Everyone wants to make the most of a media opportunity, yet much preparation goes into a successful interview. At your best, you finish up knowing that you said what you wanted to say, the way that you wanted to say it. At worst, you’re uncomfortable, say the wrong thing, or after the fact wish you’d made points that didn’t occur to you in the moment.

The goal, then, is to be ready – to be proactive rather than reactive. Here are three critical steps in preparing for an interview that can help you convey your thoughts more clearly and confidently:

Think

Knowing your audience, or audience analysis – is primary. Who’s doing the interview and what do you know about this person? Also important: who’s your target audience, what do they care about and need to hear about? The more you can find out on both fronts, the better.

Write

Potential questions
Think about and write down the questions you expect to be asked. Consider the context of the interview and what’s been going on and write down everything that come to mind. You also need to face up to questions you dread, that you hope not to be asked – the ugly and awkward, the embarrassing and controversial, the ones you have no idea how to answer. If you do this step, you’re half way home.

Potential answers
Now look at those questions and jot a few notes. Don’t write out answers and memorize them – you’ll sound scripted and phony. For questions you have no idea how to answer, turn to the people who can help you – with facts and an approach that is positive and neither apologetic nor defensive.

Key messages
Sometimes reporters don’t know much about your business, or choose to take the interview in a negative direction. Yet you know what your audience needs to hear your story. Jot down a few points you intend to get across. Then, listen for opportunities to work these messages in during the course of the interview. This helps shape the direction of the interview that simply responding to the questions as given will not. It also enables you to move from defense to offense when the going gets tough.

Talk

Practice, but don’t rehearse. You don’t really know what you think until you hear what you say. Have someone ask you the questions you’ve written down and see how it goes. Better to hear what you’d like to say differently in practice rather than wait until the interview and be surprised at what comes tumbling out of your mouth.

Media interviews can have a significant impact on your story, your company and your reputation as a leader. Take time to prepare effectively and you’ll likely have a positive media experience.

Cora Nucci of Information Week http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/04/blogging_as_fas.html gives some credence to The New York Time’s recent story that suggests the stress of blogging may have contributed to the heart attacks of three well-known tech bloggers, two of whom died.  While Nucci does say it’s impossible to know for sure whether blogging played a role in the heart attacks, she points out that “some days, blogging feels like breaking rocks in the hot sun.”  Certainly, blogging, like any form of writing in this era of digital media – which can be likened to speed dialing – brings a certain amount of stress.  It seems a stretch to believe that blogging itself would take such a serious toll on a person’s health without factoring in additional underlying health problems.  I could understand how reporters before the 1970s might suffer a heart attack. These writers had to literally pound the pavement, investigate their stories with limited resources, then write their articles and get them perfect the first time – on typewriters. No spell check, no cut and paste, no online thesaurus, no whitepages.com. No Google.  No working from the beach (as one heart attack victim blogger did) or from one’s living room.   Nucci also says, “the burdens of blogging can be felt by anyone who blogs, even amateurs. The urgency to express an original thought and to post it first, is constant.”  The urgency to express an original thought?  Isn’t that what inspires and motivates journalists to get into the world of writing in the first place? Sadly, it sounds like the heart attack victims had critical health issues.    

While public relations and marketing experts use different methods and media to communicate their messages, the goals are the same: to get maximum visibility for clients and generate responses from target audiences.

When well planned, PR and marketing are a dynamic duo. PR leaves off where marketing should pick up, and visa versa. In fact, it should be a continual tag team of picking up the client’s ball and running with it.

If one agency handles both PR & marketing, the client is positioned to be ahead of the game – both strategically and financially. When PR & marketing are not under the same roof, it’s critical the client asks each firm to communicate and work with one another, or the risks can include mixed messages, misunderstandings, and missed opportunities.

Here are two examples of a well integrated PR-marketing team:

• A client gets a great interview in a highly visible publication or with a major news station. Once the story has run, the PR and marketing team will keep it alive for as long as possible. The interview will turn into reprints for company brochures and press kits, as well as links and podcasts for the company web site, social media web sites, and news releases, etc. Mentions and/or portions of the interview are used in advertising and/or branding campaigns, and the news piece is highlighted in company backgrounders, press pitches, future media opportunities, and proposals for prospective clients.

• A marketing department holds a major event, with proceeds benefiting a charity. The role of PR is to publicize the charitable aspect of the event and work toward media coverage. Each function is promoting the same event using different avenues to generate responses and engage different participants. When PR and marketing work in sync, the chances are greater the message will cover more bases that reach a larger audience.

And, with PR and marketing working as a team, an added value to the client is the brainstorming sessions from “two sides of the house” (as we say here) that result in fresh and innovative approaches, ideas, and campaigns. When pooling creative resources from different areas, the agency launches more initiatives in a more efficient way – which leads to more success for the client.

A former coworker once told me that managing multiple projects is a lot like to balancing your grandmother’s best china in the air and making sure that you don’t drop any of the plates. 

Whether you’re trying to meet the needs of your clients, your bosses or your staff, you need to be organized.  As soon as I have a firm deadline, I use my outlook calendar to record notes about what I need to follow up on each day. It’s kind of an electronic “To Do” list that pops up for me each day.  I check with the designers, clients, vendors multiple times on any given project to make sure things are moving along as expected.  I try to set realistic expectations for everyone.  We can’t do a good job for clients if we are not given an appropriate amount of time.  If a client wants a 12 page brochure in 3 days, it is my job to let them know that is not likely to happen.

It is also about prioritization, as everyone knows. That is where experience can come into play…I know which projects I might be able to squeeze an extra day or two out of, but I also know which projects have “drop dead” deadlines and obviously those you don’t want to miss. Working with different clients, different products, different designers, different vendors each day…well that’s what keeps the day exciting. 

As an account supervisor, it is my job to make recommendations to our clients and to offer different options or solutions to help them achieve their marketing objectives.  Most clients recognize that the experience of the entire agency is behind those recommendations, and we offer solutions based on successes we have had over a number of years. I try to convey that. That being said, if a client is insistent about trying something which we don’t recommend, we will still assist them. In the end it is their right to decide how to spend their marketing dollars.  And you never know, we might learn something in the process.

Thirty years after the idea first came along, the concept of “the medium is the message” is more relevant than ever. If you don’t know what this concept is, look it up and you’ll learn something. If you’re familiar with this idea, which medium is delivering more of the “message” these days?

Trying to do PR in a marketing vacuum can be very challenging. Being at an agency and working with clients that combine their branding, marketing programs, web strategy, and advertising together with their communications strategy, I am able to see firsthand how all the marketing processes can fit together and build on one another towards a common goal. It makes a world of difference. I am now a firm believer that a public relations campaign that includes other aspects of marketing will help maximize its effectiveness. Plus it’s fun to work on “both sides of the house” so to speak. Public Relations is so much more than just pitching traditional media. Creating a brand identity and maintaining it in the press is just as important. Sitting in as creative briefs are being prepared, and watching the client pick logos and banner ads gives you a much better sense of the direction the CEO is trying to take the brand. For instance, perhaps pitching a quirky consumer pub isn’t quite right if the company is trying to create a more serious, old school image. This kind of information is not as readily available when the marketing is being handled by numerous firms. Teaming up with media buyers is also a great way to maximize outreach potential. Advertorials are a great way to leverage messaging. PR pros and media gurus can split up demographics and make sure each target vertical has a little bit of editorial, and a little bit of paid media. Again, this kind of planning and strategy is much more difficult when two or more firms are being used in the overall marketing campaign.