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Content Marketing Requires Message Mapping

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In a high-level discussion with a colleague recently, we surmised there are three buckets in which we play in the social media world:

  • App developers
  • Big data masters
  • Content marketers

 

 

Although these three seem siloed; in fact, they’re not. The common thread is content marketing, where I play.

  • Everyone expecting to deliver a successful app to the space requires spot-on messaging to enhance content.
  • Anyone dissecting analytics and big data for marketers requires spot-on messaging to deliver the analysis for use in content marketing.
  • Anyone executing content marketing requires message mapping to deliver spot-on messaging.

What is Message Mapping?

There still seems to be great confusion about when to use a message map or if a mind map will suffice. I’d like to shed more light on this topic and help business owners understand the importance of each.

This is a core public relations tool used at the start of any strategic campaign and also prior to launch of a business. A message mapping exercise can be executed any time, actually. If a leadership team is interested in tweaking and perfecting messaging to launch new products or services, or complete a merger or acquisition, then a message map comes into play. Sales teams can even use message maps, as well.

When you develop a message map, a three-hour session with an integrated leadership team is drilled down to a messaging platform that becomes a creative suite of sound bites. Everyone likes to call it the elevator speech. It is and it’s so much more.

Message maps allow the encapsulation of a story about a company’s history, its products, its services, its people/founders, its competitors, its pricing, and industry all within one map that looks like a hub with quadrants and sub-sections.

When questions are asked of an executive, the message map provides all the prompts for the answer and then some. I’ve known executives to minimize the map and keep it in their wallet for easy reference. Nowadays, it’s easier to pull it up via mobile device.

As a content marketer, I recognize how critical a message map is to the success of any social media marketing campaign. I prefer to use a message map or messaging platform to draft social media posts for Twitter and Facebook. I prefer to reference a message map to ensure that approved language is added to corporate blog posts, too.

When there isn’t a message map, there is no unified voice. Think about that. Most of my clients that are smaller don’t want to invest in message mapping exercises. When they don’t, there is no approved corporate content to communicate externally. Messages become a tangled web and the team can become confused how to communicate and best portray the company.

For anyone starting or dabbling in social media marketing, I encourage this exercise. The outcome provides a foundation to build upon as your company grows. It is a critical component to the success of your positioning and the strength of your brand.

Lastly, a message map is NOT a mind map. From what I understand, mind maps allow for the tracking of tasks, actions and future programs via in-depth schematic like a roadway. Still confused? Ask me; ready to shed more light any time.

Message Mapping Revisited

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If I was an analytics girl, I’d be all over this topic like icing on cake. Alas, I’m not and that’s why it’s taken me so long to return to this highly popular subject.

(Here’s a quick story about what nudged me…I was at a corporate marketing meeting on a recent January Monday and introduced myself. Later that day a man I never met approached me to say my name had sounded familiar, and sure enough, he checked his bookmarks and noted he’d used this for his training session. How ridiculously cool is that?)

I digress.

Message mapping is something I do and get hired for. I lend my 27 years of core public relations blended with marketing to develop a company’s story. Not the type of storytelling story marketers are used to uncovering, but the factual, media type stories for delivery to all external audiences required by the PR team.

Messaging, regardless of whether you use a map format, is the single-most critical strategy for all companies in this post-social media era. (Heck, it was even the single most, blah, blah when social media was a big trend.) Without approved messaging for spokespeople to deliver to external audiences, the PR and communications teams cannot amplify the brand, position thought leaders, promote areas of excellence, and the like.

It’s never too late to start a exercise because core facts about a company don’t change yet outside influences do adjust the story. A formal messaging process ought to happen:

>>Every two years with the executive team

>>Every year with the communications team

>>Whenever a launch, business decision, acquisition, etc. changes the core messaging platform

 

Step One to Create Message Maps

In the beginning, I’m not concerned with how the message will be delivered or on which channel, I’m only interested in what we’re going to say. The “to whom” isn’t even a requirement at first; we uncover the basics and cascade from there.  Here’s how I approach message mapping:

>>Gather executives from the C-suite or other high-level positions in a room.

>>No advance prep required, but ask for a three-hour commitment.

>>For those you really need to focus, ask for undivided attention.

>>Facilitator (someone like me) from outside company begins the open-ended questioning about the company.

