BY T. Wilkins
13
9.Keep swearing to a minimum. Everyone knows you’re an adult and no one wants to hire a potty mouth.
10.Since my show is a show for and about small business owners, share your expertise. Educate. Don’t sell your product. Listeners will most likely buy from you if you establish yourself as the “go to” person in your field.
11.Low ratings mean you won’t be asked back to my show. One very important rule for coming on the show is that all guests have to help promote their segment by sending out e-mails, tweets etc. to their target audience. Unless you’re a household name then you’ll need all the publicity you can get. So it always puzzles me when guests (with low ratings) expect to get re-booked on my show. It tells me that doing the interview wasn’t important enough to promote yourself and that you (as a guest) expect the show to do it for you. To be clear, we promote all of our shows otherwise we’d have no listeners. But the point is each guest has a target audience they can market their services to by establishing themselves as an expert. So why wouldn’t you want to help the word out?
12.Finally, if a producer contacts you then promptly return their call/message within 48 hours. We’re all busy and most producers book up quite quickly weeks, even months in advance.
13.Don’t say or do anything that you’re likely to regret. I don’t edit my show and always recommend that my guests not say anything on the air they’re likely to regret later.
Here’s the bottom line. Small business owners don’t always have the advantage of a solid PR campaign to get the word out. So any opportunity to promote yourself for free should be taken seriously. No one wants to deal with a diva or an unprofessional person so treat a request for an interview as you would any other work related opportunity.
I've seen that face before
Making my television debut on The View from the Bay on Channel 7.
Getting booked on any media outlet is tough but getting booked on a popular tv show can be especially difficult but not impossible. Here's how I landed several spots on this top afternoon chat show (and sold a number of copies of my cookbook). Working at home has its advantages particularly if you're in the habit of watching daytime shows at the same time. One of my favorite shows at the time was the local chat show, The View from the Bay which ran for several years and featured hosts Spencer Christian, Lisa Quinn, Michael Finney. Getting on the show (in this instance anyway) was simple yet labor intensive. First I watched the show which proved beneficial since they were soliciting for guests at the time. Of course there was no guarantee that they would book me but still. So to improve my chances I manage to score a couple of free tickets to sit in the studio audience for a live taping of the show. This proved fortuitous since there was a meet and greet with the hosts after the show. And this is where a little chutzpah comes into play. I asked Spenser Christian if anyone from his office had contacted him about booking me on the show about my cookbook for single people. He turned to me and said no but felt it would make a great segment and gave me the name of the show's booker. I waited 24 hours before calling the booker mentioning that I was following up to see if my publicist had faxed over my bio and product info to her and that Spencer had suggested I contact her. After receiving confirmation I was told that I would receive a call or e-mail in about a month with a decision. Of course that turned into 60 days of waiting. After weeks of waiting for an answer I finally got one. Yes, they would like to book me on their Halloween show. And here's the result....
Next month-My debut