Court Story Communications

Giving Good Soundbites

The average soundbite on TV is just over seven seconds. That means you have to get to the point immediately. Below are some tips for taped interviews:

Keep your sentences short and crisp
Avoid industry jargon that most people fail to understand
Speak in a conversational tone
Sound enthused
Each sentence should contain only one thought
If a reporter asks you the same question in a different way, it means (s)he is looking for a better soundbite on this particular line of questioning
If you don't like the way you said something, clean it up and say it again
Look at the reporter not the camera

Remember The Wire Services

The easiest way to get your firm blanketed in news is to set up interviews with wire services, such as the AP, Bloomberg, Dow Jones and Reuters. The reach of wire services is absolutely enormous. Just about every media outlet has access to and uses at least one of these wire services. And with news organizations reducing staffs and cutting back, they rely more on wire services than ever before.

Getting quoted by the Associated Press or Reuters is hitting the jackpot. A single quote may appear in dozens if not hundreds of publications and websites around the world. That's how you get your experts noticed and plastered all over Google.

Don’t Just Swing For The Fences

Every firm would love to see a favorable profile show up in a local or national publication. Talk about a home run that can be used as a valuable marketing tool. Still, such profiles are few and far between.

The bread-and-butter for generating publicity is to market key individuals as experts in a particular field. So when news breaks and reporters need an objective viewpoint or perspective, they will turn to you to provide a reliable expert.

This requires keeping track of daily news events and anticipating when a reporter might need your expertise.

News Releases Masquerading as News

While news releases do serve a valuable purpose -- to widely disseminate information announcing an event or idea that will interest the media -- too often they are used as a masquerade for real news.

Public relations practitioners and in-house communicators are fond of pointing out all the press releases they've produced on behalf of a firm or client. But if the press releases don't generate news coverage, what good are they?

Sure, they might turn up on Google, which is always welcome; and the higher-ups get to see their name in print. But that's getting away from your main goal, which is to generate publicity to enhance your reputation and help market your firm. That's what generating real news does.

If your news releases aren't generating news, it may be time to rethink your strategy. A more personalized approach of targeting individual reporters who cover your industry is far more apt to obtain results than blasting out news releases that largely go unread.