Okay, you've got your messages, you've practiced those. You've got some techniques for answering questions. But timeout a minute, we focused on what we need. We haven't really focused on what reporters need. Reporters need quotes, if it's any kind of a tech story, they need sound bites bites out of your sound, if it's any kind of a TV, video, radio audio broadcast. So it's not enough to simply have messages, we have to package our messages with the sound bites.

Now, sound bites is a big, it's a big mystery to a lot of people. It's not that mysterious. There are 10 basic categories that all sound bites come from, I want to give you just the top three, we don't have time for all the other stuff. But there are three easy ways of turning your messages into sound bites and remember, what are reporters trying to do? They're trying to make the ideas in this story more understandable to their audience, and more memorable. That's all They're trying to do generally sure their bias as reporters have.

But the number one bias most reporters have anything that's interesting enough to get other people to watch it, pass it on, click on it, share it. That's their number one bias. So you've got your messages written down. That's great, but messages can be bland, boring, straightforward, factual, linear. sound bites have to have a little more pizzazz. What are the elements that make pizzazz for one emotion?

Simply say how you feel about each one of your message points. If you're upset, frustrated, angry, incredibly happy. any emotion doesn't matter what the emotion is. Reporters can't write or talk about their own emotions in the story, but they love quoting you talking about your emotions. So one of the easiest ways to ever get quoted Is to express emotion, outrage, worried, concerned, use these emotion filled words. When talking about your message points in you increase the odds it will be quoted, the second easiest way to be quoted, I absolutely guarantee you this is an easy way to get quoted.

And it is to use absolutes. If you use the word absolute always must never. It brings clarity to the subject, and it greatly increases the odds that reporters will want to quote you on that. So look at your messages again, and see if you can some happen always must never have to you've got to absolutely essential anytime you can put an absolute into your answer. It makes it more quotable. Some more attractive soundbite you increase the odds of being quoted why Else is a really easy way to be quoted rhetorical questions, just put your message and a question mark at the end.

It creates a little variety and makes it much, much easier. So those are the three easiest ones. I want you to focus on that. Now there's some soundbites, you have to be careful of humor is really dangerous, because if you are attacking somebody, even attacking yourself, there's a good chance it will be quoted. So I would avoid the humor. And I would also avoid attacks unless you specifically mean to attack someone.

Now, if you're a politician running against an incumbent, you're going to have to attack the incumbent in all likelihood. Be very careful with the text though. Because you can be positive on message all day long. And then say something like, Well, sure, we were slow to realize the severity of the recession, but once we did we bump up and then you're positive for the next 10 minutes. Guess what the only sound bite well They're, we were slow to react to the severity of the recession. I'm saying I'm slow.

That's an attack. I attacked myself. So you got to be very careful about attacks. Don't ever attack anything and immediate interview unless you are at salute the 100% certain you don't mind a quote, just around those words. By the way, there's a soundbite I used to absolute. So this is your homework.

Let's focus on the easy soundbite. Since we don't have a lot of time, come up with an emotion and absolute and a rhetorical question soundbite for each one of your three messages. So that's a total of three sound bites for each message point. You should have a total of nine sound bites. Spend a few minutes right now doing it realize you want to be clever. You want to be creative.

It's almost like paint by number. Do it now.