Flexible work policies, casual attire, free meals and pet-friendly - sounds like today's small- and medium-sized businesses are running for sixth-grade class president.
Rather than win votes, however, SMBs owners plan to offer additional benefits like these in 2014 to help attract and retain talent, according to a j2 Global Forecast Survey. J2 Global asked customers of eVoice, eFax and Campaigner to participate in an on online survey about trends in mobile usage and business expectations for the New Year.
Of all the questions asked, respondents were most certain about their plans to adopt the Facebook mobile app for their business development and marketing (70.27 percent), followed by apps from Twitter (43.24 percent) and YouTube (34.79 percent). Not surprisingly, Snapchat came in last at 2.59 percent.
As for top marketing priorities in 2014, increasing online presence (setting up website, online store) came in first (28.16 percent). This may seem basic to the average Website Magazine reader, but it's important to remember that more than half of SMB owners still do not have a website (52 percent).
Even so, these SMBs are forward-thinking in that almost 88 percent of respondents say they plan to, or wish they could retire one or more legacy business technologies and nearly 60 percent of survey respondents expect to save money by using cloud services in 2014.
