How to create scrumptious sound bites

To boost your chances of actually getting air time or column inches from what you say during the interview spend time beforehand creating a set of sound bites. These delicious word morsels are fun to hear or read and irresistible for the media to share.

Here are six ideas for sound bites:

1. Triples

You may have noticed that a number of jokes begin with “a priest, a minister, and a rabbi …” That’s because our minds like triples. It’s why most people remember “blood, sweat, and tears” from Winston Churchill’s famous speech in which he said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

Make a list of keywords for your subject matter and look for catchy combinations of threes. For example, if you’re a personal trainer, you could tell a reporter that you “help out-of-shape people get fit without pain, tedium, or humiliation.”

2. Tweaked clichés

Everyone loves an unexpected version of a familiar saying. Look up your keywords at www.westegg.com/cliche or www.clichesite.com and then start twisting what you find.