Don’t Leave Out Small Details Have you ever held a document in your hand and wondered if it was latest copy that existed? Have you ever wrecked your brain to figure out what date a meeting was held? These type of details are small, but may become crucial well after you’ve submitted report. They also make your report a complete document. Here are some other small details to consider: Meeting Attendees List, Location, Print Date & Time (always at bottom), Filename (bottom), Page Numbers (except on first page), company logo (if it’s for a client), Minutes From Last Meeting (if it’s for a meeting that repeats on a recurring basis).

Organize Your Information into Sections Remember that you’re not writing for entertainment, but to provide your workgroup or company with information that they need to make business decisions. A good report will make sure that this information is easy to find, and that’s where sections come into play. Make sure that each section has a subheading that is bold and/or underlined; it can also have a slightly larger font size (maybe 2 pts larger). A good place to begin is by dividing your notes into discussion topics; after that, you may want to add sections like Objective, Purpose of Meeting, Conclusion, Action Items, or Next Steps.

Make It Look Good and Keep It That Way You’ve gone this far to provide for your team, so why not go extra mile to make sure that your report doesn’t get lost amongst other bland documents. Consider following techniques: 1) Do everything you can to have fewest amount of pages possible by slightly changing margins, font sizes and even font face; 2) You don’t have to use Times New Roman or Arial, but make sure that font is clear and very readable - changing font face on just headings is another way to give it a change of pace; 3) A simple divider line after heading or in your footer can bring elagance to a document; 4) Take extra time to set your copy machine to make good copies - you don’t want to spent time making your document look good and have your copy machine ruin it; and 5) Save your document with a filename that makes sense and use this exact copy to make report like (people respond well to consistency) - learn how to make it into a template to use for new documents later.

You can also take a closer look at business environment. Often, opportunities arise as a result of a changing business environment. Some examples are:

* A new trend develops for which demand outstrips supply of quality options. Early on, trend toward healthy eating coupled with an insistence on good-tasting food produced a shortage of acceptable natural food alternatives, for example.

* A customer segment is becoming more predominant, but their specific needs are not being fully met by your competitors. The U.S. Hispanic population experienced this phenomenon in late 1990’s and early 2000’s.

* A customer, competitor, or supplier goes out of business or merges with another company. With demise of many pure-play "dot coms", examples of this abound. As each went out of business, opportunities arise to gain defunct business’ customers.

You can also enhance a SWOT analysis through surveys. You can learn more about your own as well as competitor’s sites and businesses. Areas you can research include 1) customer awareness, interest, trial, and usage levels, 2) brand, site, and/or company image, 3) importance of different site or product attributes to your customers, and 4) product and/or site performance.

Whether using a basic or more advanced approach to SWOT analysis, you are sure to come away with newfound insights. Use these to increase your company's effectiveness and as input into your business or marketing plan.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Related Resources ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Book: Strategic Marketing Planning http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/sr.htm

* Resources: Market Research and Analysis http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/SR12.htm

* Article: Affordable Market Research http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/Arts/MktRsrch.htm