When crafting your media messages, consider what will appeal to your audience. There are some messages that may be of great interest to reporters, but not to readers, viewers or listeners. For example, political reporters love to write stories on campaign finance reform, political fundraising and insider strategy conflicts. But news consumers and voters don’t care about this stuff AT ALL. So if you waste time pandering to reporters on these issues, you do yourself and your campaign no good.
It might be important to you and everyone in your company that you have been certified by internationally recognized safety standards organizations. But, chances are, none of your customers or clients find this particularly interesting or relevant to them, therefore this information would not make for a good message point in your interview with The Wall Street Journal. So if you want to brag about your compliance with ISO standards, save that message for your in-house corporate newsletter or the employee section of your web site, but don’t tell the world if the world doesn’t care.
To craft a good media message, it is crucial to take your audience into consideration. If your message isn’t of critical importance to your audience, get a new message or find a new audience. (It’s probably easier to find a new message.)
For more information on media and presentation training please visit http://www.mediatrainingworldwide.com and continue reading http://www.mediatrainingworldwide.com/blog for news and analysis to help you communicate more effectively.
During the last quarter of a century I have coached tens of thousands of people—sales executives, CEOs, civic leaders, prime ministers, members of the U.S. Congress and British Parliament, athletes, entertainers, pageant winners, and ordinary business people—on how to be better presenters. And through all of those sessions and speeches, I have found that there really is one big secret to giving a foolproof presentation. Would you like to know what it is?
