Companies often default to using senior executives as spokespeople, assuming title equals authority. However, audience engagement is driven by delivery and personality, not job title. Prioritize employees who are naturally compelling speakers—even if junior—to create more effective content like webinars and podcasts.

Print interviews are uniquely susceptible to manipulation because journalists can strip away crucial context like tone, humor, and clarifying statements. By selectively publishing only the most extreme lines, they can paint a subject in a negative light while maintaining plausible deniability of misquoting.

The media landscape has shifted from a few press channels to infinite creator channels. The old strategy was message control ("what can I not say?"). The new strategy is authenticity and volume; a gaffe is fixed by creating more content, not by apologizing.

A simple AI prompt can transform your press release into a list of challenging interview questions from a journalist's perspective. This helps you anticipate and prepare for difficult lines of questioning that your internal team might miss.

Roka News intentionally uses a lean, two-person team (host and videographer) for its documentaries. This is a content strategy, not just for efficiency. A minimal crew fosters more organic and honest conversations, as subjects are less intimidated than they would be by a large production.

Media outlets maintain a list of reliable, articulate guests. By delivering a compelling and well-prepared interview, you can become a go-to source for that outlet, securing numerous future media opportunities from a single successful appearance.

On video calls, avoid being a tiny person in the corner of the screen. Maximize your camera frame to take up as much space as possible. This conveys presence and confidence, showing the prospect you are actively engaged. Combine this with leaning in to listen to demonstrate active engagement visually.

With fewer journalists and newspapers to tell stories about companies, brands are building in-house "storytelling" teams to control their own narrative. This shift from earned media to owned media (podcasts, blogs, social channels) is driving the demand for corporate storytellers to act as brand journalists.

When a journalist uses an emotive, negative word like "crisis" in a question, do not repeat it in your answer. Reframe it with a more neutral term like "issue" or "challenge" to prevent your soundbite from reinforcing the negative narrative.