Over the past month, I’ve noticed that many women entrepreneurs are writing about doing their business plans. Bravo! If you want a strong, successful business, having a living business plan is very important!
Living Business Plan
What’s a living business plan? It’s a plan that you actually, use, update, get coffee on, thumb through and scribble all over. It needs to change as the world changes.
As I wrote in an earlier post, 2010 is going to be the year of social media marketing. It’s a significant trend and one we have to pay attention to. When preparing your marketing section of your business plan for 2010, women business owners need to make sure that they are setting tactical objectives for their social media marketing efforts. There are three significant points that need to be made about social media marketing:
- Social media marketing objectives should tie to your marketing plan and your overall business objectives
- Social media marketing should fallow a plan, not be hit-or-miss
- Social media objectives should be measurable and measured
More and more I’m hearing a discussion about measuring social media. That means that marketing experts have begun to pay serious attention to the space and that some serious tools for measurement will be coming out in the next year or so. These tools will not be for the faint-hearted–a quick look at a list of Twitter Tools from Mashable will give you an idea of the serious geekiness of these tools!
Business Plans and Money
Along with reviewing your business initiatives and past financials, the entrepreneur woman needs to plan business expenses for the following year. If you are seriously thinking of launching social media campaigns, you will probably need to get some help. Since the field is new, there are going to be many newly forged experts out there. This isn’t a bad thing, everyone is figuring it out as they go…just as they’ve been doing for the past 40 years of technological advances!
Budgeting money for the expense is important. Even though the economy is still shaky, it’s important to budget for marketing. A good social media plan isn’t free, neither are the measurements required to actually get the return on investment you want!
Comments about social media marketing in your business plan? Leave them below!
