How to Prepare for Media Interviews

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The Roman statesman Seneca once said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”  This is a sentiment executives must keep in mind as they prepare for media interviews.  And the key word here is preparation. 

As busy as everyone seems to be in the era of COVID-19, media interviews – much like any formal presentation – cannot and should not be treated as something to be checked off a list.

A lot goes into preparing company messaging and positioning an organization.  Getting third-party validation for a company’s value proposition can go a long way toward softening the beachheads for sales leads and building industry leadership and brand awareness.

But how should one prepare for a media interview?  Here are six techniques to consider:

  1. Review the reporter’s coverage and publication to best understand the audience and how you need to communicate to that audience

A PR/marketing agency such as Amendola Communications prepares briefing sheets with details of reporters, their backgrounds, messaging and any caveats.  While the PR pros can guide you through the process, it also makes sense to read the reporter’s last three to five articles to ascertain trends or patterns in coverage.  Doing so may reveal something you can share with the reporter to strike a chord during an interview.

  1. Write out your key messages and envision the headline you want to read

Again, your agency is doing a lot of the leg work already; however, homing in on the three key messages you want to share during an interview goes a long way toward ensuring one stays focused and doesn’t stray into unchartered territory.  A reporter has only so much time, so you want to maximize your time to deliver your key messages and get your points across.  Furthermore, think about the headline and story you want to see resulting from the interview, and figure out how you’ll get there.

  1. Consider the types of questions that can lead to minefields

Along with No. 2, your agency should caution you about the types of questions that will take you off the path of a productive interview for your organization.  Those questions may involve competitors, controversies or unpopular opinions.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t address them or consider being provocative.  But it’s best to practice your responses ahead of time and test them with key colleagues and your communications advisors to ensure they are the types of messages that will have the intended impact.  And if you don’t want to answer certain questions, using bridging techniques can help you get back on track.

  1. Practice in front of a mirror to gauge body language  

While this technique is especially important to prep for broadcast or Zoom interviews, it’s also valuable in general because it speaks to whether you believe what you’re saying.  Are you credible?  Are you passionate?  If your responses fall flat to you, consider what a reporter will take away.  Using a conversational style while conveying insights the reporter can use begets future interviews.

  1. Ensure any product messaging is grounded in business benefits and not conjecture

While it’s important to demonstrate the success of your products to key influencers, the best way to do so is to substantiate with industry facts, e.g. time and dollar savings, patient/staff safety, industry awards and the like.  Of more importance is citing key statistics or anecdotes from key customers.  You’ll want to confirm that those customers are referenceable in any media interviews.  Your PR agency can help you sort through those details.

  1. Block off 15-30 minutes prior to an interview to put on your game face

While competitive sports seem like a distant memory during the pandemic, those pre-game rituals still hold a place close to our hearts.  Instead of rushing to a media interview, it’s best to block out some time for mindfulness before the interview.  Doing so elicits focus and can make your preparation bear real fruit.

Media interviews often seem to be over in a flash, but the outcomes can have a long shelf life.  Taking time to properly prepare can elevate your own brand and help your organization flourish.

5 Helpful PR Tips for Rebranding

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Many healthcare technology companies are choosing to rebrand because of the impact that the novel coronavirus has had on the healthcare ecosphere. Capabilities or focus points which may not have been on the forefront before this year-long industry earthquake are now front and center. Clear company identities and market differentiators have never been more important.

When rebranding, there are 5 strategic public relations best practices that you will want to make sure you are clear on before finalizing your overall rebranding marketing efforts and plans.

Messaging. The most common misunderstanding I have come up against when working on rebranding a company from a public relations perspective is that many communicators – even long time marketing seniors – are entirely unaware that there is a difference between marketing messaging (often, product messaging) and public relations messaging. They are sisters, not twins, folks!

Some questions that I often ask to get to the bottom of the public relations messaging rebranding efforts include: What is it that you want to convey from a thought leadership level to the public? How does this back up your business goals and objectives and overarching communications goals and objectives?

Typically, when these questions are answered, it can be a fairly simple process to start development on a “moving” public relations messaging document that will grow and evolve as the company grows and evolves.

Audience. Do not forget to think about the people who will be impacted by your rebranding. It is important to get the message into the right hands and ears.

Who are your customers? Who are your customers’ customers? What matters to them? How are they acquiring information? Social media? A certain publication?

Being clear on the answer to these questions can help promote a strategic public relations strategy when rebranding. Showing in-depth knowledge of your customers and customers’ customers pain points on a public scale can be impactful for building the overall credibility of your rebranded company in the public’s eye.

Thought Leadership. What can you speak to other than your business offerings that props up the depth and breadth of your company’s position in the market?

In this vein, I often recommend that clients take time to work together to articulate which areas of the market their products impact indirectly that can be a strategic topic of reference for the company to react to on a public scale. It really helps to get specific here.

Listing thought leadership topics and corresponding messages that support your company’s overarching messages can be invaluable to being ready and able to pursue high impact reputation building messages in front of the public’s eye. Be willing to tell the story of “why” the rebranding was important given the current state of the industry.

