“Think outside the box!” That’s been the motto of modern business and the plea of post-modern pop-culture. But as we learned at this month’s TEN gathering, the key to giving a solid media interview is keeping it inside the box.

Social media has fast-forwarded the traditional 24-hour news cycle into real-time. News is near instantaneous and stories get updated throughout the day. This means that theoretically, you have multiple opportunities to influence what’s being said.

So how can you do this? Develop relationships with media professionals—writers, editors, reporters. Use social media tools to engage them on a regular basis. Once they come to know you as an expert, you’ll be on the top of their mind as a potential source. When a story breaks, they’ll have someone to go to immediately.

The better your relationships with media professionals in your community, the more opportunity you’ll have to control what is being said.

So, you’ve established a good rapport with a reporter, and they’ve asked you to do an interview. How do you prepare? By keeping in mind the power of three and using a little box.

When preparing for the interview, organize your thoughts around three points:

1) Context: provide the background so that people know where you’re coming from

2) Action: three simple and straightforward key messages

3) Vision: the idea or thought or emotion that you want to leave people with

For example, here’s what that might look like for a representative from a downtown clean-up program:

1) Context: We feel that our downtown is a mess, and we’re concerned about it.

2) Action:

• We’re going to pick up three pieces of garbage a day, and we want everyone else to do the same.
• If this happens, we could remove three garbage bins worth of garbage from our streets each day!
• Clean downtowns are safer; they increase quality of life, and are better for tourism.

3) Vision: “We have the cleanest downtown in Canada.”

Now, draw a square around your three points; they are your box, what you will present to the media. Your goal during the interview is to keep the conversation about the topics in your box. Soon, you’ll find that reporters will come to you more often because you present such a strong story—one that practically writes itself.

Take advantage of today’s instantaneous news cycle by developing relationships with the people writing the stories; become known as an expert that they can source when a story breaks. If you present your story in a neatly packaged box, you’ll increase the chances of watching it take-off successfully.

Learn more about TEN.

Discussion at this month’s TEN gathering focused on a topic familiar to many business owners, especially to those whose businesses have experienced significant growth in a short period of time: the identity crisis.

Here’s the situation: if your company has grown quickly through the addition of multiple products or services, and each one targets a distinct audience, should you:

Create multiple brands for each product and service?

or

Operate with one brand that encompasses all aspects of your business?

With a brand for each product or service, you might be able to speak more directly to each of your target audiences, but with one all-encompassing brand, you have the opportunity to carry more weight in the marketplace and take advantage of cross-promotional opportunities.

Realistically, the arguments for and against each option varies greatly depending on your product mix, audience segments, and current and desired position in the market place. But two important points emerged from the TEN discussion:

1. An identity crisis—not knowing who you are as a company—is typically a symptom of not knowing how you are perceived by your clients and target audience(s).
2. An identity crisis is also a symptom of not clearly knowing where you want to be in the future.

Business owners that find themselves in the midst of an identity crisis should pause, and take a step back to re-evaluate their business. Take a brief time-out to reset the bricks and mortar so that your business has the support to continue growing in a way that is both manageable and profitable.

During this pause, inform yourself:

• Find out what your audience thinks of you, how they find you, and what they really need from you. (You might be surprised to find that you’re over-valuing your current brand.)
• Think about your goals as a company; where do you want to be in five years, ten years? (Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.)

Once you’ve established a plan for where you want to take your business, and armed yourself with accurate knowledge about how your business is perceived in the marketplace, you will be able to make an informed decision about which direction to take your brand(s).

I recently shared my ideas on the concept of confidence accumulation and its importance to cultivating referrals to some of my peers at a TEN luncheon.

We know that referrals are one of the most powerful drivers of business development (marketing giant Nike says that the vast majority of its business is from referrals). We also know that the science behind promoting good referrals involves creating a good experience, and to create a good experience you need to manage your touch points—not all your touch points though, only those that are important to your target market.

But how exactly do positive experiences at relevant touch points translate into referrals? Why is it that 100 good touch points can be ruined by 1 mediocre one?

One way to think about referrals is through the concept of accumulation.

In order for potential clients to decide to do business with you, to actually reach into their pockets and pull out their wallets, they need to feel confident that what they’re going to receive in exchange for their money is of equal value. There needs to be a certain level of confidence on their part, in your product or service. What’s more, that level of required confidence varies depending on the product or service. Common commodities like toothpaste or shampoo have a lower threshold of confidence that must be reached than, say, consulting services or a more significant product like a car or home.

For someone to refer your company, an accumulation of confidence also needs to occur—and perhaps even more so, because a referral reflects back on the person who gave it.

Here’s the connection: each touch point either adds to or detracts from that confidence.

This is why managing each touch point is so crucial, and also why some touch points should be weighted heavier than others. (How do you know which touch points to focus on? Survey your customers.)

For instance, a web-savvy consumer checks out a company’s website (one of his highly valued touch points) before going to the store to purchase something. If the website is terrible, he may not even go into the store because the amount of confidence lost in his interaction with this crucial touch point could be too much to recover.

On the other hand, another consumer might place more value in the appearance and manner of the company’s staff, and not care at all about the website.

The point is, think of your company’s touch points, think about the ones that matter most to your target, and then figure out how to make them confidence builders, not confidence detractors. It’s also important to make sure there aren’t any inconsistencies between your touch points, because inconsistency is one of the most detrimental factors to the accumulation of confidence.

People always think that good customer service is enough to generate referrals. But what does that mean exactly? Responsiveness? Expertise? Look and feel? In fact, someone’s willingness to refer your business is based on an accumulation of confidence over multiple touch points.

Sometimes our best ideas grow from a spontaneous conversation with a friend or colleague. Little nuggets of wisdom often emerge from something as innocuous as a morning chat over a cappuccino (my rationale for frequent coffee shop visits). Grand ideas are often conjured in the middle of a golf game (and forgotten when the beer cart comes around for the third time).

Unfortunately, Time never graces most of us with the opportunity to pursue those great thoughts, and so they get lost in the land of abandoned ideas.

To me, this is a tragedy because some of my greatest ideas have sprung from those times that I took a step outside the day-to-day chaos to think about things from a different perspective. (The idea for Incite came to Ted and me in a theoretical discussion about business during a hike around a lake.)

What’s more, there’s something to be said about the excitement of a great discussion. There’s an energy that flows when colleagues share ideas and have the freedom to discuss them openly—it’s truly an inspiring experience.

Lately, I’ve noticed that some of the moments I value the most are those time-outs for high-level thinking, those moments that I experienced the excitement of fellow (great) minds sharing ideas. I value those moments because each time I feel like I come out equipped with the power to navigate the world of business.

Out of a desire to set more time aside to think and share ideas with colleagues, out of a desire to experience that excitement as people discuss strategies to navigate the scene, a group of leaders in the Edmonton marketing industry recently got together to form TEN.

TEN is a group of marketing industry professionals who will meet ten times annually, and each of the ten members will present on a topic of choice to generate discussion and ideas. The goal is that TEN will be used as a strategic tool to stay ahead of the curve on marketing trends and ideas. By formally setting aside time, members will give themselves the chance to connect with other industry leaders as they navigate business issues and opportunities.

TEN recently had its first idea-sharing session, and it was a great success. One of our goals is to create a series of short blogs or articles about an idea that comes out of the group’s discussions, so that fewer ideas are lost in the shuffle of day-to-day business.

Groups like TEN are a great opportunity for people within or across industries to take time out to connect and have a look at business from a different perspective. It’s something most of us would like to do more often, and setting up a formal group for regular gatherings is the perfect way to make sure that happens.