing in the final product.
After a press interview, for example, you might want to email on some additional statistics, research findings and case studies. Doing this by email will increase the chance of the journalist reproducing the information correctly. You might also want to send on some press cuttings or press releases. Putting the journalist or producer in touch with other sources, especially if they’re helpful to your point of view, is also useful after an interview.
Even if it’s a live TV or radio interview contacting the producer and reporter afterwards and thanking them for their time and complimenting them will pay dividends as it can develop a relationship and possibly improve your media coverage in the future.
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