Podcast sound bites: 14 ways for guests to be quotable

A sound bite is the one bite-sized piece of what you say that the person interviewing you wants to use. For TV and radio it is called a sound bite because they can hear your answer. In print it is a quote. Out of the paragraphs you say, they are often looking for just one answer, and you want it to be irresistible.

Do podcast guests really need sound bites?

Fair question. On a live morning show or a long conversational program you get to speak for a long time, and nobody is slicing and dicing your answers. But sound bites are the sentences inside those answers that make an answer pop. They get the host excited, get the host to react, and get you asked back. A lot of media trainers teach messaging and body language, then toss in one or two snappy lines. This is not about snappy. It is about irresistible answers.

Here is where it comes from. When I was a TV producer and we interviewed someone, I would take the recording to an edit room, and the editor and I would listen together. We knew a great sound bite when we heard it. As soon as the person said something great, we said "that's it" and stopped looking. Two lessons. One, get some of your best answers in early, especially when the interview is recorded. They may only use what you say early. Print reporters sometimes use what you say at the end. Two, learn what we were listening for. I boiled it down to 14 techniques. There are more, but the rest are harder to create. For a cliche-focused look, see cliches as sound bites.

What are the 14 sound bite techniques?

1. Absolutes. The media likes people who are not wishy-washy. "We will do everything we need to do to get the job done." What absolute can you write for your topic?
2. Facts. "Forty-four percent of the people we talked to said this." "The event is on April 12th." Facts get you quoted, and they make the interviewer's life easier.
3. Examples. Journalists love them because they solidify your point. Keep stories short, because a long one can take up the whole interview. A school official can say "our kids are great," or can say they rank in the top percentile of the country in volunteerism.
4. Action words. We hear it for resumes, but it works in interviews. "The casual restaurant segment has been squeezed." Squeezed, moved, shaken, pushed.
5. Shocking answers. "You can eat fast food and lose 20 pounds." There are likely things you already tell clients that make their eyebrows go up. Decide how shocking you want to be.
6. Predictions. "Mark my words, a year from now this company will be out of business." They take the heat off the host, but you have to be comfortable owning them.
7. Emotion. Shame, struggle, gratitude. "We were really grateful when we were able to get this money in the budget. It helped the kids." Ask how to add some emotion to one of your answers. (See how to use emotion in a media interview.)
8. Conflict. When I interviewed for a TV job, I was asked to define drama and gave a long-winded answer. The answer was one word: conflict. The media loves wars, debates and feuds. For most of my clients the answer is not an attack but something like "the old way of doing things is broken."
9. Cliches. We learned in seventh grade never to use them, yet journalists cannot stop quoting them. You do not have to say "a penny saved." Just attach a cliche to the answer you were already going to give: "the bottom line is..." or "at the end of the day..."
10. The triple play. People love threes. Blood, sweat and tears. "This is something we want to do, need to do and should be doing."
11. Rhetorical questions. You ask your own question and answer it. "Is this the perfect plan for America? It is, and I will tell you why." They often leave the question in.
12. Analogies. "The system is being held together by Band-Aids and needs major surgery." A comparison sticks.
13. Humor. It will get you quoted, but techniques cut both ways. If in doubt, leave it out.
14. Pop culture references. "A perfect storm." "Elvis has left the building." They make a story sound more relevant.

Some of these do double duty, like Band-Aids, which is both an analogy and a cliche. You only need to hit one, but hitting more is better.

How do you find them in the real world?

Go online or open a newspaper and find an article from today with somebody being quoted. Look for full answers, not single words in quotation marks. Compare them against the 14 techniques. You will find many of them match. Once you can see these, you cannot unsee them on the evening news, on the radio and in print, and you will start to spot them in everything you read.

How do you write your own?

1. Print the list and put it next to you.
2. Write five to ten sound bites using different techniques, in five to seven minutes. Pull from the answers you wrote in your message grid. Attach "the bottom line is" to one. Make a rhetorical question out of another. For the grid, see what to say on a podcast as a guest.
3. Accept that many will be bad. When I write mine, the first few are not great, then I hit some gems. I only use the ones I like. Some are silly and I would never use them.
4. Use the rule: if in doubt, leave it out. Ask yourself, would I really say this in an interview? If not, drop it.
5. Read them out loud and record yourself. Do not worry about memorizing or where to look. You want to hear the sound bites come out of your own mouth, step out of your body and decide which ones you like and which ones you would use in a real interview.

Then take the bonus step. Give a couple of answers, either with a friend or using a sheet of questions, and practice a three part answer that weaves in one or maybe two of your sound bites. Play it back and watch yourself succeed. Do not try to cram in six. One well-placed line beats five forced ones.

Where does this fit?

Messaging comes first, then sound bites inside it, then handling questions. The result is an answer that has a little from each column and one line that is hard to forget. When you are ready to make sure that line leads somewhere, see how to get business from podcast appearances.

Jess Todtfeld, CSP, Guinness World Record holder, former ABC/NBC/Fox producer, and 20-year executive communication coach.