TV, Radio, or Podcast interviews are a great opportunity to talk about your charity and to get across key messages about your work. They are exciting and nerve wracking in equal measure. Unless you are responding to a crisis situation you are unlikely to get a hard time. How can you maximise those opportunities? Here are ten tips:

1. Be prepared. Be clear on your objectives and know your key messages. Don't wing it!

2. When you prepare answers be brief and be succinct. That means pithy sound-bites not waffle.

3. You won’t always get the questions in advance so do your homework on your subject and don’t get drawn in on areas that are outside of your expertise.

4. Dealing with nerves can be tricky. You can control them by having a well-rehearsed (and short) relevant anecdote up your sleeve that encapsulates what your charity stands for. Speaking about something very familiar will buy you time as you work through initial nerves.

5. Have three gems of information ready to get across. Each one needs to be Interesting (passing the “so what test”), Significant (tell them something they don’t know), and Newsworthy.

6. Always answer the question (you are not a politician).

7. Bridge to one of your three gems; use “and “however” “also” “what’s important is” “but” to make a bridge from your answer to one of your gems.

8. Communicate one of your three gems (the style - brief and succinct; the substance - interesting, significant, newsworthy).

9. Don’t give one word answers but don’t talk too much.

10. Being on camera means thinking about body language; you will look good on TV if you keep the eye-line of the interviewer and stay still (you can talk with your hands naturally, but don’t move your body by swaying).

At Luminous Media we run training workshops for groups of 8-10 people per day. The training is for TV and radio interviews, and includes filming two interviews with each delegate, with the interviews being played back and constructive feedback given.

The sessions are very hands on and intensive, but done in a safe, encouraging, and positive setting. The training content looks at answering questions, delivering key messages, and how to appear on camera (body language, posture etc.). We go through the ‘how’ (or theory) part in detail and then get delegates in front of the camera. If you would like to know more you can find us here

We have also created a free download guide to making a charity video which you can get here

Ever wondered why, no matter which party they are from, all politicians seem to answer questions in the same way?

Here’s what they do…

1. They go on the attack

2. They give non-specific answers and then go on to what they want to say

3. They won’t answer hypothetical questions