Before you write a single word of your speech, you need to step back for a moment and really think of what your goals are. What do you want to have happen after this speech after this press conference? Now, unless you are such a huge, huge newsmaker, and you really think your entire press conference, because it's going to be carried live, you have to think in terms of edited stories, what messages of yours we'll get into the final news coverage tonight on TV, on radio, on prominent websites and newspapers and their websites. So you've got to think about the final outcome, what messages of yours will get communicated to the audiences in the media, and what quotes and soundbites it's a little bit different than how you would prepare for a normal speech. So because of that, I'm going to walk you through all the messaging process that you've got to go through in preparing for any media parents.

The differences you have to package it in a speech. Now when I say a speech, that doesn't mean it's going to be 20 minutes long or that you're walking around and commanding the stage. If you're inviting the news media, and you're expecting TV, you do need generally unless you're in a news plant or a water, lake or a river and you're showing pollution typically it's best to stand in one spot, so that the microphones can be in one place. The cameras can be aimed at one spot, and it's simply easy to capture what you're saying doesn't mean you need to stand behind a gigantic lectern. A lower table is perfectly fine. So you can be seen as gesturing, but don't prepare some big long speech.

I think you should be able to do pretty much everything you need to do in about three minutes. It's more than enough time to introduce what's going on to really hit your message points to sprinkle sound bites throughout. And then of course take questions at some level. Speaking at a press conference seems like a much bigger deal than just a little interview with one reporter. But another level, it's exactly the same thing. It's still about, you have a message on a topic.

You've gotten the news media interested. And now it's a game about how you can get the content you want the messages you want, the sound bites you want in to the story. So don't lose sight of really focusing on what our goals are. So your first bit of homework, write down what your messages are, what are you really trying to accomplish? What do you want people to do? And what are the messages that are going to drive them to your actions write that down now.