Just about every fall for the past 10 years I’ve made a trip, with a close friend of mine, up to a very special place in the Great White North, otherwise known as Canada. That place is Algonquin Provincial Park. The Park is located between Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River in Central Ontario, at roughly the same latitude as Montreal.

It is the oldest and one of the largest provincial parks in Canada comprising almost 8,000 square kilometers of back country wilderness. For comparison purposes, it is about the size of the state of Delaware. There are over 2,400 lakes and 1,200 kilometers of streams and rivers throughout the park.

The natural unspoiled beauty of this part of the world cannot be fully appreciated in pictures or videos. In my humble opinion, it is best experienced in person. And that is precisely what we do every year. We appreciate the great outdoors while we canoe, portage and camp throughout the park for about a week in late September.

It’s a pretty rugged trip which takes preparation and months of (physical) training. We travel between 175 – 200 kilometers during our week in the park. 80% of the time we are on the water and 20% of the time we are (single) carrying our gear and canoes between waterways. We use solo canoes and we each carry about 120 lbs of gear and supplies, including the weight of the canoe, when we portage. Both my friend and I are former military and this is our annual opportunity to see if we’ve still got it. For lack of a better description, this is Extreme Canoeing.

There’s nothing better than a fired-up client … a client eager to spend resources and energy on doing smart things in a smart way … a client ready for results and willing to do what it takes to get them.

And there’s nothing worse than having to tell that client to holster it back up because they aren’t ready to pull the trigger.

That is sometimes the situation we find ourselves in when our small business clients are interested in implementing social media strategies before they have made sure that the location they are driving traffic to – usually their Web site – is prepared to handle the traffic.

When it comes to marketing their own brand, many small- and mid-sized businesses are working with limited resources.  So a decision to increase focus in one area often inadvertently becomes a decision to decrease attention in another.

Embarking on a social media strategy is a major undertaking for any company, an effort that often manages to soak up a lot of internal resources.  This can mean that the more mundane efforts it takes to update the company Web site can often go ignored, leaving the place you are trying to drive more traffic to looking something less than its best. Why is this a problem?  Because social media efforts are just a means to an end, with your final goal being to convert traffic into sales.

It’s important that the first step of your social media strategy be taking a look at your Web site and making sure it is an effective end-destination for every tweet, blog post and shared video.

• Are there clear “calls to action” throughout your Web site?
• Are your products and service pages current, accurate and complete?
• If you are targeting a specific audience with specific services/products needs in your social media efforts, are those services/products easily found?
• Are your contact pages updated and complete?  Is it easy for customers to continue the dialog that you started with a social media vehicle?
• Is your Web site content of interest to your social media audiences?

Pages that need simple corrections should be taken care of right away.  Any section that needs more extensive effort should be avoided as landing pages for social media traffic.  Once you are comfortable that your Web site is ready and able to do handle the new traffic, your company can feel comfortable in taking its first shot at social media success.

That statement may seem optimistic considering all the negativity in the traditional media right now. But, it is something I truly believe. First, access to top level employees is high and getting higher. Your business gets to be at the forefront of helping to solve the unemployment dilema.

Next, a lot of your competitors are sitting on their hands waiting for something to happen. If you are out there making something happen, you have a huge advantage. I think Winston Churchill’s statement during WWII sums up our current state pretty well, “This is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.”

This leads us to the next advantage. Your business is part of the solution. Small business is the back bone of the American economy. Our own President acknowledges this. So, running a well oiled successful small business, in today’s turbulent economy, only sets you up for greater success as the economy moves forward into more rewarding times.

Now, do I think it is going to be easy? Absolutely not! It’s going to take creativity, thought, planning and implementation on a huge level. Your business is going to need to have a rock solid strategy from top to bottom. In today’s business environment, any hole in your business model will quickly lead to a sinking ship.

So what can you do as an entrepreneur to ensure success? First, get a strong business plan. Plans help you set a course for success. They show you were your strong points are and where your challenges are. Next, be willing to make adjustments based on the information you gather that will impact your business plan and create a strategy for implementing your plan. Finally, follow through with the plan. I have seen more small businesses than I care to remember set themselves up for failure based on their lack of follow through. They have a great plan, but never implement it and end up dying off or just winging it. In today’s economy this is truly a recipe for disaster.

Lastly, as Nike likes to say ‘JUST DO IT’. Whatever it takes, do it! Don’t be afraid to ask for help there are a lot of places out there to get help. You can go to the Small Business Administration, the Internet has a ton of information and advice, local business groups, or even other local business owners themselves. Business owners can be the greatest resource because in many cases, they have been there and done that.

The E Myth — Revisited, by Michael E. Gerber — Why Most Small Businesses Fail and What to Do About It (The dog-eared book to the right is my own personal copy from 1995).

The subhead says it all! As you know if you’ve read my other posts, I’m all about overcoming the small business epidemic (a term that I coined several years ago), which gets right to the point that “most” small businesses don’t work, or fail.

Needless to say this book speaks to me. Actually, it’s been speaking to me for years and was instrumental in the development, structure and continuing success of my own business, Cazbah.

The term E Myth relates directly to the Myth that; I am an Entrepreneur, therefore I know how to start, run, manage and succeed at a small business. The data regarding small business failures in this country say otherwise. In fact, most small businesses are started by what Gerber refers to as “technicians,” people that make things or do things and start a business because they think they have a better way of making or doing things. I’ve always related the difference between leaders and managers to this point, namely – managers do things right, leaders do the right things. So simple, so relevant…

One of the characteristic pinch points for entrepreneurs is that they can never seem to get ahead. Gerber refers to this as working in the business, rather than working on the business. They are so busy making stuff that they never raise their eyes to the horizon to see what’s coming or where they are going. Like walking across a field looking at your feet. You may never get to the other side…

There are many, many small businesses (most actually) that I’ve interacted with over the years that are in a perpetual vicious cycle. They go out to their markets sell something, bring it back to the shop and build it, go out sell something, bring it back build it..(repeat). Their financial results porpoise as a result. Picture the fish (o.k., mammal), above the water – below the water – above the water – below the water, etc… It never ends and they never really grow or get ahead. They just exist like this, in some cases from one generation to the next.