Countown 2007: Three Questions to Fourth Quarter Focus
September 26, 2007 by Mary Ellen
One quarter – time enough to produce an effective public relations campaign. As my clients face fourth quarter, a frentic-paced time of year, I suggest a forty-minute evaluation based on three key questions:
- Where do we go from here?
- What is the successful outcome we expect as a result?
- What is the next action we must take?
Let’s say, for example, that you eect to focus on one major public relations campaign in conjunction with an event. Blogger friend and marketing troubleshooter, Mary Schmidt, AIBA Executive Director Rebecca Jo Dakota and I implement this suggestion in conjunction with Albuquerque Independent Business Alliance, AIBA, next week. AIBA is hosting an annual event, the Keep it Querque Gala at Los Poblanos on Monday, November 12, 2007.
Step one involves developing a list of potential results such as: feature story around the event, backgrounder on keynote presenter, FAQ’s, blog submissions, letters to the editor, news notice published, general feature article in local paper, calendar item, news release, website submission, forum posting.
As Step two, prioritize the items listed above. Break each item into tasks, assigning the person responsible and a deadline. Simply make a spreadsheet with these columns : item, person responsible, deadline.
In Step three, designate the next action item and begin to move forward with it.
Does it work? We’ll let you know. At the very least, this is the agenda for our October 5th meeting. My preview with a couple of other trials this week says yes. So, if you want to maintain focus during the Holidaze, take these three questions, and run!
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Darn. You mean you actually expect me to do something?
But seriously folks – the missing success element in any type of planning – simple to complex, big company, little company, for profit, non profit – is the action plan. Somebody actually has to do something (and on a schedule.)
It’s far better to have a simple, even simply okay plan that gets implemented than a brilliant one that just sits there.