When you’re being interviewed, whether that’s on camera, on the phone or in person, sound bites make the difference between getting quoted in the news story and being left out. Unless you’re unusually witty, you should think up your tasty verbal morsels ahead of time and toss them into your interview at the appropriate moment.

A terrific sound bite grabs the ear and the mind. It sticks in people’s memory because it contains compressed meaning along with a smidgeon of surprise. A great sound bite is fun for the media and the general public to repeat. It spices up the news story or feature with delightful, unexpected flavor.

Here are seven techniques for constructing memorable sound bites.

1. Triples. Remember “Veni, vidi, vici” (“I came, I saw, I conquered”) from high school Latin? Or “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” from the Declaration of Independence? Many people do. That’s because the human mind likes threes. Make a list of keywords for your subject matter and look for catchy triplet combinations. For instance, if you’re a business startup guru, you could tell a reporter that you “help ordinary people get rich without working on Wall Street, inheriting wealth or marrying a millionaire.”

2. Tweaked cliches. 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. For example, if you’re an advocate of biofuels for automobiles, you could opine that “the new clean air regulations for cars are as clear as sludge.”

3. Clever mnemonic. Some schoolkids remember the structure of our solar system with a little ditty in which the first letter of each word corresponds to a planet: “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles.” Make up an interesting pattern like this for a well-known set of initials, such as “We tell our clients that in our firm, ‘CPA’ stands for ‘Court Prosperity Avidly.'”

4. Unexpected metaphors. Compare your quest, cause or issue to something familiar, using words that relate the abstraction to a specific, wry situation in real life. On NPR’s Marketplace show recently, I heard Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center say, “It’s as if Republicans and Democrats are planning a trip but they disagree over whether you should start the trip from Buenos Aires or from Greenland.” That’s much more luscious than simply “…start the trip from Point A or Point B” because the geographical disparity of Buenos Aires and Greenland takes a moment to register, then explodes pleasurably in the mind.

5. Contrast, conflict or paradox. Advertising tag lines often combine opposites or near-opposites in ironic, attention-getting ways, as in “Our food is fresh. Our customers are spoiled” (online grocer FreshDirect) or “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands” (M&M candy). You can do the same by brainstorming words and ideas for your theme, then looking for contraries like local/national, full/empty, funny/serious, up/down, etc., and building something catchy out of it.

6. Details. Review your case studies, client advice, bio and blog for details that can take on iconic significance. For you, the key detail might be your percentage of repeat customers, your documented accuracy rate, your carbon-neutral score – or something other than a number, like “The only thing left after the tornado destroyed our office was a teddy bear we used to keep in the waiting room to comfort our young patients.”

7. Rhymes. We normally associate corny verses with greeting cards or jump-rope chants. But Muhammed Ali is one public figure who used rhyming to get quoted, explaining his boxing strategy as “I outwit them and then I out-hit them.” You may need to grin as you deliver a rhymed sound bite, and the reporter or talk-show host may groan, yet chances are it’ll get passed along.

As Mark Twain (one of the most quoted authors ever) wrote, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” The effort to tweak a rough idea into a tight, bright arrangement of words is worthwhile, turning a so-so sound bite into a sensational one. Then enjoy your minutes in the limelight!

Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last (http://www.namedatlast.com) as well as the author of Publicity Tactics, 6 Steps to Free Publicity and the new Kindle ebook, The Sound Bite Workbook, which provides a step-by-step approach to creating sound bites: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005NCLN8I.

Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last (http://www.namedatlast.com) as well as the author of Publicity Tactics, 6 Steps to Free Publicity and the new Kindle ebook, The Sound Bite Workbook, which provides a step-by-step approach to creating sound bites: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005NCLN8I.

Author Bio: Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last (http://www.namedatlast.com) as well as the author of Publicity Tactics, 6 Steps to Free Publicity and the new Kindle ebook, The Sound Bite Workbook, which provides a step-by-step approach to creating sound bites: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005NCLN8I.

Category: Marketing
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