It's not too surprising. Constant contact did a survey of over 1,500 small business and found that most are using social media for marketing.

• 73% are currently using social media for marketing
• 62% expect to start using social media for marketing this year
• 81% of those using social media expect to increase their efforts in this area

In this report, Spring 2011 Attitudes and Outlook Survey they found that email, websites, event marketing and advertising were all used by small business to drive marketing.

Do you enjoy words? I do. They are so important to our ability to understand each other, and since we all have different experiences we have different understanding of what a word means. This applies more often to the words we take for granted, especially when they cover a wide body of knowledge like the word "Finance".

In the course of writing our book that is coming out this summer, I decided to look up other people's definition of finance. I've worked in finance from a business perspective for over 20 years and so I take it a little for granted that everybody knows what it means. Recently I discovered that some people find it mysterious.

Here are some definitions below for your review.

Financial planning does not have to be difficult, but it does need to be done. Maybe you have a "financial planner" that helps you plan for your retirement. Financial planning is about understanding the immediate steps that are required to get you to where you want to go in the longer term.

For your business, financial planning will let you you key measures to determine if what you are doing is bringing you business success. There are many ways to start, and here we will start with the basics. This process should be done as a planning exercise at the beginning of your business, as well as every year as a way to set measureable goals for your business.

Let's start with Total Revenue.