Does this mean that you must meet your goals every single day? No - rather it is a guide. If there is a cook-out planned with company coming over, should you ignore your guests just to meet your goals? Of course not! But those goals have to be met under any circumstances. While you can delay them for a day, next day you will find yourself with a double load. I prefer to try to meet goals that I know I won't meet on a certain day in advance. That way, I can relax in social session without having that "Sword of Damocles" hanging over my head.

Let's take a real life example. Suppose you are in network marketing, and of course one of your goals should be to enroll new recruits. This can be done a number of ways, and making calls to new prospects will be one of your daily chores. Set a goal of how many calls you will make on any given day. Once you meet that goal, you can either do other things to promote your business, or simply relax. If you "goof off" however and don't meet that goal for whatever reason, you are only hurting yourself if you don't make it up.

Personally I prefer working seven days a week. Granted, I don't work a full work day, but by spreading work out like this, it gives me a lot of free time everyday. Others might prefer having definite days off, but you have to adjust your goals accordingly. In other words, if you are going to work at home, and have all of its benefits, you have to be in control.

If you are "out of control" your home business will not prosper, and you just might find you have to return to that regular job, from which you so desperately tried to escape.

The data you collect, you will use to establish your public relations goal, i.e., specific perception to be altered, followed by desired behavior change. In other words, your objective here is to correct those untruths, inaccuracies, misconceptions and rumors.

But goals are worthless without strategies. Happily you have three of them to choose from: create perception/opinion where there isn’t any, change existing perception, or reinforce it. Let your public relations goal point to obvious choice.

Now you put on your writer’s hat and write a really persuasive bit of prose – corrective message you will use to create, change or reinforce individual opinion among members of that target audience. Clarity is really important, as is accuracy and believability. The more compelling message is, more it helps alter what a lot of people believe, so try hard to “compel” reader.

Luckily, you have a herd of “beasts of burden” – communications tactics mentioned earlier – that will carry your “message of inspiration” to eyes and ears of your target audience.

The tactics range from newsworthy surveys, all kinds of speeches and letters-to-the-editor to press releases, brochures, radio and newspaper interviews and just about everything in between. One caveat: make sure tactics you select have a proven record of reaching people like those in your target audience.

Pretty soon you will ask yourself, “Are we making any progress in altering offending perception?” Assuming you don’t want to spend a lot of money on professional opinion surveys, (any more than you did earlier in this drill), you’ll have to remonitor that target audience’s perceptions.

Big difference this time is, you’ll be watching carefully to see, while asking same questions again, to what degree offending perception has now been altered. In other words, how much that perception is actually moving in your direction, AND how likely it is to deliver behaviors you really want.

That is to say, you have no chance of becoming a chowderhead when you use fundmental realities of public relations to safely nail down outside audience behaviors that help you reach your objectives.

end

Bob Kelly counsels, writes and speaks to general management personnel about the fundamental premise of public relations. He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR, Olin Corp.; VP-PR, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communications, U.S. Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press secretary, The White House. mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net Visit:http://www.prcommentary.com