More Clients - the Online Marketing Newsletter
for Independent Professionals
from Action Plan Marketing
and Robert MiddletonIn This Week's Issue: Great - You have an interview. Now how do you prepare for it?
I just returned from my workshop tour (in New York and London) and vacation in Paris. To my great delight, several member of the InfoGuru Support Forum stepped up to contribute articles to More Clients this month. This week's is by Geoff Bryan, one of our most prolific contributors from La Canada, California.
In fact this article was a post taken directly from the Support Forum.
Preparing for Interviews
I used to get interviewed pretty regularly in the mid-90's in connection with my legal work, and discovered a lot of things about working with reporters.
If you can possibly look at earlier pieces that this same reporter has done in this genre, you can get a fairly good idea of the kinds of information he or she will be looking for.
What I found in many cases is that the reporters already had a kind of framework they like to use for these profile pieces, and their questions are designed to "fill in the blanks" of this framework.
Obviously, they may have 20 or 25 questions to elicit this kind of information, out of which they may pick 5 or 10 of the strongest things to actually use in the piece about you. (In other words, the places where you have the most interesting things to say will be the places that tend to pop up in the piece.)
The thing to remember about answering these questions is that you do best when your answer is phrased in a way that the reporter can put directly into print. This is very hard to grasp for a lot of people.
When the reporter asks a question, they are not seeking a 5-minute dissertation on the thing, nor is it really a matter of "persuading" or "converting" the reporter. In truth, the persuasion has already occurred, because there he or she is, interviewing you.
Now, your job is to supply interesting material that will create an article with sparkle and audience appeal. From my experience, here are some things you should be prepared to talk about:
1. How did you get started in this work?2. What is your background (in a nutshell: one sentence, ideally, that captures your "essence")
3. What is the most exciting project you have worked on?
4. What surprises have you encountered in doing this work?
5. How hard is it to learn how to do this?
6. What is your favorite part of doing this?
7. What is the hardest part of doing this? What challenges do you face?
8. What do your friends and colleagues think about what you are doing?
9. What plans/projects are you working on now?
10. Where do you see this field going in the next 5 years?
11. What is a typical day like?
12. What is the most unusual, far-out request you have gotten in connection with this work?
13. What places have you travelled to in performing this work?
14. Where do you turn when you need help or moral support?
15. If you could say one thing to the readers, what would it be?
I have a tendency to rattle off "sound bites" without thinking about them too hard, usually in off-hand comments. In fact, it is usually the closing remarks I make, after the interview is officially over, that become the lead items in the piece.
It is important to remember that everything that comes out of your mouth is "on the record," and be careful not to say something harmful to your interests or business relationships, even if you are walking to the door with the reporter.
If you can think of some short, snappy sound bites in connection with what you do, that would be helpful material to have in your bag of tricks.
Reporters rarely run their stories past the subject for review in advance of publication, but you may want to indicate your availability to double-check specific facts, or spellings, or whatever.
If there are any vocabulary words, or famous names, that inevitably come up in any discussion of your topic, you might want to jot them down on a piece of paper (that also has your name and phone number on it) and make it available for the reporter to take back with him or her.
Give the reporter your home as well as office number and indicate your availability to take calls checking on last-minute details. If you get a voicemail message with a question, call back ASAP and leave the complete answer on the reporter's voicemail -- don't play phone tag. If it sounds like the reporter needs another quote or two, leave some good ones on the voicemail system.
Finally, have a few interesting or "fun" facts available for the reporter -- things that relate to the interviewee's field and would add gee-whiz value to the story. These could either be kept in mind, to be sprinkled into the interview as appropriate, or written down on a sheet of paper to hand to the reporter.
Remember, above all, that the point of the newspaper article is not to promote your business; that is a by-product of the publicity. The point is to have something that the paper's audience will find interesting to read.
Geoff Bryan
Voiceover Professional
The InfoGuru Support Forum
I once told Geoff Bryan that we could probably create a very solid book from all the posts he's contributed to the Infoguru Support Forum. Geoff's knowledge is encyclopedic and every answer he posts shares a wealth of information.
Geoff has contributed over 800 posts since early 2003; in sheer volume and quality of feedback, Geoff is the clear leader. In his very first post he asserted this about naming your business:
"The most important thing is that this kind of name is oriented toward the prospective client. It is "about" those clients. It is not "about" you because, politeness aside, the people of the world care far less about you than about themselves and their problems."Still, Geoff is only one of the hundreds of members of the InfoGuru Support forum you are likely to get feedback from if you're looking to attract more clients.
On this audio clip, Geoff shares what he's personally gained from the Forum (2 min, 10 sec.).
http://www.actionplan.com/mp3files/GBForum.mp3The only way to join the Forum is by owning the InfoGuru Marketing Manual. Check it out below!
http://www.actionplan.com/infoguru.html
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Until next week, all the best,
Robert Middleton
ACTION PLAN MARKETING
Cracking the Marketing Code for Independent Professionals~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
210 Riverside Drive
Boulder Creek, CA 95006
831-338-7790© 2005 Robert Middleton, All rights reserved. You are free to use material from the More Clients eZine in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear. The attribution should read:
"By Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Please visit Robert's web site at http://www.actionplan.com for additional marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional service businesses."
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