Do You Have What’s Needed to Speak Up? Or Should You Sit This One Out?

A wise and tired schoolteacher once said, as her classroom of kids stuffed their crumpled worksheets into their bite-sized backpacks, “When you get home, be useful, not a pain, please.”

The same advice applies to whether you speak up or sit out a hot media debate. Make sure you have what it takes to be useful, not a pain.

Only Raise Your Hand if you Have Something to Say

Here’s how to decide whether you should speak up. It’s pretty simple.

Lots of people and companies out there have opinions — but not as many have an audience. So once we get the ear of a journalist, podcast host, or any media counterpart, the goal is to appear useful, not a pain, as the schoolteacher once said. 

If not, we risk losing trust in our relationships with media friendlies. For every bland comment or missed deadline, the more likely they are to stop listening to your point of view in the future, even if you have something completely mind-boggling to say.

How to Know if you Have Something to Say

So how do you know when you have the golden ticket to contribute?

You have a different POV to share

This means that other players in your space haven’t said what you want to say. Essentially, what you’re sharing is new in your industry or at least new to a reporter. An easy way in is through disagreement — maybe you don’t actually agree with your competitors or industry players around you. That’s a good way to get the media’s attention: “Hey there, Ms. Reporter, I actually don’t agree with my competitor…” 

On the other hand, you could agree with your competitor, so what’s something people aren’t talking about or actively ignoring? Sometimes, there’s reward in risk. Think about sharing a take that hasn’t been spoken about yet or might come off as taboo. 

But knowing whether your POV is actually different takes some homework. Before reaching out to the media, research the topic and see what competitors, analysts, and other spokespeople have said on the subject. If a handful of other people in your space have already made the same point to the same group of reporters, you’re not offering a POV, you’re parroting one.

New data or statistics that support a claim

New, relevant data is any news story’s best friend. It’s the best way to further validate or counter an existing narrative. For instance, reaching out to a reporter to say, “Actually, the data that we found while conducting a 400-person survey concludes that respondents felt X% more positively about the workplace agents…” 

But how do you get this data? It could come from your own product or usage data, such as adoption trends, growth metrics, customer behavior, or patterns your company observes through internal surveys. You can commission a formal study or use a third-party service to conduct a field study that speaks to a certain trend. You can also collect anecdotes from customers. 

The general rule of thumb is that you need enough in your arsenal to speak up. Don’t bring information that is repetitive, irrelevant, or ‘old news.’

The Payoff

The instinct to speak up is natural, but the discipline to sit out until you have something useful to say is part of reputation building. It signals that you’ll speak up when you have something to say, but you’re not there just to fill space.

The goal is to be useful and helpful in furthering a story, whether that’s validation or new information, not to be someone’s waste of time or pain. 

And the people who pass this test consistently aren’t just tolerated; they can become the first call. When a reporter is chasing a story or a podcast host is looking for a guest, they are looking for someone with the most credible, freshest take. Be that person, and you won’t need to fight for the ear you already have.