Create a Business-Aligned Communication Strategy
By Mikal E. Belicove •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

If I could mandate one resolution for your start-up orbusiness, it would be to create a business-aligned communication strategy thatguides all of your public-facing communications. That means having a specificstrategy for how company-generated communications are going to help theorganization reach or surpass its short- and long-term goals. It also meanshaving a plan for implementing the strategy.
Why do I think this is more important than anything else?It is my observation that an overwhelming number of start-ups and establishedbusinesses act in a reactionary manner when it comes to company communications.For example:
- Someone points out the blog hasn't been updated in a while, so a new blog post is created.
- Woops, we forgot to tweet about that special offer we're running... get someone to tweet about it right now!
- Holy cow, someone left a customer service-related question on our Facebook wall last week and no one's responded or removed the post... take care of that, too.
- That truly inconsequential thing just happened and the CEO says we have to get a press out immediately.
If your company is actively engaging with customers and prospects via a company-branded blog or on Facebook or Twitter, and you do not have a business-aligned communication strategy based on your positioning and 2011 goals and objectives, now would be a great time to create one.