How to Prepare for a National Media Interview
This is your chance. You’ve booked an interview with a national publication or broadcaster and you are about to get your brand in front of the entire country.
No pressure, but we both know you need to make this work.
Not only is this a big opportunity for your brand, it’s also your chance to prove to the media that you are someone they want to work with. The media likes to work with people who are easy to work with. When they find someone that makes their job easier, they’ll come back to you over and over again.
In fact, my best clients get PR opportunities even without sending a pitch because the media contact already knows they can quickly get good, interesting information from them. This makes their job much easier and keeps them coming back.
If you want to be a valuable resource for the media (and reap many more media placements) it starts long before the interview. Here are four tips to keep in mind as you prepare for your national media interview.
1. Meet deadlines
At the end of the day, being on time is probably the most important thing you can do. Pay attention to the deadlines of every step and don’t be late.
This may start before the interview. In a lot of cases, the reporter will send you an email with questions to answer before booking the actual interview. Make sure you meet this deadline, or you risk losing your opportunity altogether.
The media works with very tight deadlines. Whatever you can do to help them meet their deadlines is going to work in your favor.
2. Provide useful information
You are the expert on the topic, so make sure you are providing important, useful insight to the insight.
This may seem obvious, but where I see people make mistakes is when they are afraid to give away too much information. You can’t be too worried about giving away too much of your secret sauce. If you are trying to gain business, you have to show people that you know what you are talking about and that you’re good at your job.
Plus, most people would rather buy your product then go through the trouble of recreating it themselves.
3. Don’t be too promotional
This is based on real-world experience. I have actually had TV stations say that they don’t want to work with my client again because they were too promotional in an interview.
Look – if you just want to talk about how great your business is, you should buy an ad.
But going back to my first point, if you can skip the promotional stuff and provide useful information for their audience, they’ll want to have you back again.
4. Over communicate
Everyone is juggling a lot of different things, so in my opinion you can never over communicate with a media contact.
The main goal when you communicate with the media is to make sure you’re on the same page as them.
I would double check details like:
Interview time
Time zone (so important!)
That emails have been received
Err on the side of caution. If you send your pre-interview answers to the media contact and don’t hear anything back, shoot them a quick email just to make sure. There’s no hard rule for when to send a follow up email, but feel out their normal pace of response and when the deadlines are. Their inbox may just be a mess, so put yourself at the top of their inbox. This is your chance and you’ll be better off letting them know you are the valuable resource they need.