By Peter Kim. Reposted by Carie Statz, DCTC Marketing and Sales Instructor

Now that initiatives have been in market, any reasonable business manager would expect to see program results. However, quantified results in social business and brands willing to stand behind them are difficult to find. But the truth is out there…

…and here are 101 examples of social business return on investment, roughly 60% revenue generation and 40% cost reduction. Each example lists brand, activity, and source + year.

1. Aflac. Community drove online payments increase of 3% led to $95,000 in savings. (Lithium Technologies, 2011)
2. Alberta Common Wealth Credit Union. Blog, YouTube, Facebook – 2 million impressions, 2,300 new accounts, and $4 million Canadian in new deposits. (Forrester, 2008)
3. AT&T. Community: 21,000 customer issues resolved, driving 16% improvement in call deflections year/year. (Lithium Technologies, 2011)
4. Audi. Audi A1 Community: Almost 40,000 people created customized versions of the new model. In total 5.5 million people visited the microsite 119 million times. And the company reports that this program helped generate the largest number of car pre-orders in its history. (Forrester, 2010)
5. Bank of America. Community drove High School segment sales increased 40 percent from 2008 – 2009; portfolio mix of high school students increased by 27 percent. (Communispace, 2010)
6. Benefit Cosmetics. Customer generated content drives 10X click-thru rate on “Buy Now” button. (Bazaarvoice, 2011)
7. Best Buy. Community generates $5M value in annual support savings and sales advocacy. (Lithium Technologies, 2011)
8. Blendtec. Viral videos increased company sales +700%. (Barnraisers, 2010)
9. Bonobos. 13 times more cost effective (CPA) to acquire a new customer from Twitter than from other marketing channels. (Twitter, 2011)
10. Bonobos. Exclusive sale on Twitter generated 1,200% ROI in 24 hours on promoted tweet. (Twitter, 2011)
11. Bupa. Community drove £190,000 savings through collaboration, online events. (Jive Software, 2011)
12. Burberry. Social microsites secured 1,000,000 fans and a 10% increase in same-store sales. (Barnraisers, 2010)
13. Burger King. Subservient Chicken video increased chicken sandwich sales 9% per week a month after launch. (Adweek, 2005)
14. CDW. Online community member Net Promoter Score 4x average and saved an estimated $4 million. (Communispace, 2007)
15. Cerner. Community resulted in 13% fewer customer support issues logged. (Jive Software, 2011)
16. Cerner. Community resulted in 70% decrease in internal HR issues logged. (Jive Software, 2011)
17. Cerner. Community resulted in shorter approval cycles for writing technical documentation, from 2-6 weeks to hours or days. (Jive Software, 2011) Read more »

From Part #1 of this blog I made the case that creating a business plan prior to starting your business is essential because statistics show that creating a plan before you start, dramatically increases your probability of success.  I also wrote that from experience I know that going through the business planning process verifies that you are starting the right business for you.  In this blog post I would like to cover another critical reason why doing a business plan before you start your business is so important.

One of the problems that new small business owners have is that they do not charge enough for their products or services.  One of the reasons for this is that most small business owners are not even aware of how much they need to charge in order to stay in business!  This may sound astonishing, but it is true.  New BizOwners often set their prices by guessing instead of actually seeing what they need to charge in order to become a solid, profitable business.  The only way of knowing for sure if your prices will make you enough to survive AND grow the business is to do some simple projections and let the numbers speak the truth!  By doing simple projections you will see how many sales you need to breakeven at the “guess” prices, and then you can change your prices to see how raising your prices can get you to breakeven a whole lot faster.  Playing with numbers is one of the things I strongly encourage when you are creating a business plan. 

One big advantage of having the numbers (financials) help set your prices is that you now know what you need to charge in order to have a “real” (profitable) business.  Knowing this makes you are far less likely to discount and give stuff away, which is something new small business owners do too much!  Here is some good news for you…Doing projections is really easy.  When I was creating the 21 Question Business Plan™ I wanted the numbers part to be so easy anyone could do it.  Six of the questions in the 21 Question Business Plan™, deal with creating a financial projection spreadsheet.  Just answer these six questions, insert your answers into our program and you have a great set of projections for your new business.

More will follow on this topic of why you need a business plan before starting your new business.  Remember if you would like to comment on this blog or have me answer your new business question, e-mail me at bob.voss@dctc.edu.

