You may need to answer media questions. Here’s a quick guide to help non-experts deal with media questions.

Companies need to keep communication channels open so:

• investors,
• business partners,
• employees and
• customers

stay informed.

You might think  because you are a knowledge worker, your job puts you in a backroom role and you don’t need to worry about communications. You may work for a company that thinks it has watertight external communications strategies.

You’re on the front line

But even if your employer has access to the brightest and best communications experts, you may still find yourself pitched into a spokesperson role. In fact, if your employer uses the best communications experts, you are more likely to find yourself in the front line.

That’s because experienced journalists are able to see through the platitudes and feel-good nonsense spouted by corporate spin-doctors. Although they may not immediately be able to dig deep enough to find the real story behind any smokescreen, they know what a smokescreen smells like.

Putting genuine, but trained and fully briefed, voices in front of the media works to a company’s overall advantage.

Even if your employer would rather you stayed in the background, you might well be forced to speak to the media. This means that being able to articulate a company’s position is a key skill.

Crisis management

In the public relations industry dealing with communications when things go wrong is often known as crisis management – though it has other names. The smartest firms put flexible crises management plans in place long before any anticipated problems, this saves valuable time when troubles appear.

Developing a crises management plan is best left for another time. The key elements are establishing lines of communications and putting people in place who can articulate your company’s point of view to the media.

Of course, it’s a good idea to give all senior managers media training.

Let’s assume you don’t have media training, there are no well-developed lines of communications and you know nothing of any crises management plans. Things have gone badly wrong and you are right in the thick of it.

What should you do if a journalist quizzes you about a potentially damaging news story?

Good stories, not good news

Before we go any further, I must declare a personal interest. I am a journalist, I cover technology companies, I write news. I like to write good stories.

In this context ‘good’ doesn’t necessarily mean positive. In the news media we use the word to describe stories with reader interest – from your point of view that might be anything but good.

I prefer to go straight to the most obvious news source – the man or woman in the department dealing with the matter – and ask direct questions. The idea isn’t to catch someone out or make someone look stupid – my goal is simply to get to the bottom of the story and find facts.

Most Australian or New Zealand employers would expect employees to take one of two courses of action at this point. They might prefer it if the employee said nothing, refusing to speak and blocking all questions. Alternatively, they might expect an employee to tell outright lies.

Both courses of action are equally damaging, both to the company and to the employee.

Allow me to explain.

Telling lies is dumb

Aside from any ethical considerations, telling lies is just plain stupid.

Sooner or later the truth will emerge and you will be on the record as a liar. Your employer won’t look any better.

It’s possible you’ll get away with this, that any future employer will not know, not care or even be impressed you lied to cover your previous employer’s backside. Maybe.

Other people will remember your lies. And that will harm your reputation over the long-term, maybe even your business.

At any point a rival might remember those lies and make them public. In certain circumstances your lie might be legally actionable.

On the other hand, if you block a question, it can make things sound worse than they are.

It might simply mean that you or your employer don’t get an opportunity to put the record straight. But there are worse possibilities.

Suppose you were to read in a newspaper, ‘company X refused to comment on claims that it was trading while bankrupt’? What does this make you think about the company?

In my experience I’ve come up against more advanced forms of blocking, but they all amount to the same thing.  ‘The executive responsible for the exploding television monitors could not be contacted yesterday’ doesn’t sound innocent.

So what should you do when the media calls?

Rules number one, two and three are simply do not tell lies. Don’t even consider it. It is better to say nothing.

If you don’t want to answer questions or are not authorised to speak, find someone else who can.

There’s nothing wrong with telling a journalist that you aren’t able to help with enquiries but your immediate boss is.

There’s also nothing wrong with telling a journalist that you, or whoever can speak, is busy but will call back shortly – mind you it is important that person does call back shortly. This approach can buy you time to think about exactly what to say, take a deep breath and calm those nerves.

You might even want to take advice from a communications professional.

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Being good at your job is helpful. But to get the best jobs you also need to work on your profile. When top-flight companies hire people, the first question they ask themselves is ‘who is the ideal person for the role?’

More often than not, the first name that comes to mind is someone with the right skills set and a high profile. One sure fire way to build a higher profile is to become a taller poppy or a media star – this isn’t hard.

Media people know reporters and editors are only as good as their contacts. Although stories appearing in newspapers, magazines and online or broadcast via radio and television are increasingly manufactured – many are not. Journalists often need expert sources to explain things or to put them in context.