>>Describe your company; what do you do? For whom, when, how, how much, competition, industry, accolades, staff, etc.

>>Invariably, no executive says the same thing; everyone has a different descriptor or thought about the company.

>>The facilitator’s role is to capture all the words on sticky notes and come up with a draft messaging platform.

>>The draft messages are bucketized by category with statements under each.

>>Upon that organization, the header/descriptor of the category is simplified for all audiences.

>>Clients/internal teams approve the messages in a Word document; consensus is critical in some fashion.

Once messages are approved internally, a map can be used to capture all the messages on one page. I use PowerPoint with a home-base message square in the middle. Circling the center message are four-to-five categories that describe the company. Within those second-tier messages are bulleted lists to describe the company further.

The facilitator doesn’t need to have industry experience; in fact, it’s often better if the session leader isn’t in the know about the company. That way she can ask the open-ended questions and it’s more acceptable from an outsider. The trick is to hire an engaged facilitator who can get those who don’t wish to speak to speak.

More on this topic will appear about creating maps specific to business units and sales and how thought leaders can use message maps to advantage. What experience do you have with , message maps, of other tools you prefer to capture the corporate message?

 

 

How to Message Map

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Many people have been asking for more on this topic. I introduced message mapping , and as as result featured the complementary mind mapping via my new colleague Roy Grubb in Hong Kong . Roy was kind enough to share his mind mapping expertise at The   , my new blog targeting all things biz for small-to-medium businesses. (Stop on by there when you get a chance, would you?)

Yesterday, I facilitated a message mapping session, and I’ve been doing a bunch of them lately. I’ve done these for solo firms up to companies with thousands of employees.  A primary takeaway here is “size doesn’t matter;” all companies need message mapping, a messaging framework, messaging architecture, or whatever you name it.

What does matter is what a company is saying to its audiences. Today, it’s more critical than ever to ensure core messages are up to snuff because consumers, as we know, are in the drivers’ seats in this era of social CRM and social media marketing. Message mapping is your company’s song sheet consisting of the elevator pitch (everyone uses that and knows what that means).

Marketers who’ve never experienced my message mapping are unclear how the two exercises differ and why it’s necessary to “do the same thing twice.” I’ve had various heated discussions about why public relations messaging differs from the very internal marketing exercise with which many companies are more familiar. While marketers explore the nuance associated with brand, mission, vision, values, and storytelling, too, my work in public relations taps this with enhancements and extends it to the public sector.

What I glean from executives around a boardroom table are sound bites and simple descriptors to take the company outside to key audiences. These messages when approved are suitable for stakeholders, influencers, consumers, employees, the sales team, media, and others. While I said this messaging is more externally focused, we’ve had message maps done for sales teams and employee communications, too.

How to Message Map

By: Soulati Media, Inc.

Here is how works to facilitate and execute message mapping:

  • I develop a list of open-ended questions oriented to all aspects of a company’s operations, philosophy, business goals, competition, position in the marketplace, valuation, services, products, size, leadership, history, and so much more. This basic list of questions rarely changes.
  • What does change are the answers I get from around the table. Invariably, no one on the leadership team answers my questions the same way – everyone has their own idea, and this exercise builds consensus among executives who need to agree on the best way to describe their company.
  • It takes about three hours to get through the questions, and it’s intense. As a facilitator, I use large sticky notes and write all over them and affix them to the wall. As the session progresses, more copy gets added, we re-visit what’s been said, and sometimes a sound bite or two come out of the session.
  • During the experience, I listen intently. The juicy tidbits come directly from the horses’ mouths. Often, the company spokespeople have so many thoughts circling their brains, this exercise provides a needed release for ideation. What frequently comes is a tagline or domain name. I also can cull key word, obviously, the beginnings of website copy, and pounds of fruit to help anchor a business’s story.
  • All the content is typed into Word and bucketized by collection of theme. Once I compile the content under a header, I try and write a descriptor for that grouping of content so it all cascades.
  • A first draft of messages can take two weeks or more to develop. Like any intensive writing project, these messages do not come easy; it’s serious business. Once in the hands of the leadership team and the extended team who finally get to see what this is all about, all bets are off. This is where the work is; trying to garner consensus among 10+ people who each have a favorite word or disagree about how to describe a service offering, for example.
  • With edits from the company, various rewrites occur until everyone is comfortable. Then I put the approved copy into an actual map. I learned to use a PowerPoint template created 10 years ago; it works for me, and it also works for the companies I do it for. Other folks may have different systems, and that’s all fine and dandy. Once spokespeople understand and work with final map (always a work in progress), it becomes a handy cheat sheet for designated front-line executives to use.
  • Once the message map is approved, then I often do some training and role playing to ensure people are comfortable with the content, the messages and how to navigate the page.

