In simple terms, social media describes the tools people are using to share text, video, images and information online and the networks they are using to connect with each other. It’s the evolution of the internet from a broadcast medium to a massive online conversation where free, easy to use tools, available 24/7, give users the ability to share and spread information (both good and bad) quicker than any other communication channel.

1.  Use Social Media internally first - Start using social media tools internally to improve communication between team members and your best customers. Collaboration tools include: Wikis, Basecamp HQ, Central Desktop, and Sharepoint. Meeting tools include:  Gotomeeting, Webex and Skype. Instant Messaging tools include: MSN, Gmail chat. Cloud computing tools include: Google Apps. Internal social network tools include: Yammer and Salesforce Chatter.

2.  Set the ground-rules - Write a social media policy for yourself, your employees and where appropriate for customers and partners. Even if your organisation is not officially using social media, chances are your employees are using social media at work so you need a policy. The policy can be short, but should clearly outline how employees should behave online, what they should and shouldn’t say. You may also need a response guide outlining how you will respond to good and bad comments about your organisation online.

3.  Start Listening - Social Media is best described as a series of online conversations. Just like in normal life good conversationalists are great listeners. Listen to what the leading organisations in your field are doing, listen to what your customers are saying online, keep up-to-date with industry blogs. Luckily there are a myriad of tools available to listen including Google Alerts, Socialmention.com, LinkedIn groups, Twitter search and OpenFacebook Search.

4.  Identify your target market - As with any communication plan you need to know exactly who you are targeting? Where are they online? How do they communicate? What are they doing online? Why will they listen to and eventually buy from you? You will already know a lot of this about your existing customers. Often sending out a well-structured survey on surveymonkey.com will provide you with more clues as to where and what you should be communicating. Combine this with point 3 and you are on your way.

5.  Start responding - When you have listened and understand what people are saying and where they are saying it, start responding on specific industry blogs, joining Twitter discussions, commenting on Youtube, and slideshare.net or starting discussions on LinkedIn. This will give you an understanding of the tone and topics that interest and engage people, and you will start to get noticed by the online influencers in your industry.

6.  Create your own initiatives and get others involved - You’ve done the research, now dive in! Choose your tools and set up your initiatives. You will by now have a feel for which tools, initiatives and type of content best suit your customers. It could be blogs, discussion forums, linkedin, facebook, slideshare etc etc. Focus on spreading the content that adds the most value to your target market. Ask customers, partners and others that can add further value to contribute a guest post or video. This fosters community and adds value to the people who visit your online community.

7.  Measure - Everything online is measureable. Regularly check your analytics to see what is working and not working. Are you achieving your KPIs? Keep doing more of what’s working.  If something’s not working change it or stop doing it. See next point.

8.  Fail fast - Social media tools are free and quick to set up. The most wasted resource will be the time of you and your team. Once you have a plan for a tool set it up and test it. Find out how much value it can add as quickly as you can. Measure carefully and try different tactics.If it’s not working move on.

9.  Syndicate – Connect up the various social media tools so that you only have to create a message once and promote it via all your social media tools and networks. Tools like Hootsuite, Ping.fm, Bit.ly, Tweetdeck and Postling enable you to do this automatically. This ensures you get your message your target audience in multiple places, with little additional effort.

10.  Train and educate – Train your team to use the Social Media tools you decide best suit your target market. Train your partners and customers on these tools so they understand how to get the best from the information and value you provide. Oh and finally, train and educate them again, and again and again.

Now that the worst of the Global Financial Crisis is probably behind us, many business owners have changed their focus from survival to growth. This growth has funding implications as businesses generally will have to invest in additional inventory and receivables.

Many businesses who have just managed to survive the recession are now facing the daunting prospect of funding the recovery. Typically the obvious candidates go broke early on in any recession with many fragile businesses surviving based on the banks not willing to take action. Now, with the recovery underway the weaker businesses will struggle to access finance.

The better capitalized companies may have invested in equipment and people during the recession and now are well placed to strengthen their market position. These companies are likely to be acquirers over the next period. If the gap between your business and the market leader is becoming too great, it may be time to exit or change your focus.

The traditional sources of external finance are debt (bank, factoring and leasing) and equity (family/friends, angel investors, private equity and the public market). The recession has not only damaged the balance sheets of the banks, many of the niche financiers have gone out of business. In these capital constrained times, banks have a limited amount to lend, so only the best funding opportunities will be successful. As the rules have changed, don’t assume that the ratios and costs that the banks previously applied are still relevant.  

If you are considering taking in an external shareholder, make sure that you are Investment Ready before you approach investors. Consider where your business fits now as an attractive investment opportunity, then look to where your business needs to be to make it more attractive and then how you are going to make it happen. Your business advisor can assist you in the process.

The best and generally cheapest source of finance for business already exists on their balance sheet in the form of lazy working capital. Working capital is the amount of inventory and receivables less payables.  

1.  What gets measured gets done – make sure you are monitoring the level of working capital in your business and take action when it blows out.

2.  A sale cost money until it is collected – focus on the payment terms with your customers and watch for slippage in payments – do not let yourself become your customers bank as we have noticed that many larger companies are now paying their suppliers later.

3.  Some customers are not worth it – a low profitability customer who pays you late may not be worth servicing.

4.  Do unto others – seek to get extended payment terms from your suppliers.

5.  Reduce your inventory - implement a more effective inventory control system to reduce the level of funds tied up in the warehouse and cull low profitability and non core product lines.

6.  Invoice more frequently – especially for professional services firms seek to reduce the level of work in progress by invoicing your clients more frequently and remember the cliché bill early and bill often.

1.  2011 is about execution
2010 was a year where many business leaders fine-tuned the way they did business in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Coming out of the GFC in 2011, most businesses are looking to do ‘more with less’ and focus their attention on ‘execution’ of their existing strategies. Many business leaders are finding it difficult to handle much more ‘change’ as the energy levels of both them and their teams are still quite low. Therefore holding team members accountable to the effective execution of existing strategies and actions will deliver solid results.

2.  Understand WHERE before looking at HOW
A challenge for business leaders in a fast paced business environment is to hold themselves back from rushing in and fixing burning issues when they arise. Remembering to pause for a moment to gain perspective as to what is the end goal of fixing a particular issue or opportunity will help determine the most appropriate solution. So before rushing to HOW they will fix their next issue they should first think, WHERE do I want to be?

3.  How to get in the ‘flow’ more often?
You often hear people talk about getting in the ‘flow’ whether it is a business, sporting or personal context. When people find themselves in the flow they tend to say they achieve great things, time disappears and they feel fantastic. So if all these terrific things occur when you are in the flow how can you ensure both you and your team are in that ‘flow’ more often? Well there's actually a ‘Flow’ model developed by Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi where you can plot your skills / confidence levels versus the level of challenge a given task or role provides. He found through his studies that when a balance occurs between these two factors a person tends to be in the flow and when it is out of balance a person can range from being ‘bored’ to being ‘anxious’. If you watch the 18 minute long video via the link below he begins at the 15 minute mark to explain the model in detail which would be a useful tool to use with yourself and your team: Click here to view the video. Whilst his presentation style may not inspire, the content is quite powerful and well worth investing the time to watch the video clip in full.