When being interviewed by the media, spokespeople should have some key statistics up their sleeve to support their viewpoints. Journalists love statistics, because they give them and their target audiences a reference point or measure, for example by which to judge the importance and credibility of what the spokesperson is saying.

When I am running media training workshops with three to seven spokespeople, I always ask them what statistic comes to mind when I say the word “most,” and I sometimes get a different answer from each of them, ranging anywhere from 51% to 99%. Interestingly, many people think “majority” and “most” are interchangeable - it’s all about perception.

If a spokesperson makes a vague comment like “Most companies are moving in this direction……” the audience will interpret it in their own way. Meanwhile, the spokesperson had a definite statistic in his mind as to what he meant by “most,” but he omitted to share it, and clarity was lost.

There are plenty of statistics available today on just about every topic one can think of, and the number of analysts that provide them are increasing. In the media training workshops I run, I always suggest it is a good idea to look at several analysts figures and views on each specific point, because they often vary from one to another, and it is important to weigh this up.

There is nothing wrong with saying during a media interview that market statistics on the point in question vary from one analyst to another and give the range of figures. After all, the objective is to be seen as an authority on the topic being discussed. On the other hand spokespeople working for multinationals should be able to gather statistics from their company’s global information base.

I have found when interviewing spokespeople for articles I am writing or during media training sessions that a lot of spokespeople have little confidence in their own ability to quantify their statements. When prompted to do so, they will often say, “There are no local statistics on this,” or will regurgitate figures provided by their favourite local research company.

Company spokespeople should be able to gather local statistics from their own customer base, but when I suggest this in media training workshops the attendees often see this as a massive task they don’t have time to tackle. But if 7 out of a sample of ten customers are making similar business decisions or facing the same issues, or looking for the same type of opportunities, this will provide a useful statistic, even if the spokesperson qualifies the figure he or she gives the journalist as an estimate.

While statistics are important, spokespeople will gain even more credibility if they can discuss the underlying messages in the figures they are providing. For example, what does this statistic say about what is happening in the market? What are the market influences driving the growth or causing the decline in the figures over the past few years?

Why are these figures significant? Given these statistics, what is likely to happen in the future? If spokespeople can discuss the how? when? why? what, who? behind the statistics, and keep feeding their knowledge base with the latest trends and figures they will provide more value in a media interview.

The more value they provide the more sort-after they will be by the media and the more recognition they will receive for themselves and their companies.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist and is author of A Perfect Press Release - or Not?, a guide to writing press releases. She also runs media spokesperson training workshops and one-on-one sessions, and article writing skills courses. Other spokesperson and writing tips can be found on her website: http://www.jennigay.co.za

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Being a media spokesperson is often seen as a grudge role that is out on a limb, far removed from priorities like dealing with customers. But if approached in the right way media interaction can complement rather than detract from customer interaction, and vice versa.

For example, by broadening their understanding of the markets in which they operate to give good value in a media interview spokespeople will be able to feed this knowledge back into their customer base. Similarly, they can gather rich market intelligence while interacting with customers that will elevate them to the ranks of sort-after spokespeople.

During the media training workshops I run, I always stress how important it is for  spokespeople to support their viewpoints with key market statistics when discussing trends in media interviews. Journalists like me love statistics, because they quantify and give the audience a reference point, or measure that will enable them to judge for themselves whether a trend is significant to them or not.

It is not enough just to say “a few” or “most.” When I ask a six or seven people attending a media training workshop what figure comes to mind when they hear the word “most,” I get at least three or four different answers.  Some people even confuse “most” with “majority” and respond with “more than 51%.”

Ninety five percent of spokespeople are bad at providing statistics during media interviews, especially when it comes to the local market. All too often I get the response: “There are no local statistics available.” When this happens during the media training sessions I run, my next question is: “Are you telling me you don’t have any customers?”

I then suggest that if they take a sample of 10 or 15 top customers and 80% of them are making similar decisions about moving in a certain direction, follow similar buying patterns or have similar issues or expectations, this signifies a trend. Comparative trends can then be identified by taking a similar small or medium sized customers.

