16. What your one goal of every media interaction should be

I would bet that whatever type of expert you are, and whatever kind of work you do, you want to do media interviews to grow your practice or business. That is literally the goal of this podcast – to teach you how to do that.

But growing your business, and getting more patients, clients and customers can’t be your goal when you go into a media interview.

If you’ve listened to some of the other episodes of this podcast, you’ve heard me say over and over that success in the media, especially over the long term, is about building relationships. Relationships with journalists, writers, reporters, TV, radio and podcast hosts, and show producers.

Win-win media relationships

And to build relationships with them, you have to make each interaction a win-win.

The win for you is simple. You get an interview that shares your message and potentially helps you attract patients, clients and customers.

But you need to focus on making it a win for that journalist or producer. What kinds of actions or steps can you take to create wins for them?

Bring them an interesting story idea or topic for an interview.

Be available to provide expert opinions and information on a topic they don’t understand, even if it’s for background, and you are never quoted directly.

Give them a name and contact information for someone who could speak about a topic outside of what you’re comfortable with.

Help them attract readers, listeners or viewers.

Be great during the interview so that they look good.

Approach every interaction with people in the media with this goal

Basically, you need to approach every interview with the goal of helping that media person.

One of my former media coaches used to ask me, over and over, to consider this question: “How can I be a producer’s solution?” Apply that same question with every medium. “How can I be the host’s solution?” “How can I be a reporter’s solution?”

Think about how you can help, and how you can be a solution for them in every interaction – before, during and after the interview.

Focus on how you can help them in every email, every pitch, every phone call, in every social media retweet or share or mention of your upcoming interview.

That approach will make you stand out from all the other experts out there doing media interviews. It will make that reporter, journalist, producer or host like you, value you as a resource, and encourage them to use you over and over again in the future.

Promoting yourself and your business will often have the opposite effect

But if you take the approach that most experts use – using the interview as a way to promote yourself and your business – you won’t develop those long-term, mutually beneficial relationships, and you’ll probably hurt your chances of having a successful interview.

Trying to make yourself look good and promoting or even selling your product or service instead of offering information that helps the audience and that makes the media person look good will almost certainly have the opposite effect.

One of the biggest reasons media interviews work to help experts grow their businesses is the credibility the interviews provide. If you offer information that helps the audience, and not try to promote yourself and your business, it makes you more credible in the audience’s eyes. And without selling, you become more attractive to that listener, viewer or reader. He or she thinks, “You know, I’ve had that issue too. Maybe I should talk to this attorney, or physician, or whatever type of expert you are.”

True media success and growing your business comes from not just one interview, but lots of them. Repetition is huge. If someone sees you on TV a lot, or hears you on a radio show every week, or reads your newspaper column or sees you quoted in newspapers and magazines a lot, that is what really makes you the go-to expert in your industry in your town.

Work with me to develop and implement your media strategy

One of the things I do with the clients I work with one-on-one is that you and I figure out how you can be the solution for reporters, writers, show hosts and producers in your town, who you can help by bringing them interesting topics for articles or show segments, by being available on a moment’s notice, by doing whatever you can to help them, so that you become THE physician, financial planner, accountant, real estate agent, chiropractor, therapist, dentist or whatever kind of expert you are.

Now please remember, that just like my website, my coaching and everywhere else, that I am not giving business, financial, legal, medical or any other kind of advice here. Talk to a professional for advice specific to your situation.

If you want to learn more…if you want more customers, more clients, more patients, you want to make more money, you want to be recognized as THE expert in your industry, or you even want people you don’t even know to come up to you at the gym or in the grocery store, thanking you for helping them, I can help you become a Media PRO.

Sign up for a FREE 30-minute media strategy session with me. We will see where you are and what you’re trying to achieve in your business, and then plan some strategies for you to get more media interviews and appearances to achieve all those goals and far more.

Also, pick up my FREE eBook – The Media PROS Interview Checklist, offering you a handy reference full of tips to shine in your next media interview or appearance so they keep asking you back, over and over.