With the start of a New Year comes predictions regarding what's in store for the year ahead and Reuters has published technology tips for small businesses who wish to embrace both new and emerging media.

A strong web presence and SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one area small businesses should focus on, because it allows them to compete online against bigger corporations, reports Reuters. Indeed, creating a strong web presence is important, especially for emerging brands.

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Whether Social Networking sites are likely to be useful will depend very much on the nature of your business and how much time you are willing to put into them. There is also the risk that thoughtless use could damage your company’s image (and once published, information can be impossible to remove).

Social networking and emerging websites

Business owners are also reporting that they're focusing on growing their presence on social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. They're also turning to emerging websites, such as Tumblr, which many didn't embrace last year.

Another prediction is that businesses will switch their focus from using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) to Mozilla's Firefox and other competitive browsers in 2011. As reported by The Independent, Firefox overtook IE for the first time in December, as more consumers chose Firefox and Google's Chrome over the previously dominant IE. This is an important consideration for any business with a website as pages often render differently in different browsers.