I am a reality show fanatic and one of my favorites is Dancing with the Stars. This has been a great season with incredible talent. I’ m excited to watch the finale.
One particular contestant who interests me is Romeo. He is an amazing guy—definitely committed to making a difference. He plugged what he was doing on the show every chance he got. He did it so much that the host, Ron Bergeron, started joking about it. The first couple of times it was fine, but after a while even for me as a viewer it was; “ Enough already! You’ re-committed to children. You want to be a role model. We got it.”
This is an amazing lesson. Being over-promotional is a pitfall that many fall into. When we’re in media training we work on avoiding overkill. At the end of the day the media are looking for stories and value for their audiences, but you can overdo it if you’ re not careful. So when you’re being interviewed it’ s a good idea not to over-promote. It’ s better to let whoever is interviewing you promote you—it looks more credible than you constantly plugging yourself.
Of course you can put in a small plug at the end, but you want to find cool and creative ways to pitch your work and yourself. Your initial goal is to make people, bloggers, and the media aware of you and what you’ re doing. On that front you can hardly do too much. Once you snag the interview, however, be careful about how far you push yourself. Make sure there’ s a happy balance between promoting yourself and providing value to their readers and listeners.
To find out if you’ re being too promotional, watch the interviewer’ s face. If they have an expression of “ enough already” , then you want to stop. You never want that to happen, so practice interviewing with colleagues and friends. Give them a list of questions you anticipate your interviewer might ask, and after you’ ve prepared and rehearsed your answers, go for it. Tell your pretend-interviewer to watch you for pushing too hard. That way, when the interviews come (and they will if you’ ve done your footwork!) you’ ll be prepared and will dazzle them.
