Protect Your Message, Reduce Anxiety, and Align With Strategy Fear before an interview or public appearance is often fear of the unknown—especially the “What if they ask me about ___?” spiral. One of the most effective ways to reduce that anxiety and protect your message is to set clear boundaries in advance: what you will…
Eliminate fillers, such as “um, “like,” “you know,” and “I mean,” to communicate more clearly and confidently. You will appear more self-assured, polished, and prepared if you use fewer filler words. The overuse of fillers detracts from your message. Quite often, people focus more on your filler words than your actual message. Furthermore, people might…
You may have read about a Harvard University study that was published a year or so ago, which stated that sarcasm can increase your creativity. As references to this article continue to be passed around by bloggers and others, people are often forgetting to include the caveats about trust in the relationship and understanding when…
Sometimes a TV producer or editor from a media outlet contact experts in the hopes that the experts will share exactly the opinion they want in order to shape their story. If you’re an expert, it’s important that you maintain your integrity and only say what you truly believe. Otherwise, you simply become a mouthpiece…
When delivering a speech, presentation, or media interview, speaking from the heart is important, but a message must also make sense logically. There are times when a very passionate speaker can draw people in by affecting the audience emotionally, but if upon further reflection the argument or position presented by the speaker doesn’t hold up…
1. Know what drives your audience at any given time; pain avoidance or aspiration. Some people are more motivated to avoid pain, thus the “speak to their pain points” advice that has proliferated on the Internet for the past decade. Others are more motivated by their aspirations or ideals. Most people’s motivations can vacillate between…
There are many old adages about the topics to avoid in polite company – politics, religion and race being among them. These rules of etiquette have slipped away in most of society and they don’t necessarily apply to media interviews, especially when it comes to public figures. Once people achieve celebrity status, it is not…
For most people, becoming a great communicator is a lifelong endeavor. One of the best ways to become a better communicator is to become a better listener. To be a good listener, you must improve your ability to concentrate and refrain from hastily jumping to conclusions about what others are saying or asking of you….
There is a reason you may be seeing lots of articles about the overuse of jargon. It’s especially important to avoid using jargon in media interviews. What would you think or feel if you heard this statement from a company spokesperson? “We’re incentivizing our brand evangelists to virally spread our high-level content by gifting them…
Media training is meant to help anyone who is going to be interviewed by the media to feel as prepared as possible. Understanding the lingo that you may encounter before or during interviews will help you to feel more at ease. This glossary of media interview terms will get you started. a-roll – This is…