There are a lot of negatives in the news about the big social media companies.

While those headlines tend to focus on the leadership at those companies, the sites themselves continue to be a boon for small business owners. They’re one centralized location to reach a large group of potential customers and followers.

This week, we learned about two recent developments on social media that can definitely help small business.

The first comes from Facebook and its expansion of the Stories feature that’s become more and more popular. Now, according to our reporting, you can share Facebook Stories in Facebook Groups. Is your business using either of these feature on Facebook, Groups and/or Stories?

And then, we heard from Square. They’ve just added a new feature to Square Appointments that allows you to reach customers and schedule appointments on Instagram and Google. It seems like a nifty automation and inter-connectivity tool that would benefit service businesses, especially.

It was a light week overall, being the last of 2018 and first of 2019. But check out the rest of the week in small business headlines in our news roundup below.

Management

10 Ways to Update Your Small Business for 2019

You don’t need to wait for a new year to update your business’s processes. But when the calendar changes, it serves as a good reminder to evaluate some of the tech and platforms you use so you can modernize your business and become even more effective.

Marketing Tips

Year End Report Looks at Email Marketing on the Biggest Shopping Days of 2018

The one marketing channel which has been delivering consistently for years is email. And with a record-breaking $7.9 billion in sales for Cyber Monday 2018, SendGrid wanted to know just how marketers were using email. SendGrid analyzed the data from the record 2.9 billion emails sent on Cyber Monday alone.

Research

94% of Consumers Say Your Website Must Be Easy to Navigate

The issue of Internet addiction is grabbing headlines, which is presenting businesses with a new set of challenges as people spend less time online. And when they do spend time online, 94% of consumers say they want an easy to navigate website. This is according to a new survey by Clutch which looked to identify the top website features people value most.

Small Business Loans

Lenders Look at Personal and Business Credit Scores, Both

According to US Bank’s Jessie Hagen, 82% of business failures are due to poor cash flow management skills. Failure to understand and manage cash flow effectively can lead to poor personal and business credit scores. Small business lenders look at both your personal and business credit histories which means personal credit affects small business borrowing.

Small Business Operations

Customer Experience Lessons Retailers Can Learn From the World’s Best Companies

How can your retail store deliver a best-in-class customer experience? Learn from the best, that’s how. Global customer agency C Space recently released its report on the best customer experiences of 2018, and retailers dominated the top companies on the list. Nine of the top 25 companies were retailers: Trader Joe’s, L.L.

Social Media

Top 2018 YouTube Trends for Small Business

Since its launch back in 2005, YouTube has become the premier online destination for video content. For small businesses, YouTube provides a number of unique opportunities, from video marketing for a specific product or service to earning an income through the YouTube Partner Program.

Startup

10 Amazing Tech Acquisitions in 2018 – and What Entrepreneurs can Learn from Them

In the tech world, companies change hands constantly — it’s hard to keep up! I’m proud to say that my first company, WordStream, was on the list of tech acquisitions in 2018. After growing it into a full-fledged unicorn, I sold WordStream to Gannett for $150 million (here’s the exact story of how I built and sold that business).

Technology Trends

New Catchpoint SaaS Performance Tool Addresses Small Business Tech Challenges

Catchpoint recently announced new SaaS Monitoring products specifically geared to Office 365 and Salesforce. The new products are designed to smooth over the issues for small business SaaS application users during outages and slowdowns. Small Business Trends got in touch with Vandan Desai, Senior Product Manager at Catchpoint, to learn more.