I’m excited because CMO.com published the Communications Blueprint I’ve been working on with Horn Group as their lead story today.

Horn Group believes that companies have to tell engaging stories wherever and whenever their audiences want to interact–whether that’s in person, online, in their hands, or on the go.  But many marketers struggle to create this kind of cohesive, breakthrough voice for their brands.

So we set out to create a tool — combination sanity check and step-by-step guide — to help marketing executives create coordinated communications across every channel — PR, social, mobile, web, events…and more.  We’d had much success with the Social Media Action Plan template that I created a few years ago with my colleague Susan Etlinger, who is now an analyst at Altimeter Group.  (It’s been more popular than I expected and broke 55,000 views on Slideshare a few months ago.)  An actionable template for integrated communications seemed to be missing in the marketplace.

Like so many things, the formula was simple once I put pen to paper: a top-down evaluation of business goals, audience, messages, medium, execution and measurement that ties back to those business goals.  Horn Group’s mastered the magic mix of each of these but where they really stand out is with the unique ability to execute holistically across every medium.

I’m eager to see the market’s response to the Communications Blueprint. Hope it’s useful, looking forward to your feedback.