Enforcing Consistency of Message
December 2006
by Edward J. Barks
Consistency of message counts for a lot, no matter whether your aim is to persuade, educate, or inform. Your message must be crystal clear and consistent over all your communications platforms—the media, your public presentations, and testimony before policymakers.
Some organizations bang their heads against the wall because they try to reinvent the wheel before every public appearance. However, message consistency done right actually facilitates your communications efforts.
The trick is to leverage your communications outreach by using media materials to strengthen presentations, utilizing speeches to bolster legislative testimony, and so forth. Let’s review some important leveraging benefits:
- Save time and avoid frustration: You can recycle materials to fit various situations.
- Improve your consistency of message: Leveraging helps enforce the discipline needed to structure a clear message.
- Put yourself ahead of the competition: Most organizations fail to grasp the benefits of leveraging. If you practice it, you win.
It does take some discipline. But there are no great mysteries to leveraging your communications endeavors. Here are some practical ways you can put leveraging to work for you.
Media outreach: Your organization crafts a variety of materials targeted to reporters and editors—news releases, statements, news advisories, backgrounder sheets, columns, op-eds, and the like. Use these existing resources when other opportunities arise to communicate with your public.
For example, when you deliver a presentation, bring along a handful of news releases or columns that you have published, and distribute them to your audience. It gives you ready-made handouts and augments your legitimacy.
When you testify before a legislative or regulatory panel, refer to op-eds you have written (and append them to your written testimony). Also, distribute positive news clips. These steps increase your influence.
Leveraging offers time saving benefits, too. You can easily cut and paste snippets from your backgrounder sheets, for instance, into your oral statement. Or you can exhibit successes you have had publishing op-eds and letters to the editor as part of your slide presentation.
Presentations and speeches: It doesn’t matter whether you work from a full text speech, an outline, or presentation software. You should have some type of prepared material that you can leverage for your dealings with the media and government officials.
An example: When cultivating a reporter for a story, put her on your distribution list so that she receives copies of all your speeches. This solidifies your position as a leader in your field.
When your post-presentation assessments indicate that you are hitting a home run with a particular talk, use it as the basis for your next round of legislative testimony. Sure, you will need to fine tune it for your audience of lawmakers, but using material you have already road tested gives you a head start.
Legislative and regulatory testimony: You may testify before Congress, a state regulatory body, or your city council. Here’s how to leverage your testimony. Distribute copies of your oral statement to reporters in attendance. Better yet, append it to the news release you issue to call attention to your appearance. Immediately after your testimony, e-mail or fax the material to key reporters who were unable to attend the hearing.
Don’t be shy about citing your testimony in speeches. This move not only gives you ready made message-driven content, it further establishes you as the authority in your subject area.
This is but a sampling of how leveraging can save time and enforce the message discipline so vital to any organization’s success. The important point is to find methods that work for you when you meet the media, deliver presentations, and address policymakers.
Ed Barks is a trainer, author, and speaker who teaches today's leaders
how to work with the media and how to deliver dynamic, message-packed
presentations. Ed, the President of Barks Communications, is the author of
The Truth About Public Speaking: The Three Keys to Great Presentations.
His firm also operates Barkscomm.com, the Internet's Communications Training
Resource, at http://www.barkscomm.com.
He can be reached at (540) 955-0600 or by e-mail.
© Edward J. Barks 2006
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