If you want people to talk about you or your company and they don’t, that’s one thing. It’s easy to make a story more compelling, to look at what’s happening from a different angle, see if there’s a business or societal trend to which it can be tied, make incremental gains in coverage until a buzz begins to build, no matter how slowly. There are still, thankfully, slow news days.

If you want people to talk about you or your company and they do talk about you but they don’t seem to say any of the things you think – based on what you’ve said to them – that they should be saying, that’s another thing. When a socio-political issue so clouds the coverage of a company that they can’t get their annual earnings onto the business pages (despite the fact that they’re a runaway success), you’ve got a problem. You’re not going to be allowed to tell your story until you’ve told the story the media, the public, your shareholders, your staff, and ultimately, if you’re really unlucky, the government wants you to tell.

When you have limited collateral with the media, you have to be even more careful about how you phrase what you say, and ever more precise in your messaging so you won’t end up wishing you’d phrased things a little differently. I should have done a media prep for myself so I had better, more appropriate supporting points for my key message about managing clients’ expectations for media coverage.

here’s something i often wonder about, and perhaps, with your blog called “no spin”, you have something to say about it: where does spin end and prudence begin? of course, there are obvious cases. but what made me ask this question are your words here:

“Naturally I said things I wish I hadn’t said – or said things I wished I’d phrased a little differently.”

in the (idealized, i know) world of no-spin, transparent social media – is that a problem?