100% Buy-in across company segments. You need to make sure every sector of the company is very clear on the new messaging and branding statements. It is vitally important to get buy-in from each segment on every word and punctuation mark.

Once you do, offering each segment of a company a document or visual on how the new branding impacts how they talk about the company or how they will do their job moving forward can be helpful in getting everyone on the same page.

Buy-in needs to happen on every level from the CEO to the janitor. Each employee needs to be clear on what the company does and the best way to explain that to whoever they need to explain it to.

Pipeline tactic development: Once you have rebranded, you also need to take good look at current tactics and pipelines to determine if they are supporting the new look and/or descriptors that you have chosen for your company.

Old communication, marketing, public relations tactics may have worked for your old way of thinking about what you did, but there may be pivots you need to take to support the updated messaging and overall look of the company. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard about rebranding where major sales documents were not updated, yet still used, mostly due to confusion on the branding, how it effects the company, and why it matters.

Each sector of the company needs to look at the way they are doing their jobs in light of the rebranding efforts and determine if old ways of thinking need some updating.

Keep these recommendations in mind when developing your public relations strategy during a company rebranding effort. All healthcare technology companies should take a good look at their company identity in this season.

Whether or not your company is taking on a full-on rebranding effort, it’s helpful to keep these best practices in mind.

Research: Be Careful What You Link To

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Stats and other evidence can look great at first, but after a little digging…not so much

A big part of the content we create for clients, whether it is a blog post, bylined article, white paper, or even an infographic, is research. It can be a collaborative process where the client will recommend statistics or a recent study they have discovered and want to highlight, but often it will be up the writer to unearth interesting data on their own.

Anyone who’s spent time researching online knows what an exhaustive process it can be. When searching on PubMed, for example, a writer can spend hours scanning study after study and still not find enough relevant data for the article they’re writing. Either the nature of the research does not quite relate to your content, it’s too dated, or it says nothing conclusive other than “more research is needed.”

Searching for recent results from a non-scientific poll or survey can be even more fruitless and risky. Part of the reason is healthcare information technology is at least a $227 billion industry, and it can be difficult to generate media and industry awareness of your company (unless you have a great partner like Amendola). That is why many companies will conduct their own survey or poll to generate media interest.

More often than I would like, while researching for one client I will discover the enticing results data was from a survey commissioned by a competitor. Such a conflict makes those stats, while tempting, off-limits. (But I am surprised how often I come across competitors who will cite one another’s research in their content.)

To avoid these mistakes and ensure the research you use in your content is relevant and accurate, consider these tips:

Get to the Bottom of it

I came across this stat recently that was perfect for a writing project I was working on: 85% to 99% of medical device alerts are not clinically actionable. I saw it cited in numerous medical journals and even in books with different attribution, with many citing it from The Joint Commission.

Although TJC did reference it, the stat originally came from a 2011 report from the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, which cites that figure to a study conducted by Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. I highlight this example to illustrate how challenging, but also how important it is, to identify and link to the original source of the stat.

Not only is it the most accurate way to present the data, but you may discover that by getting to the root of the source it may not be reliable or from an organization (i.e. competitor), that you want to draw attention to in your content.

Find the Context

Avoiding information from a competitor is an excellent reason to scrutinize the source of data. But after you determine where the information is coming from, the writer should also investigate the context around the data so you can further evaluate its credibility.

Some organizations will issue press releases, or mention in blog posts or bylined articles, “astounding” results from a survey or research they’ve conducted. In reading the full report or study it came from, you will learn that its PR or marketing materials carefully omitted important context, which creates a misleading perspective.

For example, you may find survey results that show “90% of physicians are considering retiring within the next five years.” However, if you dig deeper into the survey, you may find that the survey question was only conducted on physicians age 65 or older. While that may be an exaggerated hypothetical scenario, it shows how risky it is to feature data without investigating the context.

Science or Pseudo-Science?

As New York Times reporter Carl Zimmer pointed out, thanks to COVID-19, many more people are reading scientific papers, but are finding them difficult to understand. Although I’ve been reading these studies for many years, I, too, occasionally struggle to interpret findings that I can incorporate in the content we create.

Fortunately, article abstracts typically offer enough information to help decide if you should keep reading. Abstracts also provide insight into the scientific rigor behind the study, such as if it is a randomized controlled trial, which is the gold standard for medical research.

Even in such trials, if it includes only a very small or narrow population of patients, it may not apply to what you’re writing. The publication itself should also be considered. A peer-reviewed publication is ideal, as is information published in prominent journals such as JAMA, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet, although even some of these journals have taken some credibility dings lately in the rush to publish COVID-19 research.

You are the Gatekeeper

Regardless of the quality of the data or the publication, you are the ultimate gatekeeper: Do you find the information and publication credible? Will it be meaningful and interesting to the prospective reader of the content? If so, then include it.

The great part about finding lots of meaningful research data is that it can help accelerate the writing process. With lots of information to include, it is just a matter of organizing and presenting it compellingly… but that’s for another post.