The Media Interview

wall·flow·er: a person who from shyness or unpopularity remains on the sidelines of a social activity

Are you being a wallflower in your media interviews? Are you waiting on the sidelines of the conversation, hoping the interviewer will ask you THE QUESTION?

Never let yourself come away from an interview saying “I wish they’d asked me about X”. Even if it should have been the interviewer’s number one question to ask, it’s up to you to make sure the answer is given. Your key message should never be dependent on an interviewer asking the right questions; you’re responsible for getting your point across.

I was talking to a client the other day about this point. She has a book which is explicitly for teachers, but there’s a lot in it which can be used by parents as well, and when talking to mainstream media, your audience has a lot more parents than teachers. So we focussed our media training on ways to relate the book to parents, through examples, anecdotes, etc.

Several of her interviewers saw the parent connection themselves and asked about it, but others did not. How’d my client do when the interviewers didn’t ask how parents can use the book? She was no wallflower…