Susan Harrow and me, Elizabeth Yarnell!

Susan knows her stuff when it comes to helping people get more attention. What she teaches will not only help people who want to get in the media to sell their books or products, but will work for anyone who is promoting anything, be it a fundraiser for the elementary school, your business, or your favorite charity.

The 90-minute free webinar starts at 11 am PDT/2 pm EDT today, and both Susan and I will be offering free gifts to attendees who are present. However, if you can’t make it, all registered people will receive a link to the recording afterward as well.

Register now for the Sound Bites webinar with Susan Harrow.

Hope to see you there!

©2012 Recipes for Publicity. All Rights Reserved.

Many people don’t understand what sound bites are. They don’t know how to create sound bites that sell. They don’t know that it’s not enough to be clever, entertaining or quippy. That might make TV and radio hosts happy, but it often won’t bring in the kind of results you’re looking for: to grow your business, sell more product, get new clients, more customers, or increase your fees.

You want to develop sound bites that speak to who you are, what you do and how well you do it. Sound bites are the essential messages that will create sales and recognition. They consist of anecdotes, analogies, stories, one-liners, and facts that you can speak in 15-30 seconds. They should be singly focused on what you want your audience to know. To turn media interviews into sales here are three things you can do.

1. Incorporate Your Past into Your Present Experience.
Camus says, “We are the sum of our choices.” We want to know how your childhood dreams have influenced the career you’ve chosen. Your past often has predictors to your future interests and life decisions. If you don’t want to go back as far as childhood then go back in your professional career. Sarah Newton, The UK’s Top Teen Coach, said that when she was a juvenile corrections officer what she heard from teenagers most was that they didn’t feel heard, understood or respected. “The most important thing a parent can do is listen,” says Newton.

Often sound bites like Newton’s seem simple. But it takes work to distill your ideas down to their essence. It’s the unadorned statement that is often the most powerful.

Another way to tie past to present is to show how your passion drives your profession. “People think I am disciplined. It is not discipline. It is devotion. There is a great difference,” says Luciano Pavarotti. Choose the words that show your devotion.

2. Include Client Successes.
How has your product or service impacted your clients or customers? Tell a story that centers on that success. Marty Friedman, seminar Leader and author of Straight Talk for Men About Marriage, says, “An attorney who came to one of my seminars said he didn’t really think he got much out of it–until he got home and his wife wanted to have sex with him–for the first time in months. ‘I guess I must have learned a little something,’ the attorney admitted.”

Friedman tells a very succinct story with a potent punch line. And this sound bite lets you know that his methods are so powerful they work on non-believers and hard-sell cases like attorneys.

3. Show Your Suffering.
The people I’ve known who have suffered the most are funny, sarcastic, and wise, but never saccharin. Saccharin is all this sweet talk about love and understanding and comes off as facile. Love, understanding and forgiveness aren’t sickly tender. They often come out of bitterness, hopelessness and heartache. We trust those people who have suffered or who have failed over and over again and are willing to share their insights–in a non-showy way.

Dr. Vicki Rackner, CEO of Medical Bridges and Medical Editor of the Hope Health Letter which reaches over 3 million people says that at age 40 she made a radical choice: to close her private practice to be with her son. “As the operating room door closed, another opened. I can’t tell you that everyone lived happily ever after because we’re just at `once upon a time.’”

Closing her practice, the choice she made to forgo surgery in favor of becoming a patient advocate, goes against the grain of what “society” could deem is proper for a board certified surgeon with a full practice. You know right away that she is thoughtful and has tremendous empathy and insight. As a patient wouldn’t you want her on your side?

Sound bites, speaking in condensed language to convey your points, is an art to be practiced daily in and out of media interviews until it becomes a natural way of speaking.

If you incorporate your past into your present experience, include client successes, and show your suffering during an interview you’ll be perceived as an expert, increase your sales, and develop a following all while demonstrating your humanity.
Susan Harrow, CEO of http://prsecrets.com, is a top media coach, marketing strategist and author of Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul® (HarperCollins), The Ultimate Guide to Getting Booked on Oprah, and Get a 6- Figure Book Advance. Clients include Fortune 500 CEOs, bestselling authors and entrepreneurs who have appeared on Oprah, 60 Minutes, NPR, and in TIME, USA Today, Parade, People, O, NY Times, WSJ, and Inc.

Join us to learn how you can speak in sound bites to get what you want in business and in life (free teleseminar / webinar) here.

©2012 Recipes for Publicity. All Rights Reserved.

Susan Harrow and me, Elizabeth Yarnell!

In this new age of media 3.0 the media is more often searching for experts when they have the need rather than pouring over hundreds of useless press releases that don’t have information that is relevant for their audience.

So even if you haven’t sent out a press release you could get that important call from the media – if you’ve positioned yourself correctly on the Internet.

On the flip side did you know that now with YouTube and Time Machine that what you say could haunt you forever? Once a video of you is posted or something you said shows up on the Internet there’s no way to take it back. With the advent of technology what you say will stay around in eternity and anyone can access it at any time.

This is why it makes it so important that you pay attention to what you say and how you say it.

That’s right, your reputation, your credibility, your brand, your livelihood could disappear with one bad article or one TV appearance gone south. But it doesn’t need to be so. Don’t make these five mistakes.

