How does an organization prepare its experts for media interviews?

Tampa Bay Water has a number of experts who can explain how the organization builds infrastructure, constantly tests water quality, and guards against potential sources of contamination as it provides quality water to local cities and counties.

While the experts know technical information, many had not had the opportunity to talk with the news media or be a part of internal videos. So how does an organization prepare its experts to do well in an interview?

B2 worked closely with Brandon Moore, APR, public communications manager at Tampa Bay Water, to create a media training curriculum for 12 potential spokespersons from around the organization.

B2 started with a group media training session via Zoom that went through a discussion of the media landscape, the keys to effective messaging (including B2’s “Three Big Rules” for media interviews) and practice in putting complicated or industry-specific terms and ideas into more accessible sound bites.

Then, over the next two weeks, each of the 12 participants did an individual media training session with B2. The individual session provided spokespersons with more focused training on how to discuss topics related to their expertise, followed by a mock TV interview with on-the-spot feedback.

B2's media training sessions prepared Tampa Bay Water’s directors and managers to effectively serve as spokespeople, demonstrate their subject matter expertise and highlight the organization’s benefit to the community.

The trainings also taught the spokespersons how to use their presence, body language and responses to convey their deep knowledge and high level of skill in their field. Confident spokespersons can effectively complete media interviews, will be engaging on internally produced videos and can be counted on to deliver compelling presentations.