In the past, I’ve had entire sales teams use my message maps to sell with, and executives have minimized these maps down to pocket size, laminated them and used them for interviews with media. The good news is message maps are working documents; nothing is set in stone, and it changes as the company grows.

Essentially, the main objective for a message map is to tell the company story. The messages on the map are meant to be thought starters and reminders for leadership about what to share and how to say it. It’s up to the spokespeople to add the “plus one” tidbit. (If you’ve ever had media training back in the day, the equation “answer + one” implies a core message with a brief additional statement.)

What form of messaging do you use? Please share!

Best-Kept Secrets: Wikis

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The topics for digestion this week have been mind mapping, message mapping and now information mapping. A post I wrote “Mind Mapping is NOT Message Mapping” attracted Roy Grubb in Hong Kong. He, intrigued, asked to publish my piece on his wiki, called WikIT. Appreciatively, I said, “Uh, let me think… YES!” 

Roy launched a management consultancy, G&A Management Consultants, in Hong Kong in 1981. With a background in information systems, Roy is now entrenched in visually oriented information/knowledge management and project managed the development of software, such as 3D Topicscape.

As I’m always seeking to push the boundaries of my mind and expand my network, I eagerly invited Roy to answer a few questions, and he graciously agreed:

 In Hong Kong, has social media taken off in your line of work?

My activities are global, rather than locally focused, and I don’t read Chinese so it’s hard to state with certainty.  Hong Kong people are generally well up with the use of technology and its influence in society.  There are plenty of HK-based Twitter accounts and blogs, I know, but I only look at those in English.

What is Topicscape?

This has its roots in mind mapping or concept mapping, because I’ve been using these for 30+ years and found them invaluable in business, organizing my reference sources and reading files, planning and thinking.  The Topicscape story is great background.

How did WikIT  come to pass?

The main purpose of WikIT is to spread the word about information mapping (the term I use to cover all visual methods where items are connected in a map according to how they are related, including message mapping).

I have long replied to people’s questions on Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs, but those replies are mostly ephemeral–they may stick around forever in reality, but they don’t much get an airing after their first appearance–so I decided to start a site where I could publish the answers, my opinions, and spark others to respond. 

I could have done this with a blog, but felt with people accustomed to Wikipedia, a wiki would carry more of a sense of being a solid and reputable reference source. 

What are the objectives for WikIT?

WikIT tries to be an anti-guru source, as well. There are too many people in the mind-mapping field, especially, who claim their way is the only one. That view is either through limited imagination, familiarity with only one technique or having an interest in some kind of trainer “accreditation,” usually from a commercial source. 

Articles in WikIT point out different benefits and varieties of map styles and formats so that mappers can see the alternatives, not just “This is right and that is wrong.”  It seeks to guide people on their choice of map for a given task, a specific audience, and an expected life-span of a map.

Who is your audience?

Mainly tech-savvy knowledge workers, project managers and students.

 Is this a profitable venture for you?

No, it’s more pro bono and was not established for profit; it’s there because I believe many more people could benefit from information mapping than do so far. I think some of the gurus are getting in the way of this, with their “one method suits all.”

Do you regard Wikis as “special” or the “forgotten” social media application, channel, tool?

No, just as an easy-to-use content-management system.  Although there are talk and discussion pages in MediaWiki wikis, it’s not an ideal social medium, but it’s a really good way to gather knowledge from many people and make it available to all.

After setting up WikIT, I switched the Topicscape user manual and FAQ pages to a wiki format, and it cut the time to update it to about a quarter. Now, each time we get a question by email, we consider if it is generic enough to go in the wiki, and if so, add the answer as soon as we have replied to the user, often with a cut-and-paste from the email and some tidying to provide context the emailer already has.  I don’t need to re-index the site manually — Mediawiki search finds changes instantly.

