Social media has been hugely beneficial to small businesses. It offers opportunities to share and collaborate with others, to reach customers and partners and keep up to date with what’s going on…
That’s all great, but there are a lot of people talking about a lot of things out there online – particularly if something of national or local importance happens as we’ve seen in recent weeks. You quite rightly want to know how your business, markets and life will be affected. Everyone has an opinion and you haven’t got time to listen to them all.
You may feel it would be good to use the people and groups you interact with online as a sounding board. You may need reassurance yourself, or have expertise you could offer to others. You may feel passionately about something and want to get involved with a campaign or movement to support or combat it.
In the end you’ve got a business to run and you 
have to separate the signal from the noise, and make sure that you a filtering down to the info that you can actually use, not just what’s interesting or entertaining. You also need to be able to separate what is beneficial or interesting to you as a person in general, to you as a business owner, specifically. So what’s the best way to do that?
When operating a SME we know that we need to adapt regularly for all sorts of reasons all the time. For instance, as a company grows it may be that instead of updating your financial forecast quarterly, you may move it to monthly or even weekly. Or maybe your company has reached a milestone – maybe you have exceeded a turnover or profit goal!
All the time in business things have to adapt and change and it is easy to find excuses as to why this is happening or why now is not convenient. When you can see changes are coming, instead of being sucked into the vacuum of speculation as to what ‘might’ happen, it is important to remain focused as to what is exactly happening for you and your business and not to take your eye off the ball.
Are you keeping an eye on your competitors and what they are doing? Are you ensuring you have regular contact with your own clients and they know your plans? That doesn’t necessarily mean a face to face conversation, it could be a blog, a newsletter or a new service you are offering.
One of the key reasons to do this is that new or more established competitors may be looking at your customers for their growth – is this part of your plan to be doing the same?
All of the above is what will have been going on despite ’what we are not going to talk about’, and it is more important than ever to carry on with your plans for your business, continue to adapt the business plan as and when required, and of course keep up to date with current affairs and how they affect you.
Don’t forget your business plan is required for so many reasons, and it is important to keep it up to date and relevant at all times. It is important to remain focused and adaptable in your business whatever the future holds and work with the facts, not with speculation at all times.
Annette Bunn is Partnership Manager at RIFT Accounting