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The Q-and-A is a very fundamental part of any important announcement your company or organization is about to make. The press release is intended to focus on the few most key and critical points of your announcement. However, we’ve found that it’s also advisable to provide the media and other audiences with additional details to ensure your story is understood and accurately reported in the form of a Q-and-A. The Q-and-A goes a step further in anticipating and providing the answers to additional questions that specific audiences might ask, placing any spokesperson in a pro-active position versus suddenly finding themselves stumbling over their words.PROFIT’s ‘Fast Five’ Steps to Developing an Effective Q-and-A…- Brainstorm anticipated stakeholder questions. Consider gathering a group of people from your company or organization [i.e., HR, Sales & Marketing, Investor & Community Relations] to review the press release announcement and to help generate the questions each audience is likely to ask.
- Tailor your answers. Essentially, know your audiences up front and be prepared to craft answers tailored to meet their specific information needs.
- Repetition is good. Repeating the same concepts in different answers isn’t redundant; in fact, it can help increase key message retention.
- Keep it concise. Each answer should be concise enough that the person using the Q-and-A can read through it a few times and pick up the essence of the key issues.
- Tackle the tough ones. It’s tempting to remove the difficult and sensitive question…don’t. Make an effort to answer every single tough question on your list as honestly and openly as possible and if all else fails, know that the spokesperson can say, “We don’t have all of the information now, but we’ll get back to you as soon as we do.”
