Accomplish Your Goals With The Right Message

What is your message.

Anytime you’re speaking to the news media you need to have a clear sense of what’s most important to you.

Your message you’re not simply there to be a reference librarian to just answer questions.

People have Google for that.

There’s Wikipedia.

If you’re speaking to the news media you need to have a clear sense of what is the message you want people to know.

If you’re making your own media focus on just one or two or three ideas in any one communication.

So for example in this video I’m not being interviewed by a reporter this is media I create and control on you to me but I’m just going to focus on messaging.

I’m not going to talk about soundbites you’re not going to go back to tips on how to look good on camera.

I’m just going to focus on messaging when you’re speaking to the news media.

I believe you should go into an interview with a strong sense of.

Here’s the topic.

Reporters will let us know what the topic is.

But now you get to figure out what is most important to you that you want the readers viewers listeners of this media outlet to get from you.

So when they are opening up their newspaper or clicking on a Web site or watching TV.

This is the part that you want them to see from you.

My recommendation have three ideas each idea.

Each message is something you should be able to say in 10 words or less.

You should be able to say the whole thing in 30 seconds or less well why three.

It’s because if you only have one message and you come back again and again and again in every answer to one message then it seems boring monotonous.

There’s not enough there.

If you try to do more than three.

In my experience it’s highly unlikely you’ll get more than three messages into any final interview even if it’s an edited.

It’s unlikely anyone will remember more than three messages.

Three is a number that just works.

It works in speeches it works in religions.

It works with a lot of symbolism in every aspect of life.

It’s easy for people to remember and it’s just enough to have a little variety not be boring.

But it doesn’t go over well.

A lot of times people say well you know I’ve just got too much stuff I want to share all my knowledge.

You’re not sharing knowledge if you’re just overwhelming.

People with lots and lots of data.

I hear this people so we’ll teach I don’t want to dumb it down.

I want to respect my audience and respect this journalist.

I want you to respect them too.

And a part of your way of respecting the audience and the journalist is by using your judgment you’re the expert on whatever it is you’re being interviewed on.

So it’s up to you to figure out everything you could say on this subject.

What’s most important.

What are people most need to know as Mark Twain and a lot of other famous writers have been credited with saying I’m sorry I wrote you a long letter.

I didn’t have time to write you a short letter.

It actually takes more time and judgment to narrow things down to your top three messages than to just tell people everything.

Here’s one way of thinking this messaging process.

If the London Times came to you and said real you write the first paragraph of this story any way you want what would you put in it your first three sentences what would you put it now they’re not going to do that but as a mental frame it’s very helpful to really figure out what’s most important.

If the BBC or France 24 came to you and said we’re going to let you run a free 30 second public service announcement commercial on this subject you can say anything you want.

What would it be.

I’m pretty sure you would figure out what your top three messages are what you could say that fits in 30 seconds.

Major news outlet comes to you and says you can only take the 30 minute 30 seconds and you say well unless I have five minutes I’m not going to take it.

I don’t think you would turn down the 30 second ad just because you insist on five minutes.

You would figure out a way of making it work.

So that’s my challenge to you now is you’ve got to think if some topic something you talk about in your real business your real career your real civic organization whatever you do think of a topic where reporters likely to want to interview you if the reason you’re here is just to prepare for your own social media creation.

And think of a topic whether it’s cooking muffins or whatever it is.

Think of a topic that you want to tell you people about and really focus focus on what those three messages can be.

I’m going to give you more tips in a moment on how to come up with these messages.