Maybe I’m re-thinking that as you’ve asked a question that I haven’t considered before. 

Today, someone asked a really interesting question on Twitter that couldn’t be answered properly inside the 140 limit (or even with twitlonger, which I did use), so I put a new article up on WikIT: So wikis can fit into the social media sphere, not as a conversational tool particularly, but as a way of capturing interesting and longer-lasting ideas and knowledge that pop up so often in social media timelines.

What are your goals with WikIT and “information mapping?”

To make the benefits of all the types of information mapping known and accessible to as many people as possible, without charge.  I believe this bag of techniques is not sufficiently known and can be useful to many. Some people don’t like it, some have razor-trap minds and don’t need it, but many will definitely find it useful.

What success metrics do you have in place? How are you defining success? Have you succeeded?

Metrics: Google Analytics. Definition of success: As long as people go on saying they find it useful, recommending it and visiting it, I shall regard it as meeting my intentions. Naturally, the more people do so, the better pleased I shall be. Have I succeeded? However popular it grows I shan’t be satisfied and will want to push on for more.

What tips or counsel can you offer our peers in social media?

I would just pass on one from Guy Kawasaki: Be a mensch. That’s why I spend a lot of time answering questions on Twitter.  I’m using ‘mensch’ in the Yiddish sense, by the way, as brilliantly defined here by Guy Kawasaki: Cutting it down a lot: Help people who cannot help you. Help without the expectation of return. Help many people. Do the right thing the right way. Pay back society. The baseline is that we owe something to society.

How is one to find you? Are you doing search marketing to drive traffic?

WikIT is 100% content (apart from a few ads down the side) which is what the search engines like, that and the fact it gets linked to a lot. I drive traffic through Twitter and occasional announcements on my blogs.  And on Topicscape.com we have a widely quoted mindmaps directory — where the maps gathered from all over the web are shown with links back to the originals.  They are tagged by subject and classified by map type (no one else does that) which means that many people find this useful and link to it.  As WikIT is mentioned at the top of each page of that library, visitors we know are interested in information maps get to know about WikIT, as well.

Roy, thank you so much for taking this time to answer my questions in-depth. I’m excited and eager to hit your sites and glean new knowledge. I hope others do, too!

Got Messaging, Singlehop?

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I’m catching up on reading, and never get ahead. The February 2010 issue of Website Magazine is now a mass of tear sheets with more blog fodder than I know what to do with.

The article, “Reliability in Hosting,” featured Chicago Web hosting provider Singlehop as “most reliable hosting company” for October 2009 by NetCraft’s monthly hosting rankings.

Here’s the quote from the SingleHop vice president of sales and marketing, “Being named as the most reliable Web hosting company by a trusted source like Netcraft confirms Singlehop’s tireless commitment to providing our customers with the best service possible,” said the man. “We finished an extensive upgrade of our network earlier this year with all-new Cisco switches, routers, and systems. That consistent investment in our services, along with our exceptionally dedicated employees, is what enables us to achieve this kind of 100 percent uptime reliability.”

Whew. What a mouth full of peanut butter and banana.

Gog messaging, Singlehop?

That quote was exactly half the story. Unfortunately, that quote came directly from a badly written press release that didn’t do Singlehop any favors. (Well, and it was published by Website Magazine, too. Sheesh.)

Do yourself a favor. Write messaging that tells audiences why they should care. Website Magazine offers a golden opportunity to sell to a specialty professional audience who need hosting services. Its readership is your next customer, Singlehop.

Singlehop wasted precious wordscape saying the same thing every other company does “tireless commitment to providing our customers with the best service possible.”

But, the second half of the quote has promise.

It speaks to an extensive upgrade, with all new brand-name switches, routers, and systems, employees who love their work, and a hosting service that NEVER breaks down.  (Hmm, sounds pretty expensive.)

Mind if I do a little rewrite with a more powerful resonation?

“The recognition by Netcraft is well deserved throughout Singlehop and reflects the dedicated teams who put our customers first with the promise of 100 percent uptime we maintain as our benchmark,” said Singlehop.

That shows pride in the product and the people without saying “We’re excited and honored to receive this award…” Everyone says that, too; yawn.