Know your key messages

Have a clear idea about the top three things you want the audience to remember – that is, what are the most important things you want to communicate throughout the interview.

Write them down and say them out loud to make sure it sounds natural for your style and tone of voice.

Keep them short and repeat them throughout the interview – no, you don’t want to sound like a parrot, but having clear key messages will help you keep control during the interview.

Also, depending on the topic or nature of the interview, sometimes it’s useful to prepare your first answer in advance. This will help ensure you cover off your key messages at the outset, and can also be a useful way to kick off the interview confidently.

What impression do you want to leave?

Think about the overall impression you want to leave the people watching or listening to the interview (or even reading it).

Do you want to come across as compassionate? Excited? Sincere? Credible? Authoritative?

It may sound like an odd exercise, but thinking about this before an interview will subconsciously influence your body language, your voice, and even your mindset.

Be conversational

Interviews fall flat when the subject sounds as though they’ve been instructed to memorise a script or use someone else’s words.

Spokespeople also often fall into the trap of being overly conscious that the quote or ‘grab’ the journalist will use is only around 10 seconds long, so they speak too briefly and abruptly.

While it is important to be concise (and this an important reason to know your key messages), being overly rehearsed or fixated on sticking to 10 second answers can make you sound wooden.

Keep your answers conversational, simple and engaging.

Set yourself up for success

Rushing from a meeting into an interview is never a good idea. Make sure you schedule a gap between the two to give yourself time to focus, gather your thoughts, and have a glass of water.

For television interviews, reporters and camera operators will tell you where to look – typically for a pre-recorded interview, your eyeline will be the journalist; for a live cross interview, you’ll be looking straight down the barrel of the camera.

If you’re standing, be sure to plant your feet to stop you unconsciously swaying, which can be distracting on camera. This may even require you to widen your stance a little bit.

If you’re seated, sit up straight and avoid a swivel chair – a cameraman’s greatest foe! Again, try to make sure both feet are planted on the floor.

To prevent being distracted or fidgeting, make sure you take your keys and phone out of your pockets, take off your lanyard or name tag if you’re wearing one, and make sure your devices are silenced. This includes on your computer screen if you’re doing a Zoom interview.

Keep calm and carry on

If you’re new to speaking to the media and nervous in an interview, that’s perfectly normal. Unless you’re the subject of controversy, journalists are well-accustomed to making their interview subjects feel comfortable.

Knowing your key messages is particularly useful when you’re nervous, because they are your means of keeping control.

The best media performers don’t show it if they’re feeling flustered. They keep their delivery calm, measured and polite.

If inflammatory language is put to you in a question, be careful not to repeat it in your answer as that can often be used in your quote or grab.

Sometimes it's okay if you don't have all the answers

This may sound counterintuitive, but if you’re addressing the media in an evolving situation, you may not have all the answers straight away… and that’s okay.

Communicating in a crisis is still critical. It’s important to do media interviews to let your customers or members or stakeholders know you’re working to fix the problem, and assure them that they’ll receive regular updates.

In the early stages of an evolving situation, it may be ok to say: “We’re still trying to determine the cause of the accident/outage/delay, but we’re committed to keeping our customers/members/the public updated”.

Or, if you don’t know the answer to a question because it’s outside your remit, it may be okay to confidently state: “I don’t have that at my fingertips, but my team may be able to get that answer for you”, or “I don’t know the answer to that right now, but I do want to emphasise [repeat key message]”.

Have the last word

Often at the end of an interview you’ll be asked: Is there anything you’d like to add?

The answer is always Yes!

This is a chance for you to reinforce your key messages or the main points you want to get across. By the end of the interview, you’ll have warmed up and become more comfortable, so it’s often when you’ll deliver your best or most succinct quote or grab.

So, don’t pass up the opportunity to have the last word!

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