Watch this Week’s PR Tip:

What is a Digital Interview?

Since COVID, the digital interview is a way of life. “Zoom” is a word used in our daily lives. The same holds true for the media digital interview. The television stations have been closed, except for essential personnel since March. This means that what were once in-studio interviews, are now being held digitally. The good news about this is that you have the ability to be interviewed on any station across the world. The bad news is, if you aren’t prepared and don’t know how to do a good digital interview, there is a chance they won’t air it (if it’s recorded) and you likely won’t be invited back.

Virtual Meetings Background

The set up is vital for a good digital interview. What should your background be? You definitely don’t want a window or lighting from behind you. And, ideally, you don’t want a solid color wall. If you have a book case, fireplace with mantel, shelving, something that provides some depth is good. Have a light in front of you. You don’t have to buy a fancy lighting kit (but that helps). Take a lamp and put it on a table or on your desk. Remove the shade if necessary to prevent shadows and give more direct light shining on you. I had a great set up in my basement where my husband folded the kids ping pong table and put a work light from the garage on top shinning on me. I used this for years.

Positioning your camera so the camera is at eye level is very important. You don’t want to talk up or down to your audience. I know some of my friends have computers with cameras on the bottom bear the keyboard which is incredibly awkward so play around with it so that you are looking into people’s eyes. Practice talking to a black screen and a green dot. Remember, as hard as it is, you want to look into the dot, not at your screen. Often, you won’t even have anyone on your screen, you’ll just hear them talking. Practice makes perfect with this and you really want to nail it the first tine out of the gate so do a set up and practice. If you can enlist a friend to help be on the other end and tell you how you look, that’s great too. Otherwise, just hit record and see how you did.

FREE PR

By being able to do a digital interview well, you are positioning yourself for landing free PR and huge exposure to potential clients and customers. Since COVID, I have done at least 10 digital television interviews and every host has been thrilled when they turn on Zoom and I’m well-lit, with a great backdrop and the camera at eye level. They’ve all commented on it. Invest a little time to learn how to do this right. It will help you impress and be invited to return.

Watch the video above for this week’s Free Publicity Friday PR Tip or read the full transcript below. If you want to chat about your PR and visibility, click on the box below or use this link >> Let’s Chat

Transcript

Hi everybody. It’s Christina Daves with this week’s Free Publicity Friday PR Tip. This week I want to talk about the digital interview. This is how most television interviews are taking place – is like this on a screen -so I really want you to be prepared.
I want you to have a good backdrop. You want to make sure that your windows are not behind you that they’re in front of you and that you’ve got a light directly shining on your face. And you don’t need high-tech lighting. You can take a lamp and take the lamp shade off. Make sure your camera level is like this so you’re looking like you’re talking to the person, not down to them or up to them like that. And you always want to be about, you want about 3 feet behind you. You don’t want to act like it’s a mug shot wall.

So really be prepared and be prepared that you might not be able to see the person on the the other side. You might just be looking into a green dot on your computer. So practice that a little bit. Practice hearing a question
and just being able to answer to anybody just pretend you’re talking to a friend. So those are some digital interview tips. If you like these tips and you’d like more on how to get media and exposure for your business, please join our PR Challenge at YourPRChallenge.com. It’s 10 days. It’s 10 minutes a day and through that we will get you massive visibility and media exposure for your business.

So I’ll see you in the Challenge and then I’ll see you in the media