In the last post, we discussed the importance of beginning any planning with business goals.

One option is to find the page in your company's strategic plan, copy those goals into the plan, and write the plan. This works.

A better option is to understand the business goals in depth. I recommend that you answer the following four questions and then schedule some time with your CEO and other leaders to hear their answers. The

We usually hear two responses when asking CEOs or other senior executives why they need PR.

The first sounds something like, "Our company need to be more visible." We'll call this Door No. 1.

The second sounds something like, "We need media coverage" or "We need to be in social media." This will be Door No. 2.

Neither door is the right place to start in the process.

Behind Door No.

I've been playing with some thoughts about how PR/marketing/communications is evolving.

The purpose of marketing is still the same: help organizations achieve desired results. Too often we forget this one, but the CEO never does. So, results are one end of the marketing continuum.

The other end of that continuum is distribution -- the many ways we reach clients and prospects. This is where most of the change is happening.

Scott Schwertly, who is the CEO of Ethos3, was my latest guest on the Atkinson Public Relations podcast. That's not him in the picture above. You'll understand if you visit the Ethos3 website.

Here is a recap of what Scott and I discussed.

PROCESS

Scott breaks a presentation into three elements: content, design, and delivery. The problem with most presentations is that people immediately begin focusing on the

We finally had a chance to play with the iPad.

It led to an interesting conversation with Bill Seaver about the business implications. You should check out Bill's blog post about what the iPad means for social media.It's good stuff.

Here are some other thoughts on the iPad:

1. It's useful at meetings. The iPhone OS makes it easy to turn the iPad on and off so that you can hop on Google and answer a question