Image by Raymond Yee via Flickr

Where are the business plans for social networking & social media ventures? Do any exist? Really? Because I keep hearing how they're needed, but never any evidence that they exist.

Business plans are important. They help you focus the direction of your business, they give you a good starting point for determining your audience, they allow you to plot how you market your service, they are a tool for raising money. Yet it seems that practically all the social ventures out there don't bother with this essential document. And that's pretty distressing.

I'm still crunching away at Taskerrific's business plan. And I keep getting stuck, and wondering why there aren't any example plans for social ventures out there. Oh, there's plenty of ideas on how to plan the monetization of a social networking service, but there's a lot more to this than just how to make money outside of loans and funding rounds. I really feel like I'm breaking ground here writing this plan, and that's not really a good thing.

I'm sure that there are business plans for ventures in the social sphere, but really, they're hiding themselves very well. Which is a shame! A business plan doesn't have to be a hundred-page document detailing every little thing. It only needs to be a blueprint for a business' direction, its marketing and its finances. Its purpose is to state in no unclear terms why the business exists and how it keeps existing. It's not so hard to ask that you have one.

I would very much like to see some of those mysterious, rumoured social networking business plans. Ones that are more than just financial projections and marketing plans. Ones that actually tell me about your company. That way, I can be more confident that I'm on the right track myself. (If you run a social venture, by the way, and would like to help me out, it's fairly simple to contact me.)

So get cracking on that business plan. It just might help you keep focus through these tough times, and beyond.