It has been estimated that an average person spends half an hour to one hour per day on various social media platforms, which amounts to almost two weeks in the course of the year.

This statement should provide enough incentive for businesses to get hold of the utilities of social media marketing; though at the same time it is necessary to consider that social media management is extremely tedious and time consuming. While maintaining the busy life of a small business owner, dedicating time as well as resources to advertise business on social media can prove to be costly.

Yet it is extremely necessary for small businesses to ensure social marketing to gain on various factors like developing connections or creating more promotional opportunities for customers to ensure advantage of business

Consider these four reasons given below as to why you should be using social media marketing for your small business: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/social-media-marketing-4-reasons-small-business-invest-01705099#jMzMGG2ZBxxrD10z.99

Predictive Analytics is making its entry into the toolbox of small companies. Predictive Analysis is a three-part formula- analysis of past performance of situation under consideration, understanding the present and applying the past to present to predict the future. For small businesses, it can be applied for customer retention, target marketing, demand forecasting, and overall marketing. However, it is crucial to ascertain the purpose for using Predictive Analysis, as the technology may not necessarily be right for every company or for every situation in the small business sector. Read more at: http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/News/Marketing/can-predictive-analytics-help-your-small-business.html

A business plan is a written description of a business's future, a document that tells us what to do, how to do and also tells us where we stand.

And a marketing plan lays out the marketing strategies of the business. If efficiently executed, it brings benefits to the business. Megan Totka, Chief Editor, ChamberofCommerce.com, in her article at business2community.com, has shared five ways to lay the foundation for a solid marketing plan for a small business. They are:

1. Define your objectives.
2. Create a customer profile.
3. Figure out what triggers consumers to buy.
4. Establish a timeline.
5. Identify where customers find details about your products and/or services.

To understand them in detail, please visit the following link:

http://www.business2community.com/small-business/5-steps-to-a-small-business-marketing-plan-01236176

According to Andre Lavoie, small business has to perform various tasks like accounting, marketing, the managing workforce, recruiting, operations, etc. Small businesses don’t have a separate HR department, so they ignore many HR tasks like making job analysis before recruiting, employee handbook, etc.  In a 2013 Career Builder Survey, it was found that the wrong hiring cost is more than $50,000. In a small business, due to less attractive job description they can't afford to hire the right candidate for their company. To help small business, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) also has guidelines to differentiate between employee and contractors.

Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245008

Software as a Service (SaaS) and subscription cloud-based software are becoming popular nowadays. But, small businesses should ask these following questions before selecting any cloud based software: which ones are the best for business? what is the cost? and are they better than the solutions you have now? Logan Roberts (Strategy Manager at Entech, an IT Consulting and Managed Services Provider), writes in the article link about cloud software a small business should consider: http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/4-cloud-options-small-businesses-consider-01130318

Nowadays, Twitter has become an important channel to sell products and services and is very effective for Business-to-Consumer (B2C) companies. A report by eConsultancy revealed that, Twitter has a conversion rate of 2.17% while other social networks such as Facebook have 0.80% and LinkedIn has 0.74% when used by B2C businesses. According to Ray Wang (Marketing Coordinator at SmarttBut), there are three important tactics which are to be kept in mind while using Twitter. To know more about the Twitter tactics, follow: http://www.smallbusinessbc.ca/growing-a-business/how-discover-potential-customers-using-twitter