Media tip of the day: if you are doing an interview, with a reporter who is face to face with you and you say something to which the reporter’s eyes go big or they look over to their camera operator or wink at them, chances are, you just delivered a sound bite. They are making a mental note of using that particular statement as the news headline that night.
At that point, it is too late for you to take it back so you need to make sure that it is exactly what you wanted. If it is what you wanted and you liked it or thought it was great, you may even want to deliver it again so you give the reporter another option of using it.
If you have a message that is even more important, this is where it becomes crucial that you had prepared soundbites in advance. You need to now put out more sound bites so that the reporter forgets about the soundbite he noted earlier which was the one that you didn’t plan for.
So you can always monitor how you are doing by looking at the reporter’s eyes and demeanor and seeing what is resonating and what isn’t.