1. You waffle.
Many people I media train waffle. They meander off into a tangent or blurt out a thought that just came into their head in the heat of the moment, instead of carefully planning their messages and delivering them. I just saw the movie Fair Game about the Valerie Plame story. When Plame spoke to one of her contacts overseas from whom she wanted information she was firm as a mountain, soft as breeze, fluid as water. She was never harsh, but she got her way. She knew her facts so when she spoke to one of her own team members or someone whose cooperation she wanted she quietly, but firmly repeated her request.

You can do the same when someone asks you a question. You calmly assert your pre-rehearsed answer no matter how many different ways a reporter or host ask you a question to elicit a different response. Know what you want to say and stick to it. Stay firm as a mountain, soft as a breeze, fluid as water.

2. You don’t quote industry leaders or competitors.
It might sound counter-intuitive to quote your competition or other high-stature people in your field, but it shows that you are on top of what’s happening in your industry. In an Inc.com article titled 10 Tips for Giving an Important Speech by Alyssa Danigelis, anthropologist, filmmaker, and National Geographic explorer Elizabeth Lindsey said, “The more we talk about the things that matter to us, and less about our achievements, people breathe a collective sigh of relief.”

When we focus on what’s important to us in a sincere way it translates to our audience. They get it. Quote people you admire whose philosophy resonates with your own to help get your ideas across in a novel way. They often say things that give a different point of view given we are all entangled in our own perspective. It’s a way of broadening our own views and the views of our audience.

3. You don’t tell how you’ve helped people.
The most potent way to persuade people to buy or buy into you isn’t for you to talk about your achievements but to tell a story about a person you’ve helped. I recently media coached a client who said he wasn’t a good story-teller. As a doctor he preferred to site facts so he would be more authoritative. But the human warm fuzzy factor was a bit lacking. It’s important to use facts and stories to build trust. And it’s also necessary to tell stories that reveal our effectiveness human to human.

Facts show you have knowledge, and personal and professional stories illustrate your understanding – how you do what you do and how well your methods work. I suggested that he tell dramatic or funny stories about people who came into his office with an acute problem whom he helped quickly recover using both his doctorly intuition and the product he was promoting. In our next media coaching session he did this beautifully in preparation for his NPR interview. Giving your audience a story about how you helped another person is the closest thing to giving them an actual experience of you.

4. You don’t transform your wounds into wisdom.
Your hardships are the mistakes that others don’t need to make. Your wounds make you loveable. We all have an Achilles Heel. Don’t hide it, highlight it.

Comedian Craig Ferguson said, “I think that sometimes fear is god’s way of saying paying attention to this could be fun. I’ve learned from people who are braver than I that fear is necessary, failure is necessary. When I talk to people and they tell me how well they are or how well they are doing I think they’re crazy and they’re failing. And when I talk to people and who are telling me how they feel. I’m not saying that misery is more authentic than joy, I don’t mean that. But I do think that sometimes self promotion can be tiresome as I sit here talkin’ about my book. Which is available reasonably priced from all good outlets.”

What I love about Ferguson is that he doesn’t wallow in any sentiment. He moves into the wound and the moves out of it with humor. And aren’t you interested in his book just from reading this one quote? I was.

5. You’re don’t have your opinion ready.
Thought leaders have opinions. They back their opinions with evidence or piggy back them with humor to soften a tough point of view. Have your opinion ready. To become a respected thought leader spend some time every week thinking about the issues in your industry. Consider some of the trends that are happening. Formulate your thoughts. Concretize them in writing on your blog, Facebook, or in an article.

When a reporter who had interviewed me before called and asked me my opinion of the new Conan O’Brien Show I told her I hadn’t seen it, but I still had an opinion about it. We laughed. Then I transitioned from what I didn’t know into what I did know – which was Jon Stewart. I watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and think he’s hilarious, smart and self-deprecating.

Even though he’s super smart he’s not a snob about it. She really wanted my comments about the future of the talk show format so I talked about that in relation to Jon Stewart. As you can see I got a paragraph at the end of her article – without knowing a thing about the topic of her piece – Conan O’Brien. (http://www.prsecrets.com/articles/ChristianScienceMonitor_111010.html)

The important thing is to transition to what you know and make the connection so you are serving the reporter and her audience. Folk singer Joan Baez said, “I’ve never had a humble opinion. If you’ve got an opinion, why be humble about it?” Thought leaders aren’t afraid to voice a strong opinion.

Susan Harrow, CEO of http://prsecrets.com, is a top media coach, marketing strategist and author of Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul® (HarperCollins), The Ultimate Guide to Getting Booked on Oprah, and Get a 6-Figure Book Advance. Clients include Fortune 500 CEOs, bestselling authors and entrepreneurs who have appeared on Oprah, 60 Minutes, NPR, and in TIME, USA Today, Parade, People, O, NY Times, WSJ, and Inc.

Join us to learn how you can speak in sound bites to get what you want in business and in life (FREE teleseminar / webinar) here.

©2012 Recipes for Publicity. All Rights Reserved.

Are you an author or an aspiring writer? This for you!

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 (11:30 am – 1:30 pm)
Four Points Sheraton
$20 members, $25 non-members (RSVP deadline: Sunday 10/19 midnight)

(PS: Sorry about the font above — I cut and pasted and couldn’t make it regular type anymore. Technology: love it and curse it!)

©2012 Recipes for Publicity. All Rights Reserved.

Many thanks to Alyson Stanfield of ArtBizCoach.com for passing this along to me! Thanks, Alyson!

©2012 Recipes for Publicity. All Rights Reserved.

Visit the Vitamin Cottage Natural Speakers website to view upcoming seminars and submit an application to speak.

©2012 Recipes for Publicity. All Rights Reserved.