Poor management is the single most deciding factor on whether a business succeeds or fails.

When a business becomes successful, it takes a life of it’s own. And as a small business owner running a successful business, you start to realize your juggling a lot more than what you may have originally anticipated.

Many business failures aren’t the result of bad economic times, but poor business management and administration. You must know where you and your business stand at all times, from planning to communicating, organizing and controlling, to directing and delegating.

Common Mistakes You can Make as a Small Business Owner:
–Contracting the wrong people
–Miscommunication or insufficient training (know your product and know how to delegate exactly what you need)
–Doing too much
–Misuse of time

When you find that it is time to delegate, you must be able to trust the person you are delegating to. You are letting someone else handle YOUR clients’ projects. It can be very hard for business owners to let go of the work, but when you find someone you can trust you can delegate at the drop of a hat, which leaves you more equipped to react instantly and decisively with confidence when problems arise. For small businesses one bad week can be fatal.

It’s always a good idea to go over your business plan on a quarterly basis to re-evaluate the administrative procedures of your business. When you get to the point where you are ready to delegate, pat yourself on the back! Not only does this mean you’re successful, but it also means that you are aware you can’t do it alone and you are ready for a change!

Good Luck and Happy Planning

Still on the fence about creating a facebook fan page for your business? Let me tell you a little story about the awesomeness of the fan page. This is why I think every business should have a fan page!

This week my husband who is a voice over actor, received an email from a lady in Philadelphia. She wanted to get back into voice over work, but it’s been awhile. In the voice over industry, it’s beyond important to have current vo demos. And they have to be good. Really good. This lady found my husband’s information because a friend of hers from CALIFORNIA came across Jason’s fan page. Why?? Because fan pages are indexed. Groups pages are NOT! This means that if you have the right content on your fan page, there is a good chance that your fan page will come up in a search engine based on someone typing in a relevant keyword that matches YOUR keywords. Pretty damn cool, huh?

Some other tips:

Fan page status updates appear in ALL of your fans’ newsfeeds. Why is this important? If you have a group page, your “members” have to go to that group to see any interaction on that group’s page. Unless you are giving away free stuff every day, the likelyhood of your members going to your group’s page everyday is slim to none! Yeah, you can send a message to everyone with a group page, but you can also send an update to your fans with the fan page.

The Static FMBL Application. This is probably the COOLEST feature the fan page has to offer! You can create a custom welcome landing page. This means that people who visit your fan page that are not yet fans will FIRST see a defaulted Welcome to ” ” page. This can be as simple or as awesome as you want it to be. This can be a great alternative to creating a website if you do not have the funds for a site yet. I do have to say that creating a welcome landing page isn’t easy. The FMBL application allows for coding. You can write text in there, but it’s pretty dull. If you really want your landing page to stand out, you do need to talk to a designer who knows a little something about coding!

Disclosure statement: I would NEVER recommend to anyone that they DON’T need a website. When starting a business this is by far, the MOST important marketing tool. That being said, the fan page is an alternative until you can get to a point where you can pay to have a website designed. When you do, I highly recommend going to Maro Design.

If you’d like to move your business forward by creating a fan page, contact us!