There’s a discretion to being articulate that often gets missed. At a time when AI in particular means you could talk about anything, what will your brand’s talking points be?
So many brands seem to get the balance between under-share and over-share wrong. They either make no effort to engage sincerely and effectively (preferring to let their work speak for them), or they go to the other extreme and pump out content on all manner of subjects in huge volumes in a bid to get noticed and ranked.
They often do this because they don’t know either where to start or when to stop. The solution is to set parameters for the conversations and interactions your brand has. One way to do this to frame the nature of your brand’s conversations and to establish types of engagement that help categorise the many, many exchanges that brands have every day. You can then assemble your brand’s talking points around those ideas.
What makes a good conversation?
In an article on “What makes a good conversation?”, Robert Kraft outlines three important principles that will make-or-break your ability to be articulate:
- Theme – people must be clear about what you are talking about, and that idea must be one they are interested in and feel they can engage with and react to. Specifically, they must be able to align that idea with your brand and what you stand for.
- Distinctive feature – there must be something that distinguishes your viewpoint on that theme from others. That’s what causes people to lean in and listen.
- Evolving – what you talk about should provide new information to give the conversation momentum and interest. Kraft talks about “Given-New” as a structure for this, where the next phase of a conversation builds on what has already been discussed. New may follow on logically from what preceded it, or it may use Given as a jumping off point to talk about something lateral. The conversation needs to go somewhere.
Everything that follows depends on your brand being very clear about these three principles. If these principles are not clear, you need to first revisit your brand strategy and your brand story.
There must be a clear idea that threads through all your brand’s talking points. Your viewpoints around your theme should be more than just what everyone else says. (Try the AI or Wikipedia test to see if you’re saying anything beyond the standard patter). And your conversations around those talking points needs to stay interesting, meaning you can’t just saying exactly the same thing.
Types of conversation
Every day of course brands have thousands of different conversations with different people. Once you know the basis for your conversation, the next step is to understand the different types of conversations your brand will have. Here are some examples:
- Fundamental – the conversations and interactions you must have just to be in business.
- Internal – the conversations internally that drive decision-making and direction.
- Value chain – what you need to tell your partners and suppliers to keep them involved and included.
- Customers and prospects – the stories you tell those considering choosing your brand.
- Stakeholder – the dialogue that you have with regulators, investors, media.
- Purpose/commitment – how you talk about your driving intentions and that means for you as a brand in the wider world.
- Topics of interest – the topics and areas of interest beyond ‘what you do’ that you wish to talk about as a brand.
- Off limits – the things your brand won’t talk about, because they are outside your purview or they distract from your brand.
So many brands don’t integrate and focus what they talk about. Instead they resolve tactically – by channel, reactively, by event or even in content blocks – rather than thinking of their full set of conversations as an expressive ecosystem.
Knowing your brand’s talking points and the range of conversations that you have effectively acts as an engagement perimeter. It helps define how articulate you need to be. At this point, we would recommend you allocate specific audiences to each of the conversation types if that’s not defined already. Follow Robert Kraft’s model. Define a theme. And establish a viewpoint that is relevant and riveting to each audience.
Eight sources of talking points
Next up, what are you actually going to talk about? You can of course just make and agree a long list of relevant topics from across the business and allocate them as you see fit. That will help you catalogue what you are talking about.
To resolve what you should or could be talking about, though requires a deeper dive. Our view is that stories act as the enabler and informer. On that basis, we suggest exploring eight areas to determine your brand’s conversation set. Align these with your theme and viewpoint. Then allocate them to your different audiences.
- Environment – what’s happening in the market that you need to interpret, act on or respond to? What do people need to know, and what do you want them to know in order for them to fundamentally understand and appreciate you as a brand?
- Strategy – what type of strategy are you pursuing? A brand with a deliberate strategy, for example, will focus on the future it is looking to build. If that future has a name, then that idea will be a dominant subject of conversation at every level.
- Culture – different types of brand culture will look to tell their stories (external and internal) in different ways. A lean culture for example will focus on demonstrating that they understand and can best deliver value as a brand. Your topics of conversation should reflect what you talk about as a culture.
- Brand story – your brand story, and everything it contains, should of course be a pillar for all your conversations.
- Values – the values you hold dear are a powerful filter for choosing what you will and will not talk about. Ask yourselves: We believe in X. Who needs to know that, what do they need to understand and how should that show up as topics in our exchanges with them? (Aside: your values should influence your interactions with everyone but there may be nuances in how that is articulated to different groups.)
- Advocacy – what do you want to see happen that you’re prepared to put your brand’s voice to? It could be an idea, a sponsorship, a contention, an aspect of your purpose or a challenge you wish to issue.
- Action/reaction – this is by far the most common subject area externally. Press releases, launch events, social media posts, Still, it’s important to decide what you will share and what you will not.
- Heritage – your backstory, what it taught you and what you choose to share with others about your history. Done well, these stories provide a powerful human aspect to your brand. They can also reinforce specialist skills, and introduce interesting twists and turns that will add intrigue to what people think they already know about you.
You now know why you should be articulate, the types of conversations you need to have, the audiences for those conversations and the topics you will cover.
Need some help with articulating your brand’s talking points?
If you’re interested in building out your stories and talking points, Long Arc is our storytelling workshop. It’s an opportunity to appraise what your story is and the best ways for you to articulate it. More on how we can help here.
Acknowledgements
Photo by Bewakoof.com Official on Unsplash