Similar statistics can be gleaned from any representative customer sample, without surveying the entire customer base.

When I suggest these approaches, in the media training workshops I run, the spokespeople attending will sometimes protest that as such a sample would have just been gleaned from their customer base, this information would not be broad-based enough.

But I know from 25 years experience as a journalist that if I ask four or five spokespeople from different companies the same question they will give me similar statistics.

If a spokesperson is still not comfortable making the statement that 80% of companies are moving in a certain direction based on feedback from their customer base, a qualified statement starting something like: “80% of our top customers are…..etc.,” would still be useful to a journalist looking for market feedback.

I provide other guidelines for adding value to customer interaction during the media training sessions and workshops I run. This training will also help sales people to interact more effectively with customers.

Spokespeople also have a problem when I ask them to give me examples of the return on investment that can be achieved from the type of solutions they are trying to build a business case for during their interview sessions. I invariably get a response like: “That’s a bit like asking, how long is a piece of string,” which is no help to anyone.

I point out that surely their customers ask them this question before making purchasing decisions. As with statistics, this type of market intelligence can be gathered from the spokesperson’s company’s customer base, either directly or through customer facing staff.

During media training sessions, spokespeople often admit that after a sale is made they or their salespeople walk away and never go back and ask customers about the return on investment they achieved from the products and service they sold them. What a missed opportunity to gather market intelligence!

Even if spokespeople do not deal directly with customers, such as line managers, they can get their sales or support people to ask specific questions like this when their are interacting with customers.

Jennigay Coetzer is a freelance business and technology journalist. She also does media spokesperson training and article writing skills training.

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Companies appoint spokespeople to interact with the media to build brand awareness and image, get their marketing messages across, keep the market up to date with what they are doing and how successful they are, attract new business, and encouraging customers to buy more of their products and services.

But journalists and other media interviewers have a different agenda. They are looking for information that will interest and enlighten their readers, listeners or viewers, keep them up to date with the latest news and trends and keep them coming back for more. So, for them, their audience is always top of mind.

It is important for company spokespeople to understand these different agendas, and media training will help them to do this. Meanwhile here are some useful tips from me, as a journalist who has had more than 25 experience interviewing spokespeople, to get you on the right track.

Journalists are not interested in how much money your company is making or how good its products and services are, except when this information is of interest to their audience - for example when they are reporting on a listed company’s results or a new company listing.

They know their readers are looking for information that will keep them up to date with what is going on locally and globally that could affect their lifestyle or business interests, the economy, the political environment or the markets in which they operate.

Media spokespeople therefore need to understand and identify with what the audience would be interested in hearing as opposed to focusing solely on what they want to tell them, when preparing for a media interview.

At the same time, their audience represents your company’s customers and potential customers, because these are the people you need to reach.  Otherwise it is a waste of time being interviewed by the media.

Another important point to remember is that in essence, the media interviewer is a conduit between the spokesperson and the audience. So during an interview the spokesperson needs to imagine he or she is speaking directly to the lowest common denominator of that audience.

For example, among other things, I have a broad knowledge of IT and telecommunications, but I write about topics in this area for a business audience. The spokespeople I interview therefore need to interact with me in practical business terms. It is not up to me to interpret their industry jargon and gobbledegook into the language my readers will understand.

It is also risky to rely on the journalist to do this, because it could give rise to misinterpretation, speculation and assumption. Hence the common complaint from spokespeople that they were quoted out of context. You can find another article on my website: www.jennigay.co.za that focuses on the dangers of assumption.

When interviewing spokespeople and during the media training workshops and one-on-one sessions I run, it amazes me that so few spokespeople have a bigger-picture view of the trends that revolve around the markets in which they operate. They are so often only capable of putting forward superficial views and pushing the products and services they sell.

When I write articles, I am looking for interesting views from spokespeople who are prepared to share knowledge and ideas that will enlighten my readers and enable them to use the information to make better decisions.

