Here are some great tips I read recently in Real Business Magazine. Click here to read part one; part three to follow soon!

6. Put social media at the heart of your business

?Social media isn?t just about marketing ? you have to try and develop your entire business culture around it, ?Explains Andrew Gerrard, a social and digital media consultant at Exeter-based Like Minds. Social media should become a part of everything that you do: your business strategy, objectives, customers, growth plan. ?Develop yourself as a social business rather than an organisation that does ?a bit of social media marketing?. This will leave you in a better position to engage with your customers, and it will drive your business forward and the profits up.?

7. Get ready for the cloud revolution

?In the future, all of your devices will exist in the cloud,? predicts Dan Dobley, marketing director at Google. ?If you lose your notebook computer, you?ll just be able to pick up a new one and start where you left off, instantly.? The cloud computing market is still in its infancy, and opportunities for entrepreneurs are vast in this space. IDC predicts that spending on public IT cloud services will hit £46bn in 2015 (up from £13.4bn in 2010). Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple ? they?re all at it. Make sure you?re there too.

8. Don?t hid away in your ivory tower

?Every year, Specsavers holds 95 retail communication meetings to update our partners on the latest strategies and to hear what?s happening in the stores,? says Dame Mary Perkins, founder of Specsavers. If things aren?t as they should be, she makes sure they?re dealt with as a priority. Keeping lines of communication open with all 1,600 stores has had remarkable results: Specsavers has never had to close a single shop and the company is entirely debt free.

9. When exporting, ask for your money upfront

?If you have a good enough product, someone will pay for it upfront ? just make sure they do,? says Lara Morgan, the founder of Pacific Direct, the toiletries business she sold for £20m in 2008 . Getting your money upfront will make it easier for you to grow your international business. ?There?s no excuse not to export. People put up unnecessary barriers, and that?s a waste of time. Just get on a plane!?

10. Future-proof your business plan

When starting a business or launching a project, remember to factor in how long it will take to get there. ?Technology will move on significantly, and users will move with it,? explains Google?s Dobley. ?Design your business plan for the future that will exist when you launch it. It will leave you in a much better position to delight your users and win.? Google believes the future is mobile, so it now builds all of its apps on mobile first, before porting them to other platforms afterwards.