 For me, the answer is definite “YES”; you really need to create a business plan before you launch your business. Let’s begin with why you should have a business plan.  The answer is very simple, if you want your new business to succeed (which we all do), then going through the business planning process is what you need to do!  Failure rates for new businesses in the first year are in the neighborhood of 25%.  Take into account the fact that many people start a sole proprietorship and simply cease operations without notifying anyone and this failure figure could be as high as 40% in the first year!   In addition, national statistics on failure rates of business say that on an average only about 43% of business start ups make it throught the third year of operation.  In an article that appeared in Business Week Small Business titled “The Bottom Line on Startup Failures” (March 4, 2002) there was the following quote:

“Clearly business planning plays an integral part of success.  We studied firms that had developed a business plan at the outset, and found that 85% were still in business after three years.  I think that fact speaks for itself!” 

Creating a business plan prior to launching your business makes it easier to get through the critical first year of operation.  This first year is when businesses have the highest failure rate.  This is really the first major reason why you should write a business plan.

 The second major reason for writing a business plan is that by going through the process you will gain either much needed confidence that your business idea is a good one, or you will find out in the planning process that your business will not work and you shouldn’t start the business.  Either way it is a very good thing.  I have taught a formal three credit business plan class three to five times a year for the last ten years.  In each class an interesting thing happens about the third through the fifth week (normally this is a ten week class).  During this time period anywhere between 10% and 25% of the students change their business idea and start creating a plan for a different business!  The first time this happened I was pretty amazed.  But when it happened semester after semester it really floored me.  For me, there is a direct correlation between people who change their business idea during the planning process and first year business failures!  If you want to make sure your business will succeed prior to launching create a simple business plan ahead of time; the business plan process really helps guarantee success and it proves to you that you are starting the right business.

Look for part 2 of this topic in a later blog post.  Remember, if you have a question you want to ask me on starting a new business, just e-mail me at bob.voss@dctc.edu!

Business Owners (or as I call them bizowners) need a lot of habits in order to succeed.  Before I tell you what I think is the most important habit bizowners need, we should probably define what a habit is.  In general terms, a habit is an action or thought pattern, developed through repetition, which is for the most part automatic.  Bizowners use habits all the time to make their lives easier and to make their businesses grow.  Some use habits to always give the best service.  Some use habits to keep track of their finances on a regular basis, and some use habits to simply return phone calls and e-mails on time.  We all have habits and we all use them all the time.  How many of us have developed the “I can’t live without my smart phone” habit?

To pick one habit over another as far as importance is a very tough job, because each of habits we have acquired impacts our success in its own way.  For me the one most overlooked and underutilized habit most bizowners should have is the CAP habit.  CAP stands for Customer Acquisition Plan.  If I had to pick one habit that impacts the success or failure of a small business the most, it is this habit.  A Customer Acquisition Plan is what you do on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to generate new business.  For some successful business owners it is making 10 calls a day to new customers.  To others it is canvassing a neighborhood once a week for 3-4 hours, and for some it is sending out 30 e-mails a week to prospects.  In any case, for a CAP to work it needs to become a habit.  Routine and repetition are keys to successful long term growth.  Doing something once doesn’t make it a habit.  Doing something twice or three times doesn’t make it a habit.  Doing something 21 times or more begins the process of making a habit. 

If you want your business to grow and develop long-term momentum then let me give you a challenge.  Take a four hour block of time each week and do nothing in the block of time but look for new customers.  Use your individual strengths and your knowledge to figure out the best way of doing the prospecting, but do it for four hours and do nothing else in that time period.  Block the time off in your calendar and don’t let anyone or anything get in the way of this activity.  It is important that you pick the same time each week.  This makes it easier to develop a habit.  If you do this for a minimum of 20 weeks, you will develop the CAP habit, and you will be amazed at the growth and momentum you will achieve.  This is a competitive advantage that I can pretty much guarantee your competition is NOT doing!

If you have any comments on this blog post or would like me to answer a question for you, you can e-mail me at bob.voss@dctc.edu

Over the last two years I have presented over 70 times a free seminar at Workforce Centers called “How to Start a Successful Small Business”.  In each of these seminars I ask a question about the failure rate of new businesses within the first 12 months of operation.  Usually the answer ranges from a high of 90% fail in the first year, to a low of 20% fail in the first year.  So what is the real answer?