Even when discussing a new concept, product or service, readers, listeners and viewers will want answers to questions such as who it is targeted at, how it will benefit them, how it works, where it can be obtained and when? How it fits into the bigger picture of the market, whether this marks a trend, and so on. In other words, what’s in it for them to absorb this information?

This will require getting onto the audience’s wavelength as opposed to expecting them to get onto yours, which many spokespeople make the mistake of doing. One-on-one media spokesperson training sessions and group media spokesperson workshops will help spokespeople to acquire techniques to achieve this.

Jennigay Coetzer is a business and technology journalist and has run more than 100 media training workshops and coaching sessions. She also runs article writing workshops.

An electronic version of her book, A Perfect Press Release - or Not?, a guideline to writing press releases, can be downloaded free from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

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Publishable articles needs to contain rich content that will capture and retain the interest of the target audience. The spokespeople journalists interview to obtain this content therefore need to be equipped with rich knowledge of the topic being discussed, from the audience’s viewpoint, and not just a few superficial, disjointed bits of information.

Spokespeople who lack knowledge end up waffling and regurgitating clichés, marketing speak and industry jargon and bits of information they have picked up without exploring the whys and wherefores behind them.

Many spokespeople have not been trained to interact with the media and are so bound up in their day-to-day work that they have tunnel vision and cannot view the products and services they sell in the context of the market as a whole. These people have superficial viewpoints and find it difficult to discuss any topic at hand from the audience’s perspective. What they have to say will therefore always be introspective and lack substance.

During the media training sessions I run, I find that even those spokespeople that have been interviewed by journalists many times are amazed at how much they learn. They realise how many mistakes they have been making, including those mentioned here, because they have not been trained properly to interact with the media.

Continually gathering local and global industry and market knowledge should not mean being exposed to information overload by reading everything.

Spokespeople can achieve this by being alert to what is going on in the markets in which they operate, gathering market intelligence by talking to their customers, and regularly scanning relevant information gathered from carefully selected knowledge sources. This will enable them to constantly refresh their knowledge base.

Good spokespeople will also explore the topics on which they are expecting to be interviewed to get a deeper understanding of the implications of the market trends and the factors that are influencing them.

Those who are not prepared to do this are putting their companies at risk when communicating with the media because of their lack of knowledge. This is equally so when spokespeople are quoted in press releases and other articles that are merely being posted on a company website.

Spokesperson will also need to be equipped with the knowledge to answer any questions that might be asked by journalists following up on a press release.

The above article is written by business and technology journalist Jennigay Coetzer. More article media spokesperson tips and writing tips can be found on her website ww.jennigay.co.za, which also contains details of the media training workshops and coaching sessions and article writing skills workshops she runs.

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“This includes small businesses that cannot justify hiring a PR consultant, but still need to send out press releases,” says Coetzer. Hard hitting views from journalists and editors who face a daily barrage of press releases are included in the book, which also contains tips for spokespeople that need to be quoted in these articles.

Press releases are an effective, inexpensive way to raise a company’s profile, promote its viewpoints, products and services and announce events. But if the first three sentences of a press release provide no value or do not make sense, most journalists and editors will delete it without reading any further.

Similarly, those looking for information on the internet will move on if the content of the articles posted on a company’s website are cluttered with marketing hype, says Coetzer. “Nobody has time to plough through all this guff in the hopes of finding meaningful information.”

She says companies will proudly say they have “unique” products and services, and market differentiators, and yet the jargon, buzzwords and cliches they use in their press releases are all the same. Today, the expectations of those seeking interesting information from newspapers, magazines and the internet are higher than ever and the opportunity to grab and hold the readers’ attention is fleeting, says Coetzer.

“Lack of meaningful content leads to waffle, which gets in the way of a story and obscures any possible value for the reader,” she says. This will result in a fragmented article that, if published, will reflect badly on the company.

