Tips in Dealing with the Media- Part 3: Crafting the Right Message

Intro (Part 1) | Part 2 | Part3 | Part4 | Part5 (Last)

*Note: This series is almost entirely based on a series of short videos (part of Wharton’s Communication class) by Amy Sharp, a media professional.*

Once the interview starts, there are lots of things that you may want to say and remember.

Your key message points are what you think is important and what you want to ensure gets out.

You need to prepare for the interview by breaking your message into 3 sections that can be a combination of any of this: who, what, when, how does it affect you, what you are doing about it, etc. More than 3 message points can get confusing. More likely, you may not have time to relay and do justice to more than 3 key points.

You need to know and understand your audience. The type of language that you will use depends on audience, so you should tailor your message to reach the right people, at the right level. AVOID industry jargon. For Muslims, this means that if you are talking about Islam, AVOID using technical terms that may be common to Muslims but if your audience is non-Muslim, they have no idea what you are talking about. Don’t mention Hajj or sajdah or worse still, get into a discussion of Usool al-Fiqh, without explaining what you mean (this would then become of one you 3 key messages) in simple terms with examples. You need to keep it simple. The easiest way to lose audience is talk over their head.

Practice out loud, start forming catch phrases, also work out mentally how you will work out from A to B to C. Don’t memorize your points otherwise you will sound robotic and unreal (you don’t want to sound like John Kerry).

If you have to memorize your points, then you probably aren’t familiar enough with the topic to be talking about it. So, make sure then that you know what you are talking about. It seems obvious but people sometimes are overconfident about what they know, and reality strikes only when they are challenged on it. Memorization makes your believability even lower. Be natural. We don’t memorize our conversations.

Next Topics:

• Part 4- Taking Control
• Part 5- Appearing Confident