Your Communications Program: More Marathon Than Sprint  Sunday, May 3, is Cincinnati's annual Flying Pig Marathon.  Many runners have been training for months.  To cross that finish line at 26.2 miles requires a comprehensive plan and the discipline to follow it. The same is true of your communications plan.  A successful communications program is more marathon than sprint.  It requires a comprehensive plan and discipline.  What is your business objective?  Runners seek to finish a marathon in a certain time or, simply, to finish.  For your business, it could be to generate new business, inform key stakeholders of a change or to get employees onboard with a new policy ... you get the picture. Your communications program should be guided by your business objective.  It will help you to determine what communications strategies or tactics (media releases, direct mail, newsletters, blogging, etc.) should be used. It's also important to clearly define your target audience, be it shareholders, employees, investors, potential customers, or current customers; the people who matter most to achieve your business objective.  Then, decide the most effective channel through which to reach them.  Should you consider advertising, direct contact, newsletters, e-newsletters, or earned media? Next you have to determine the right message to get the audience to do what you want them to do ... call, click, show up, etc.  Sounds easy, but this is very complicated. Be creative.  You have to figure out how to connect at an emotional level so your audience is motivated to act. Now, the really hard part: implementation.  You must have the discipline to implement your program over time ... to not only train for but to run the marathon as planned. And, the prize when you cross the finish line, an enhanced corporate or brand reputation and strengthened relationships with those most important to delivering meaningful and measurable results. At Vehr Communications, that's what we do.  Reputation, relationship and results - that's public relations.  That's the kind of race we run with our clients. Subscribe to "Vr3" Please visit our blog.  It's called Vr3 .  The "r3" stands for reputations, relationships and results.  That's PR.  That's what we do.  And, that's what we exchange ideas about on Vr3.   Good Reads on Strategic Communications Amazon: 1. Strategic Communication in Business & the Professions by Dan O'Hair, Gustav Friedrich & Lynda Dee Dixon 2. Business & Professional Communication: Plans, Processes & Performance by James Disariza & Nancy Legge 3. Communication Planning: An Integrated Approach by Sherry DeVereaux Ferguson PR News, PR Insights This edition of March Forth provides links (on left) to some excellent blog discussions for building strategic communications plans. As practitioners, we use communications to manage reputations, build relationships and deliver results.  The Internet is changing how we do it, but how we have always done it is just as important. We hope the connections we provide here, and the various additional news outlets and blogs we connect to on the Vehr Communications' Web site, help you to understand this rapidly changing industry as much as they help us.