Any company can have a voice in the media and on its website by championing topical issues and trends that either affect the market as a whole or specific industry sectors and sharing knowledge and expertise that will benefit others, instead of just punting product. In so doing they can create a name for themselves as an authority on relevant topics and enhance the image of their company, says Coetzer.

Jennigay Coetzer has had 25 years experience as a business and technology journalist. Articles providing tips for media spokespeople can also be found on her website at: www.jennigay.co.za,. Details of the article writing skills and media training workshops and coaching sessions she runs are also included on the website. A hard copy of her book, A Perfect Press Release - or Not? can also be purchased from the website for R50.

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• Is it a good story - or just puff?
• Will the content interest the target audience?
• Is the article constructed properly?
• Does the story line flow?
• Are all the facts there?
• Does the content make sense?
• Is the content relevant?

If your press release is published in the media, read it objectively and take note of how the editor has changed it from the original you submitted, even if these changes are minor, and use this as feedback to improve your writing skills. It will also help you understand the style of the publication better for next time you submit a press release for that target audience.

Reasons press releases fail:

• Company puffery, posturing and self-gratification.
• Lack of useful information.
• Not enough value for the target audience.
• Lack of focus.
• Too many ideas in the story.
• Superficial views stated.
• Disjointed or fragmented content.
• Waffle.

News releases

A news release implies that the content is newsworthy and if it does not live up to this expectation it is just another form of spam. The editor will be looking for the facts and perhaps some comment on the business impact the announcement is likely to have on the market.

Before embarking on writing a news release, first ask yourself:

• Is the announcement newsworthy?
• Will it have any impact on the economy, a specific industry or market segment?
• Is the announcement of interest to anyone except the company issuing it?

Authoritative articles

An authoritative opinion article should contain strong, informed views about the trends, issues or opportunities being discussed and what these mean to the target readers.

So first ask yourself:

• Is the topic relevant?
• Will the topic grab the reader’s attention?
• Will the views discussed enlighten the reader?
• Are the views forward thinking?
• Is the spokesperson an authority on the topic?

Authoritative articles can be affective for driving trends and issues in the media and championing viewpoints that create a pull-through for a company’s products and services or merely promote it as the expert in a particular area. But all too often they contain superficial views, the content is vague, fragmented, ill-informed and generally lacking in substance.

This is an exerpt from A Perfect Press Release - or Not? - a guide to writing press releases by business and technology journalist Jennigay Coetzer. More article writing tips and media spokesperson tips can be found on her website at: www.jennigay.co.za, which also contains details of the article writing skills and media training workshops and coaching sessions she runs.

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Good listening skills are vitally important when being interviewed by the media. People in general tend to be bad listeners, and in worst case scenarios will wait impatiently for the person to finish speaking to put their point of view across, going so far as interrupting in order to do so.

I come across this problem all the time as a journalist when I am interviewing spokespeople for articles, and in the mock interview sessions I conduct during the media training workshops and one-on-one coaching sessions I run.

When trying to interact with bad listeners, they are so intent on downloading their points of view that they often end up having their own parallel conversation and don’t even realise they have lost the attention of their audience.

Spokespeople who don’t listen properly are often so preoccupied with what they want to say next that they misunderstand the questions they are being asked and preempt what the journalist was going to say. This is irritating for the journalist and unproductive for both parties. It is not conducive to building good media relationships, and could well railroad the interview.

Bad listeners also often speak too fast, which puts journalists under pressure and eventually makes it impossible for them to absorb the overload of information being downloaded to them.

In the case of a print media journalist, this could result in a fragmented article, with the spokesperson’s comments taken out of context. There is also a risk of the journalist making incorrect assumptions to fill the gaps in the fragmented information he or she has managed to absorb.

To get the best results from a media interview, spokespeople need to engage in a two-way interaction with journalists, tune into their wavelength and really listen to the questions they are asking. This will help the spokesperson to gauge how their viewpoints are being received, pick up on any interest signals being given out, and identify opportunities to put their company messages across subtly at the most appropriate moments.