First off, if you Google® failure rates of new businesses there are over 67 million responses.  When looking at the first ten pages you find there is virtually no really data on this subject.  There are articles that say 90% of new businesses fail.  There are also articles that say 50% fail and so on.  To me the only real article about this subject was written by Scott Shane a college professor of Entrepreneurship.  Use the attached link to view an article by Scott:  http://smallbiztrends.com/2008/04/startup-failure-rates.html.

To make a long story short, Scott makes the case that about 25% of new businesses fail in the first 12 months of operation.  In reality this figure may be higher (up to 40%) when you take into account that in many states when you file for a Sole Proprietor, the filing is good for 10 years and no annual renewals are required.  In any case, small business start-ups do fail and the first year of business has the greatest number of business failures.  So my opinion on this subject is let’s not spend a lot of time focusing on the failure rate; let’s focus on why new businesses fail.  If you know why small businesses fail in the first year than you can learn from other peoples mistakes and make sure you don’t do the same thing.  In the next few posts I am going to share with you the four main reasons a small business fails in the first year of business.

If you have any comments on this post or would like to ask me a question, please contact me at bob.voss@dctc.edu.

By Laurence Goasduff and Christy Pettey. Reposted by Carie Statz, DCTC Marketing and Sales Instructor

Analysts Discuss the Impact of Cloud and Virtualization on Infrastructure and Operations at Gartner IT Infrastructure

The impact of Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies will not center only on the business — their capabilities will also increasingly become integral to future generations of management architecture, according to Gartner, Inc.

“We are already seeing the adoption of ‘big data’ within the IT and operations management [ITOM] industry. In particular, software-as-service [SaaS] management providers now have to collect and synthesize large volumes of data,” said Milind Govekar, managing vice president at Gartner. “We also expect more next-generation analytics to come to the forefront to address an increasingly hybrid cloud environment. On the social front, IT service desk social management tools will establish an interactive relationship with end users, enhance end-user productivity, provide a platform to share information and ideas, and market the value of IT to the business.”

Gartner identified the 10 technologies and trends that will have the biggest impact for most organizations in 2012.

They are:
1.Media tablets and beyond,
2.Mobile-centric applications and interfaces
3.Contextual and social user experience
4.The Internet of things
5.App stores and marketplaces
6.Next-generation analytics
7.Big data
8.In-memory computing
9.Extreme low-energy servers
10.Cloud computing

Gartner analysts have shared their recommendations for how to manage these technologies and trends before they take over an organization’s IT operations.

Media tablets and beyond. The media tablet market is seeing rapid device churn, which makes support and management both complex and expensive. With users broadening their use of personal devices for business applications and many organizations deploying mobile device management (MDM) to support different management styles in different ways, Gartner expects these factors to drive the adoption of tools to manage the full life cycle of mobile devices. IT leaders should develop mobility policies to mitigate the risk associated with, for example, the loss of devices and also consider a managed diversity support strategy to deliver IT support that aligns with end-user choice.

Mobile-centric applications and interfaces. Managing applications and data is more important than managing devices. One application can support multiple devices that run different operating systems (OSs). However, organizations should not assume that tools and OSs work the same way in mobile environments as they do on the desktop. Gartner recommends that IT leaders establish a mobile competency center to ensure there is sufficient focus on this area. In the longer term, they will need to establish an end-user computing group with a single mission to provide a work space management service.

Contextual and social user experience. Context-aware computing uses information about an end user’s or an object’s environment, activities, connections and preferences to improve the quality of interaction with that end user or object. Gartner believes that by 2015, 40 percent of the world’s smartphone users will opt in to contextual service providers that track their activities. Defining and “surfacing” key metrics, such as performance and usage data, during application development will become paramount. IT operations will need to extend their capabilities beyond technologies such as configuration management databases to include individuals’ social interaction information for social graph capabilities.

The Internet of things. The Internet of things is a concept that describes how the Internet will expand as sensors and intelligence are added to physical items such as consumer devices and physical assets and these objects are connected to the Internet. It will likely become impossible for organizations to develop rules and discover relationships between these devices. As a result, machine and statistical learning technologies will likely be tools increasingly used by organizations using Internet-attached sensors and instruments.

