Small Businesses in Canada
Statistics Canada defines a small business as having 5 to 100 employees. Most of the people we meet at conferences, meet-ups, tweet ups etc would fall into this category. Even most of our golf course clients would be considered small businesses. Few golf courses have over 100 employees and if they do they only reach ‘medium sized business’ status for a few busy months each year. 

According to Industry Canada, there are over one million small ’employer’ businesses (payroll of at least one but less than 100) in Canada and they made up 98% of all businesses with employees in Canada.

How do small businesses feel about 2013?

  • 74% of Canadian businesses expect to perform better financially in 2013 than they did in 2012.
  • The Canadian Federation of Independent Business Business Barometer was 66.2 in February on a scale of 0 to 100. (An index above 50 means owners who expect their operations to be stronger in the next year outnumber those expecting a weaker performance.)

What technologies will be at the forefront for small business in 2013?

  • 66% of small businesses spent more time on social media in 2012 than in 2011
  • 90% of these companies post on Facebook actively
  • 70% of these companies tweet sporadically
  • 43% spend six hours or more a week on social media
  • 55% of businesses surveyed have a blog, of those 43% publish a blog once a week
  • 22% increased their social media budget
  • “This suggests that small businesses are recognizing the increasing importance of generating content”

(Information from a study published by Vertical Response in October 2012)

To back up the importance of a blog we found another study by HubSpot indicating that 60% of small business owners consider a blog ‘critical’ and that the percentage of marketing budgets dedicated to blogs and social media has increased from 9% in 2009 to 21% in 2012.

Read HubSpot’s 2012 State of Inbound Marketing here.

So what does this mean for your small business?
Content generated by you and your team for your own platforms will be key in 2013. This can mean a blog on your website that is updated at least weekly, a newsletter that is pushed to your customers (filled with excellent content) or  content for your social media channels. It may mean all of the above. What is most important is that you are generating your own great content, and a good deal of it.

Jeff & Tara Ciecko of CK Golf Solutions write two blogs on their website, one is their 19th Hole Blog where they share personal experiences and the Biz Blog where they share business best practices and golf industry related opinions. They have owned CK Golf Solutions for 6 years.

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