Marginalizing the Soundbite

By Eric M. Seidel, CEO

The Media Trainers, LLC

How many times have you heard the tired excuse, “They took me out of context”? Sometimes it’s true, but too many times it’s proven to be a lame claim that has no factual standing.

The real issue is delivering soundbites that both the media will pick up and use them the way you intended. That does take some practice and experience. The best way is to respond to questions is with positive, self-contained answers.

However, former presidential speech writer Peggy Noonan’s column in the February 26, 2011 issue of The Wall Street Journal has pointed out how the soundbite is being defeated by the Internet. While her specialty is politics, consider this paragraph from her column and how it might apply to messages you need to reach important audiences:

In the past quarter-century or so, the speech as a vehicle of sustained political argument was killed by television and radio. Rhetoric was reduced to the TV producer's 10-second soundbite, the correspondent's eight-second insert. The makers of speeches (even the ones capable of sustained argument) saw what was happening and promptly gave up. Why give your brain and soul to a serious, substantive statement when it will all be reduced to a snip of sound? They turned their speeches into soundbite after soundbite, applause line after applause line, and a great political tradition was traduced.

But the Internet is changing all that. It is restoring rhetoric as a force… I get links to full speeches every day in my inbox and you probably do too.

People…think it's all Facebook and Twitter now, but it's not. Not everything is fractured and in pieces, some things are becoming more whole. People hunger for serious, fleshed-out ideas about what is happening in our country.

The Internet is a two-edged sword, to be sure. You always need to be careful in what you put on it in order to protect your name (ID) and reputation. But it also liberates you to be your own editor, especially when you cannot afford to be reduced to a soundbite.

Hey Al: You Can Hide…But They’ll Find You!

By Eric M. Seidel, CEO

The Media Trainers®

For several years now, The Media Trainers® slogan has been “Anyone who talks about you…or your business…is media.”

Even before LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, et al, came on the scene, it was easy to come to that conclusion. We all leave impressions with others, whether through the media or through personal contact. Those impressions get repeated.

So, messages about you and your business that you communicate to employees, customers, prospects, friends, or family will be repeated. The Internet has only increased those opportunities many times over. Hence our conclusion that everyone is media.

With the addition of devices like PDA’s and camera-equipped cell phones, you may be able to run, but it’s unlikely you can hide. At least, not for long. These things are widely used and widely known and recognized. So, it comes as something of a surprise that the man often credited for “inventing the Internet” thought he could escape the inevitable.

The irony of former vice president Al Gore banning the media from a speech he made to 4,000 attendees at a wireless cell phone trade show is well documented by Sascha Segan in an online column at PCMag.com.

Traditional media may not have been in the room, but the crowd was rampant with bloggers and tweaters, and their messages were quickly picked up by the mainstream folks, as well.

Whether Gore’s ban was based on a long memory and revenge, as suggested by Segan, doesn’t seem to be as important as the fact that he apparently thought he could keep accredited journalists from getting the story, which was naïve, at best.

Your own relationships and today’s technology have combined to end any age of innocence. Just about anywhere you go, you’re surrounded by media.

It’s a fact too important to forget!