App stores and marketplaces. Gartner forecasts that by the end of 2012 mobile application downloads from app stores will top 31 billion. Business users use app stores and marketplaces from both internal and external sources, which potentially make it difficult to distinguish between consumer apps and corporate apps. IT operations will need to address overlap between MDM and app store management as users will use various devices for apps that will be variously in the cloud and on the premises, fixed and mobile, built and bought, and composed and atomic.

Next-generation analytics. Given the aforementioned examples of interlocked and interrelated systems, it is important to be able to construct a dependency graph so that IT operations can understand the impact of systems experiencing high error rates or suffering total failure and take remedial action. Cloud-based technology, such as cloud management platforms, has the potential to provide the rapid provisioning necessary in environments where demand is causing infrastructure overload.

Big data. The rapid growth of consumer technology and steadily falling unit costs for processors, storage and communications have resulted in a major disruption to the data that is potentially available to organizations. In big data infrastructure, file systems need a layer of abstraction over them to allow for ease of scale and rapid data processing. These technologies include file systems such as GFS, HDFS and Lustre, which increasingly form the core of these new environments. Management is needed, as so-called worker nodes in file systems like HDFS can come and go, and checks need to be made to see if the rate of node failure is too high to get the necessary work done.

In-memory computing. In-memory computing is a style of computing in which the primary data store for applications (the “data store of records”) is the central (or main) memory of the computing environment (on single or multiple networked computers) running these applications. As not all in-memory solutions support durability features, IT leaders need to assess the need for additional logging and/or “snapshoting” capabilities as well as non-volatile random-access memory. It is also important to conduct a design review of applications that use in-memory computing — especially database versions — to ensure the architected performance is not compromised by excessive waiting due to latches and locks.

Extreme low-energy servers. Extreme low-energy servers are systems constructed using processor types that were originally developed for extremely low-power environments. Low-energy servers can significantly reduce power (and facilities space) costs, but their increased number can pose administrative challenges in terms of scale, so IT leaders need to look to automation technology (like Opscode Chef, Puppet and CFEngine) to reduce the labor overhead. IT leaders need to ensure these investments are paying off by deploying power-monitoring and data center infrastructure management technology to collect data on potential energy savings.

Cloud computing. Cloud compute infrastructure as a service (IaaS) — on-demand compute resources coupled with associated storage and networking capabilities — is a rapidly growing and fast-evolving market. Gartner estimates that by 2015 nearly 5 percent of all virtual machines will run on external cloud IaaS. IT operations should transform itself into a “trusted service broker” able to work with the business to identify and procure cloud computing services — private, public and hybrid — to match various business requirements.

About Gartner:

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the valuable partner to clients in 12,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 5,000 associates, including 1,280 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, www.gartner.com.

The fourth principle of the 21 Question Business Plan™ is simply that business plans are “living” documents.  Just as people change, and businesses change, so to must your business plan change.  Too often small business owners and entrepreneurs create a plan at the beginning of the business, and then “shelve” it.  They don’t’ look at it again and within just a few days have probably forgotten everything in it.  Remember, the purpose of the business planning process was to help you verify your business idea, make sure you can make money at it, AND help you define how you are going to grow the business as well.  If you “shelve” your business plan you are losing the opportunity to help grow your business.

Having started and run five businesses I know that the first year of a new business is never easy.  All of your assumptions are going to be tested and nothing ever goes like you thought it would in your business plan.  Within a month of starting your business, changes will begin to happen and your business plan better be changing as well.  Therefore, it is advisable to create a business plan that can change as your business changes.

At the end of the business planning process you will get a final, formal business plan.  For my classes (and to get a grade) the student’s present them to me professionally bound with lots of pictures and graphics.  In other words, they are very “pretty”!  I make a point in class that when you present a plan to someone like an investor or banker, or me, professional and pretty are good things.  But since you are really creating a plan for YOURSELF, I encourage the students to put them in 3-ring binders so they become “living” business plans.  Keeping your plan off the shelf and close at hand so you can add and subtract as needed is the best advice I can give.  Make sure your business plan is not a one-time activity.  Continual business planning is a habit that is found in a majority of successful BizOwners.

If you have any comments on this blog or would like me to answer your small business questions, e-mail me at bob.voss@dctc.edu

Minnesota State College and University System (MnSCU) officially approves DCTC’s Social Media Marketing AAS degree and certificate.