Because sources need to be found fast, journalists turn to the people they know first. So, for example, if a military coup erupts in a third-world country, reporters will search their contact books – sorry databases, this is the 21^st Century – for citizens of that country or at least someone who has more than just a passing knowledge of the country.

This process gets extremely granular – particularly with the trade and specialist press. If a computer virus infects government computers, reporters look for an online security expert. Computerworld reporters will determine the operating system and hardware concerned and look for, say, Windows Server 2008 security experts.

And that is the opportunity.

No matter how obscure your area of expertise, if you are a knowledge worker you are an expert on something and therefore a valuable resource to journalists and editors. In fact, the more obscure your expertise the more valuable you are as a contact.

Be ready to comment

Of course it’s no good simply being an expert. You have to let journalists and editors know you are there and available for comment. They are not going to find out about you through psychic power. This is the hardest part of building your profile.

If you work for a big outfit, one possible approach is to use your company’s public relations agency or marketing communications person. Simply make sure that they circulate your name to editors and key journalists as a possible expert contact.

Don’t forget to include online news sites, TV and radio stations on your list.

Running a blog centered on your expertise will also help you develop a higher profile.

Another approach is to wait until something happens and issue a statement. For this to work properly you need to anticipate the news and prepare your statement in advance. If you really are a subject expert this won’t be that difficult. But you’ll have to move fast. Journalists tend to work around the clock and time waits for no-one.

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Top 10 PR Blunders by Media Training News from Media Mentor.

Found this British link on the excellent PR Disasters blog run by Australian Gerry McCusker. As Darryl Kerrigan said in The Castle; “This one’s going straight to the pool room”.

Marketing communications, the business of letting people know about your products and services, can be broken down into two distinct parts: advertising and publicity. For more about the differences between the two, see Use publicity to get noticed.

As the earlier post says, advertising is straightforward. You pay money directly to a media company. In return, you retain control over your message and how it is presented. It’s a commercial transaction.

Publicity is different. It can still cost you money – there are plenty of businesses who will willingly accept payment for their promotional services – but in general you don’t pay the media to propagate your message and you have no say over timing, placement or presentation. You can’t even be sure it will run.

In theory, you should be able to get publicity when the story you want to tell is so compelling that journalists and editors will fall over themselves to ensure it appears in their publications, blogs or broadcasts. Just remember their idea of compelling is unlikely to coincide with your opinion.

Editors are driven by the need to provide readers, viewers or listeners with the hottest news, up-to-date information, the most relevant background features and the best stories. They may also be looking for something entertaining to brighten up their pages.

Contrary to what you may think, they generally don’t care at all about whether their stories help you or your business. Or at least they shouldn’t if they are doing their job properly. However, there are some, less than totally independent publications where this logic doesn’t apply.

Another common misunderstanding about publicity is that the best way to get it is to use something known as the press release. This is a pre-written version of the story you’d like to see in print. Press releases are often written in a highly stylised format, containing the basic facts together with some background.

Press releases can work, but in general they don’t. Many go straight into the bin. And rightly so. That’s the usual place for rubbish. Others are stored, maybe for future reference or to keep potentially useful contact information in a handy place. They mainly exist because clients like them – they create an aura rather than the reality of useful media activity.

In fact, there are publicity experts who believe the overwhelming majority of press releases are never read by journalists, let alone used as the basis for an editorial item.

Some of the best communications professionals – they may call themselves public relations consultants, press agents or even something ridiculously bombastic like media consul – will tell you that press releases are only one, not particularly useful strategy and account for a tiny fraction of their work.

We’ll look more closely at the mechanics of press releases another time.

Remember, publicity involves enticing the media to write or broadcast information about your company, product or services because you have something new, important, exciting or otherwise interesting to say.

Often the best way to do this is to call a journalist and tell them, quickly and concisely, just what your story is and why it may be of interest to their readers. Like everything else in business, this is largely a matter of forming the right relationships.

If you don’t feel comfortable doing this, get some media training or hire a press agent to do the calling on your behalf. Good public relations professionals know precisely who to call and how to pitch stories in a way that will make them more interesting to journalists or editors. They can introduce you to the right people, set up face-to-face meetings or organise phone interviews and help you prepare for these.

Occasionally when you have something particularly important to announce, you may want to hold a formal press conference or maybe host a less formal gathering of journalists for morning tea, lunch or afternoon cocktails. This kind of event works best when used sparingly, it’s not always the best way of telling a specific story, but it’s a great way to make or maintain contact.

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