How (& Why) To Never Overpromise When It Comes to Interviews With Your Clients
A writer needs to talk to a real estate expert. You have one. It's the perfect fit right? Not always. Tips on making sure your source is the right source + the dangers of overpromising
Happy Friday, Top Tier Community!
Lots of exciting things coming up next week.
Last chance to sign up for our upcoming Top Tier Talk
Our upcoming Top Tier Talk will be held on Tuesday March 28th at 10 am PST/1 pm EST. We’ll be Zooming with you all for an hour straight and taking all your questions that came up during the month. This is free to join for all paid members. RSVP and enter any questions you want us to review ahead of time here. We’ll also take questions on the fly as they come up but will go in order focusing on the presubmitted ones first.
Here’s the link to sign up:
2 slots left for our next group workshop: Become a Journalist’s BFF: Networking and Relationship Management
Yes, we offer these as private sessions for agencies or individuals, but now we’re making them more accessible and affordable for freelance publicists and smaller agencies, too!
Here are the details:
What: Some publicists seem to have a transactional “wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am” approach to their work, but highly successful publicists know that building long-term relationships with journalists is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Learn how to meet new journalists, and discover best practices for staying in touch, following up, and creating meaningful relationships.
Format: 1-hour workshop via Zoom with Jill and Nicole includes:
45-minute formal presentation of our best relationship-building and management tips
Learn how to meet new journalists and develop a lucrative working relationship with them
Discover best practices for staying in touch
Learn the finer points of following up that will increase your response rate
Discover how to become a writer’s go-to source
Learn how to stand out when answering a writer’s call for sources (whether that’s on HARO, a FB group, Twitter, Substack etc) — there is definitely an art to this and we will walk you through our magic formula!
Discover how to avoid common writer pet peeves that may make someone want to pass on working with you again.
15 minutes for Q&A: Anything and everything is on the table for discussion here and you will walk away with your questions answered.
Opportunity to network with and learn from your colleagues
March 29th at 10:30 am PST/1:30 pm ET. Can’t make this date but interested? Email us and let us know. We may add a second date as well.
Pricing: $199 per person for annual Top Tier Paid Subscribers; $259 per person for Free Subscribers (prepayment is required to hold your slot)
(Note to free subscribers: The TTC annual subscription fee is $99 — so, upgrading would save you $60 on this workshop, PLUS you’d get access to ALL our paid content — including our vast archive of content — and monthly Top Tier Talks for just $39 more for the year.)
Questions? Ready to sign up? Reach out to us at info@toptierconsulting.net today!
Now onto this week’s topic:
How (and why) to never stretch your clients beyond their expertise when it comes to offering them up as sources
A writer is looking for a doctor as a source for a story. You have a doctor who is available. That means they’ll be a perfect fit for the story, right? Not necessarily.
A writer needs to speak to a real estate agent to talk about a specific trend happening within the home buying space. You rep a real estate agent. They are a shoe in for the article right? Not always.
A writer is sourcing for a veterinarian to talk about the latest craze in people owning baby sheep in urban areas (we made that up but Nicole did go viral recently for tweeting that her Buy Nothing Group was asking people to babysit a 2-week-old lamb they were fostering so you never know). You haven’t spoken to your vet before you committed them to this interview but they must know allllll about this trend and can speak about it right?
A writer needs a…. OK OK you got the drill!
Unfortunately, a common situation that we see occur between our industries is when publicists over promise on what their sources can deliver on. They’ll say a doctor can speak on a new study that came out, then once we do the interview their client admits, “That’s not my area of expertise” or “I’m not too familiar with this actually.” Someone says they have a party planner who can speak to a specific new trend in party planning but when we ask that source in an interview about the latest thing the cool kids are doing on TikTok, they haven’t heard of that… and so on and so on…
Many times we find that sources aren’t that knowledgable on the particular angle we’re writing about but will try to steer the interview into a new direction that showcases their expertise. While yes, they may know a lot about supplements to help with sleep, that won’t help us if our story is all around behavioral modifications you can make for a better night’s snooze.
What happens in these scenarios is that it:
A) Wastes your client’s time. They could very well end up doing a half hour phone interview and not having any of their quotes be used in the story. Sadly this happens and more often than we’d like to see it happen.
B) Leaves the writer in a pinch. Sourcing is a tedious process. And as writers, we’re juggling multiple stories at the same time. If we line up a source or two for one story, we move onto another phase of prepping for or writing a different article, waiting on the phone interview we’ve lined up for that first story with your client or for email answers to come back. If we do the interview and the expert we’ve planned on using isn’t really qualified to do the interview — and we don’t find that out until we’re in the middle of the interview — eek. Our due date is around the corner, it’s too late to find a replacement source and we’re panicking. And having to ask an editor for an extension is not a good look unless it’s something that ABSOLUTELY has to be done.
C) This is particularly a difficult situation when it involves email interviews. Sometimes a phoner in these situations can be partially salvaged where an experienced interviewer can recognize early on that a client isn’t well versed in this subject and can either cut a phoner short or find some sort of angle that will be in the story that they can still contribute on.
But when we’re waiting on email questions to come through and they are all completely off topic, that leaves us in a tricky spot and is pretty much a guarantee that your client won't be featured. Plus think of all the time your client spent writing up answers to these questions only to have them be tossed aside.
D) This makes a writer never want to work with your source again — no matter how much of an expert they may be on other subjects. You could have a business expert who would rock out interviews for so many articles a writer is writing for various publications. But if we did an interview with him that fell flat, we’re not going to want to chance have that happening again and will pass and move onto another source.
The good news? There are plenty of ways to prevent this from happening. To save yourself from these above situations, try these tips:
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Here’s a FREE POST to give you a taste of what we offer weekly (and our most popular to date): Our TOP Tips from 2022 (spoiler: they ALL still apply in 2023!)