It will also help build a relationship with the media interviewer, and is more likely to lead to further interview opportunities. It is much easier for any media interviewer to extract meaningful information from a spokesperson who is engaging in a two-way conversation. The same thing applies with radio and TV interviews.

It is also worth remembering that experienced journalists often have a broader understanding of the topics they write about than many of the spokespeople they are interviewing and can be a valuable source of market intelligence for a good listener.

A few years ago, I was doing some media training for a couple of top directors of a security company, and one of them said to me: “When I was practicing my listening skills on my wife last night, as you taught us during our last session, she said it was the first time I had listened to anything she had said in 20 years.”

The above article is an excerpt from a new book, The Media Spokesperson’s Handbook, by business and technology journalist Jennigay Coetzer, who also does media training, and runs article writing workshops. The book is expected to be published shortly.

Jennigay Coetzer’s first book, A Perfect Press Release - or Not?, a guideline to writing press releases is available from her website: www.jennigay.co.za.

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Every press release should have an objective behind it that is in line with the business strategy, regardless of whether it is going to be distributed to the media or posted on a website. It is no good just sitting down and saying: “We need to send out a press release, so what shall we write about today?”

The organisation’s internal or external PR consultant, marketing department and designated writer should be included in the strategy process. Have a brainstorming session to identify potential target publications and come up with interesting topics to suit the type of audience each of these is addressing.

All those involved in this session need to put themselves in the mindset of the audience and consider what the reader would be interested in hearing about – not what they think the reader needs to know. My book, A Perfect Press Release - or Not? covers this and other guidelines on producing and distributing press releases. I also cover this topic in the writing skills workshops and media training workshops I run.

Having come up with a focused topic, decide who is best suited to provide the input for the rich, meaningful content required to produce a publishable press release. The designated spokesperson should be able to demonstrate a real interest in the topic being discussed. Otherwise, don’t expect the audience to be interested in what he or she has to say.

In some cases it may be better for the writer of the press release to obtain input from the person at the coal face, such as the person who designed the new product or concept being launched or is more involved with the event or deal being announced, if he or she is more knowledgeable about it than the CEO.

But bear in mind that it is risky to then attribute the person’s quotes to the top executive just to satisfy his ego or comply with corporate protocol if he does not have the knowledge to back up what has been said in the press release.

If it is an interesting story, a journalist may well follow up on the press release with a phone call and ask probing questions about the event or product being announced or the topic being discussed. For similar reasons it is not a good idea to localise international press releases just by changing the spokesperson’s name, if the local person is not equipped to handle follow-up calls.

The above article is an exerpt from A Perfect Press Release - or Not? - a guide to writing press releases, by business and technology journalist Jennigay Coetzer, which is available from the author’s website at: http//:www.jennigay.co.za. Other writing tips and media spokesperson tips are also available on her website.

Jennigay Coetzer is a business and technology journalist and author, who also runs article writing skills and media training workshops and coaching sessions.

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If you browse through the press releases published on 10 websites you will see most of them have something in common. They are filled with the same marketing hype, jargon and industry gobbledygook. The same thing happens with the press releases that are distributed on to the media.

Here are some of the reasons for this:

No clear strategy behind the press release.
Lack of rich content.

• No real story to tell.
• The spokesperson had little of interest to say.
• Too much focus on marketing messages and too little on what would interest readers.
• The writer has become indoctrinated in marketing speak.
• The press release was “enhanced” by the client after it was written.

Companies produce press releases to get their messages across and promote their brand to a target audience. But if the audience has to wade through screeds of marketing speak before they find any useful information, they will give up and move on. Plus, if every press release contains the same jargon, so where is the differentiation?

This is one of the topics covered in my book, A Perfect Press Release - or Not? and during the writing skills workshops and media workshops I run. Often those attending my workshops will admit that they had not realised how indoctrinated they have become with their industry jargon.

