Perceived endorsement Firstly, for some strange reason, people tend to believe what journalists say.  Just think about it ... if a Labour politician says the current coalition won’t last, then we dismiss it as spin.  But if a political editor says so, we think they’ve got the inside track.  So the first reason to agree to an interview is that if a journalist quotes you in an article or on TV, people will believe them – giving you extremely valuable editorial coverage.  As your PR agency will tell you: editorial coverage is generally thought to have four times the value of advertising, so a good interview is a great free advert for your company or product. Become an instant expert The second reason is that being interviewed turns you into an instant expert in your field (if you do well of course!)  And I’ll let you into a secret, journalists are generally pretty lazy, so if they’re doing an article or item on say travel chaos, or nutrition, or the environment, and they know you’ll give a good quote, they won’t bother to find someone else, they’ll come straight to you. That’s why you see the same old faces on the television over and over again.  Of course, this does mean that you might spend a lot of time on the phone to journalists or in front of a microphone, but it also raises your profile, and that of your business. Which can only be good news. You ARE the expert The third reason is that you will probably know more than the interviewer so they’re not going to ask you any question you can’t really answer - as long as you follow my top tips to stop your grilling turning into a roasting.   The three most important keys to a successful interview are: be prepared, be engaging and be passionate. Imagine you’re in the pub with your friends.   They’re asking you about whatever it is you’re being interviewed about. Unless you’re facing a Paxman or a Humphreys – or you’re being interviewed because you’ve done something seriously wrong – then those are the kind of questions you’re likely to face.  So it’s pretty easy to prepare your basic answers – and the key messages you want to get across - in advance. But dull and dry statistics and lots of jargon just won’t do.  You need to be engaging.  You need to draw the interviewer in.  The way to do this is by personalising your answers.  Use interesting stories which people can relate to – preferably ones from your own life.  When an executive from a major phone company was being interviewed about a new device with  a sat nav, he talked about how much his wife would love it – because she couldn’t even find her way out of a car park.  It struck a chord, so we remember him and what he had to say. The most important thing of all, be passionate and be enthusiastic.  After all, why on earth should anyone care what you’ve got to say if you don’t appear to? Contributed by Roughhouse Media, a PotionPR media training partner