I'm completing my placement at Liberty Resources, and our spokesperon is the Managing Director, Andrew. He has a strong, credible reputation within the finance and investment industry and is the most appropriate spokesperson for most interviews.
The first time I secured an interview for Andrew with a journalist I was over the moon! However, I’ve learnt that just securing an interview is not enough to ensure positive media coverage. I thought that I would share the process that I developed to implement after securing an interview.
1. Confirm the interview date and time
2. Ask the journalist to send through a list of proposed questions
3. Determine a list of key messages that need to be communicated in the interview
4. Develop a brief analysis of the listener/reader demographic
5. Research the journalist
6. Write proposed answers to the interview questions (for this I just used dot points under each question as it was easier for the MD to read)
7. Take research findings and proposed answers to the MD and brief on the interview
Where possible I always ask the journalist to send me a copy of the article before it goes to print or is streamed online (this is not always possible – but always worth asking!)
This task always reminds me of the mock interviews that we did in PR Media! Knowing that I had completed this excerise (even though it was over 2 years ago now) gave me the confidence to sucessfully implement this interview process.
It’s all about having as much control over the message as you can. While you want your spokesperson to sound natural in conversation with the journalist, it's also very important that they are saying the right thing!
Liberty was invited to present at a Sydney Resources Roadshow conference in April. While we were there we arranged a video interview with ABN Newswire. This is the first video interview I’d prepared for and let me tell you it is a lot more challenging than an interview over the phone. Firstly, Liberty’s MD could not read from my interview preparation notes so I spent 15 minutes before the interview going over it with him.
Let me know what you think...
It is just as important after the interview to review it. I always found it difficult to sit down with Andrew to listen to the interview and evaluate it because he didn't like listening to himself. But it is so important, as with any project, to enage in ongoing evalutation to ensure to the next interview is perfect!