Press releases often speak as though the companies sending them out have assumed they already have the full attention of the potential readers, who are waiting eagerly for all the jargon and clichés they are dishing up. But even if a company pays for space and publishes their press release as advertorial, it is doubtful if anyone will read it if it reads like an advertisement.

As a journalist, when I receive press releases, it always amazes me that companies and PR consultants continue to include so much repetitive marketing hype, even when they know it will be edited out if it is published.

When reading some press releases it would seem those writing them were torn between marketing jargon and being useful to the reader. This results in a disjointed article that will frustrate readers and leave questions in their minds, such a: So what? How will this benefit me? How does the concept work? When is this event happening? Where can I get this product?

To avoid falling into this trap, try writing the press release first, focusing on the reader perspective, and add the marketing frills later. At least then you will be able to see if the story has any merit before defacing it. Unexplained terminology should also be avoided because it makes those who are not familiar with them feel like non-members of some exclusive club.

The above article is an exerpt from my book A Perfect Press Release - or Not? a guide to writing press releases, which is available from my website at: www.jennigay.co.za. Other article writing tips and media spokesperson tips are also available on my website.

Jennigay Coetzer is a business and technology journalist and author, who also runs article writing skills workshops, and media training workshops and coaching sessions.

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A common failing of press releases and other articles is lack of interesting content - from the audience’s perspective. This is often due to the spokesperson who is being quoted or the person writing the article only having superficial knowledge of the topic, or the inability of the writer to ask the right questions during the interview process.

Lack of meaningful content leads to waffle and in the case of press releases screeds of marketing jargon. This is why 95% of press releases distributed to the media end up in the editor’s bin and why so many people complain about being flooded with information and starved of knowledge when surfing the web.

This is a common problem I focus on a lot in the article writing skills workshops I run.

The content of a news release should fulfill its promise of being newsworthy, with the essence of the story upfront, and should answer all the questions that are likely to come up in the minds of the readers as they go through it. For example, what is being announced? When is it happening? Who is involved? Why is it important? Where will it take place? Who it will affect? - and so on, with the information flowing in order of importance.

When press releases are distributed to the media, journalists and editors will want to find meaningful information in them upfront and expect them to be constructed so that they can be cut from the bottom. Sometimes press releases are cut right up to the first two or three sentences and published as a news brief.

Even if articles are just being posted on a website, the attention span of readers is limited and you will therefore need to grab their attention and keep it for as long as possible. This will require focusing on the value of the content from the reader’s perspective when gathering information for the article.

Good content is like a sculptor’s clay - it can be molded and massaged until it flows properly as you write and rewrite the article, as I always tell those attending my writing skills workshops.

When starting to write the article, don’t get hung up on “the intro paragraph” and get writers block. I always suggest to those attending my article writing skills workshops that they come up with a sentence or two that will provide an initial hook to hang their article on and focus on getting all the information down.

As you get into the swing of shaping and reshaping the article and pushing all the value to the top, you will probably rewrite the intro several times and may even end up discarding it altogether and using other content that was originally lower down in the article.

When I first became a journalist 25 years ago, I used to get serious writers block with the intro for my articles. In those days, we didn’t have PCs and word processing software with spell checkers, but typewriters and Tipp-ex.

As a result, you could often hear the “Rrrrip” sound of pages of A4 paper with a couple of lines of copy on them being yanked out of typewriter rollers and thrown in the bin by yours truly and other similarly afflicted journalists across our open plan editorial office.

Then one day my editor saw me fretting over the problem. He said to me: “Tell me the essence of the story you are trying to write?” so I told him and he said: “Well, that’s your intro!”

I discovered that verbalising what I wanted to say first, even just in my mind, before writing it down made it a lot easier. Over the years I have passed this tip on to those attending my writing skills workshops and in my book - A Perfect Press Release - or Not? and from the feedback I have had, it has helped them a lot.

More detailed article writing and media spokesperson tips can be found on my website: jennigay.co.za, which also contains details of the writing workshops and media workshops I run. My book, A Perfect Press Release - or Not?, a guide to writing press releases, is also available from my website.

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