Missouri Small Business and Technology Development Centers Blog

A new study from The Nielsen Company in April of this year indicates that 22 percent of the time we all spend online is spent interacting through some form of social media. More specifically…

75 percent of all Internet users visit a social network or blog every time they go online — up 24 percent from last year.

The average Internet user spends 66 percent more time on those social media sites than she did a year ago. The April 2010 number is six hours; last April’s number was 3 ½ hours. Facebook is about to pass Google by in terms of online traffic. YouTube recently surpassed two billion — yes, billion with a B — views per day.

More details from the study that you might find interesting:

• Brazil has the largest percentage of Internet users visiting a social network — 86 percent.
• Australians spent 7 hours and 19 minutes on social networking sites in April — the greatest amount of time internationally.
• 75 percent of Italy’s online users visit Facebook regularly; the U.S. and the U.K. were in second place with 60 percent of users visiting the online giant.

Still think you don’t need to pay attention to social media for your business?

Talk to any entrepreneur, and you’ll get a different opinion on whether or not a business plan is important to a company’s success. When we ask our clients if they have business plans, we often hear, “Yes, I have one — in my head.” Often the idea of writing that down and putting some numbers and strategy behind it is a foreign concept. But would you start on a road trip to a new destination without a map?

According to small business lore, for every successful business WITH a business plan is an equally successful one with the plan in someone’s head. But that may not be reality.

Recently Palo Alto software did a survey (that was later independently validated by the University of Oregon Department of Economics) that asked thousands of users of their software about their businesses. One question concerned business planning. The responses indicate that companies with a written business plan were nearly twice as likely to successfully grow their businesses or obtain capital as those who did not write a plan.

To be more specific, 36 percent of the respondents who had written business plans were successful in securing a loan. Only 18 percent of those without a plan secured financing. 36 percent of the business plan writers secured investment capital; only 19 percent of the non-writers could say the same thing. Finally, 64 percent of the businesses with written plans had grown their businesses. Only 43 percent of those without a written business plan had experienced any growth.

Simply put, writing a business plan appears to be a critical component of small business success.

Which brings to mind something General Dwight Eisenhower said about the D-Day invasion: “The plan is worthless; planning is everything.”

We encourage clients to write business plans not so they can produce a nicely bound document. Our purpose in encouraging that is to ensure the client does the thinking that is necessary to start an ultimately successful business. Answering the questions necessary to create a solid plan is the only way to help ensure you have thought of all of the opportunities — and the challenges — inherent in starting your company.

Seems the research backs us up on that.

So Tony Hayward of BP wants his life back. Well, I suspect there are a lot of folks affected by the Gulf oil spill disaster who would echo that sentiment, including the 11 who lost their lives when the rig exploded, the hundreds, if not thousands, of families affected by loss of income and home and the other families and businesses down stream who will feel the effect of loss of wealth in the Gulf until the mess is cleaned up.

Like many others, I was ready to sign on with the “boycott BP” gang and drive by the stations (which I have historically favored) to reach the next fuel outlet. The more I investigated, however, the more I realized that I was letting my anger get in the way of my common sense. All BP stations are franchises. The owners are local folks who are about as far removed down the food chain from the oil disaster as their competitors are. They didn’t create this mess, and they are just as miserable about it as the rest of us. Now some of them are reporting that their sales are down, that former customers are stopping by not to purchase fuel, soda or donuts, but to tell someone to his face about how incensed they are about BP’s handling of the disaster. What those people are failing to realize is that the local franchise owner can do little to remedy the situation. Punishing him does not really punish BP. It simply punishes his employees, their families and the local economy. It creates ill will in the wrong place. And it really doesn’t teach Hayward and his top echelon team much at all since their profits last year were more than $15 billion. They really won’t feel it if I buy my gas from another station.

What we need to do is call for reform in the industry, elect the leaders who will hold people like Hayward accountable and find a way to assist in relief efforts. There will be time after the clean-up to deal with the real culprits. But the fellow trying to put his kid through college by running a BP station isn’t one of those. I’m sure some of them would get out of their agreement with BP if they could at this point. Unfortunately, if they have signed a 10-year commitment, they’re stuck, just like the wildlife in the slick. As someone who cares about small business and what it brings to the community, I don’t need to make things worse. I’m just trying to keep it in perspective.