Phil Gerbyshak

Hopefully you're not one of those small business owners who thinks social media is “free” because the channels themselves are free. If you are, you need this article more than anyone, though if you understand there's some investment needed, you're still going to learn something.

By now, your business should be on social media. If you're not using it, you're lucky to still be in business in 2014. I'm going to share some predictions for social media in 2014 and how to get in the game before you go extinct.

What would you think if I told you there was a social media network that had 359 million active individual users (up 33 percent in less than a year) and 135 million business listings, and yet nobody you knew was using it? Would you be excited to use it? What if I told you it was managed by the biggest search engine out there and that they were pouring resources into integrating it into every service they owned?

Many people suffer from triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13. Instead of fearing it, embrace it and use it to your advantage in your social media marketing for 2013!

One of the things some of the small business owners I work with have in common is a huge...

One thing many small businesses have to deal with is people, especially anonymous people, posting nasty stuff about them online. While you can't really stop it, you can absolutely deal with it so it doesn't impact all of your customers who love you.

One of the most important tools you have as a small business owner is the power of storytelling. Your story makes the difference between someone buying from you, and someone buying from someone else.

If your goal is to broadcast your message to as many potential customers as possible, in fact, if numbers are your only metric of success, then don't waste your time with Google+ right now.

But ignore Google+ at your own peril. It is growing rapidly on a path to becoming a major social media force.

It's been rumored for months that Google+ will be out of business, but it's not, and you were hoping Facebook and Twitter would be around forever, so you didn't have to learn anything new. Fortunately for you, Google+ takes many of the best features of these platforms and combines them to make one excellent tool that as a business, you'll soon be able to use.