Strategic communication planning for 2010.

There was a great article in the most recent Time about how the past decade was one of the worst and how we will be happy to be rid of it. Well, the new year always bodes well for new and exciting things as we shake off the dust of the old so it is time to start thinking about what to do in 2010.

There are several things you need to do to prepare for the upcoming year. The first thing is to review not just the most recent year, but the past few years before hand if your business has been around that long. You need to take an honest and hard look at what has worked and what hasn't worked. It is time for hindsight to do its thing and tell you what would you do different if you had to. It is also important to remember what went well and what you did right. Certainly there are lessons to be learned from success as well as failure.

There is also the need to find out how marketing and communications will help drive the overall strategic goal to its successful completion. Every organization plans ahead usually quarter by quarter, but there is also the need to project out annual goals for the organization as communication goals tend to span several quarters. Strategic planning of communication is every bit as critical to the success of the organization as the strategic planning of capital spending. Planning on communication and marketing is often seen as what I would call an "oh yeah," category when in fact it requires some of the most strategic planning of all the organization's groups in order to succeed properly.

Another aspect of planning communications strategically is to have both hard and soft goals. Communications tends to fluff off the concept of hard goals and that to a large degree is why marketing and communications are seen as expendable in turbulent times like this. By developing hard targets for accomplishments and then being able to benchmark these accomplishments over a period of time and versus company success marketing and communications individuals will be able to clearly demonstrate the role they play in the success of the organization.

The time for strategic communication plan is not only here but it is long overdue. Like all other professionals marketing and communications professionals need to realize that while we are relied on as creative individuals, we also need to join the rest of the management group as people who work in a numbers based environment. Doing this will solidify the role of marketing and communications as an essential role player in the organization!