DCTC Social Media Marketing Video

Social media is an exciting and ever-evolving field. Once used as a quirky tool to stay in touch with old friends to now a massive marketing platform, capable of delivering ultra-targeted ads to a global audience, social media marketing generates web traffic, increases conversions and sales, and aids in branding, market research and building email lists. The growth in this industry created several different career choices, specific to social media marketing.

Social Media Specialist: The program you will master the tools and techniques critical to success, helping you to propel your marketing career, promote your business and boost the bottom line. You will gain skills to engage your audience and enhance your online presence by creating compelling content that generates quality traffic. Students will also learn how to leverage various monitoring methods to stay on the cutting edge of social media trends, and begin uncovering a vast array of exciting opportunities.

Work Environment

A social media marketing specialist oversees the implementation of different social media programs for clients. You will also need strong writing and grammar skills, as you may be assigned to blogging or other writing for potential clients. You will be expected to have quick turn-around on projects and be a multi-tasker. You must thrive in a entrepreneurial setting, be able to accomplish tasks on your own or as part of a team. You must be a self starter and have strong project management skills. You must already understand authentic marketing.

Potential Job Titles

• Social Media Marketing Manager
• Social Media Developer
• Social Media Manager
• Social Media Director
• Social Media Analyst

Salary Data †

• Average Wage: $18.89/hour
• Top Earners: $27.13/hour

Overview

• Delivery: Daytime or Online Classes
• Start: Fall, Spring or Summer Semester, Full- or Part-Time
• Location: Rosemount Campus, Apple Valley Site

 Academic Advisor

• Lee Anne Xiong
  Academic Advisor
  leeanne.xiong@dctc.edu
  651-423-8537

Dean

• Gayle Larson
  Dean of Business, Technology and General Education

Instructors

 Posted by Carie Statz, DCTC Marketing and Sales Instructor

There have recently been a number of changes at the Secretary of State’s office that impact new business filings:

1)     Costs have increased for on-line filing and in person filings.  If you file a Sole Proprietor the fee is now $30, and if you file on line for in person the fee has been raised to $50.  Likewise fees have increased for on line and in person filings for the other business entities (LLC’s for example) as well.

2)     If you file a Sole Proprietor (Certificate of Assumed name) you will have to now file an annual renewal to stay current.  There is no charge for annual renewals.  If you are already a sole proprietor under the old plan, the filing was good for 10 years.  When the ten years are up, you will have to re-file (and pay all fees) and from that point on you will have it file annual renewals.

3)     Go to www.sos.state.mn.us to get more information.

If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at bob.voss@dctc.edu

The third founding principle behind the 21 Question Business plan™ is that you must SPEAK the answers to the questions.  In other words, after you have created the highlights or narrative for your answers, you must then speak the answers out loud!  Speaking an answer out loud is important for two reasons.

The first reason you must speak your answers out loud is that whatever you speak out loud gets inside of you.  The answers you give to others about your business must be presented with 100% confidence and 100% belief in order for them to be believed and trusted by others.  Just writing an answer does not do this.  Speaking out loud allows you to add emotions and feelings to your answers.  People intuitively know when they hear an answer to a question if the answer is true or just a bunch of BS!  When you are creating your 21 Question Business Plan™, after a question has been answered with highlights or narrative, say the answer out loud.  How did the answer sound?  Did you answer the question?  Do you believe in your answers?  Make sure you have confidence in your answers, and then make sure when you say the answer out loud that the confidence shows with emotions and feelings. 

The second reason you must speak your answers out loud is that it will make you a much better writer.  Many people who are good writers, pause many times as they are writing to speak out loud what they have written.  As a teacher I require students to write assignments and many times I have them read the assignments to the class.  Often the student starts reading and stops because what they wrote just doesn’t sound right, or in some cases makes no sense at all!  After the initial embarrassment I use them as an example for promoting reading something out loud, before you have to read it to a class.  Usually this happens only once per class and then the students have no more problems reading what they wrote.  I became a much better writer and blogger when I started speaking out loud what I had written.  One other benefit of reading out loud is that it allows you to find misspellings or grammar errors in your writing.  It seems like every time I speak something out loud that I have written I find errors that I didn’t find when I just read it with my eyes.

If you have any questions or comments on this blog, e-mail be at bob.voss@dctc.edu

Thanks for reading!!