The Path to Poor Local Rankings – Citation Inconsistency [INFOGRAPHIC]

Users are increasingly searching for products or services based on location, putting local businesses in a fierce battle to be the first solution searchers find. A battle that cannot be fought alone!

The following infographic created by OptiLocal - Episode I of the Local SEO Wars - the Citation Inconsistency Awakens encourages local businesses to prepare a reliable army of business citations that will help fight this battle for higher local rankings. The infographic illustrates what citation inconsistency is, how it can negatively influence your local business and ultimately, provides suggestions on how you ended up suffering from inconsistencies in the first place.

By transforming your business citations into the Stormtroopers of the First Order, the infographic puts you on a mission of turning your army of soldiers to the Light (cleaning up your citations to avoid citation inconsistency), just like Finn did in The Force Awakens, escaping the First Order to follow his heart serving the Light.

Social Media, Email Marketing & Blogging: Top 9 Tactics for Finding New Customers Online - Infographic

Looking to grow your list of leads? Rely on these tried and true digital marketing methods.

Social media

Private message:
There's still incredible value in one on one exchange. Reach out to Facebook, Twitter or Google+ fans via private message, and offer personalized consultations or custom promotions.

Group and Communities Discussions:
Join both private and public Google Plus communities, Facebook and LinkedIn Groups that relate to your industry. Build relationships with the members and eventually recommend your product.

How to Make Pinterest Work for Both B2C and B2B Marketing - #infographic

“Using Pinterest for marketing is a powerful yet fairly underutilized tool. While many businesses - especially retailers - know how to use it for B2C marketing, the platform offers opportunities for B2B marketing as well. The question, then, is how to make it work best for your company.”

Take a look at this infographic, produced by ExactTarget, that illustrates 8 ways to make Pinterest work for both B2C and B2B marketing.

Targeting and Connecting with Potential Customers – 9 Tactics

The Internet has transformed marketing. Even the small business can now compete on a large scale and grow its profits through dedicated and consistent strategies. It's amazing to think that we can reach huge audiences without the use of TV, radio, and expensive purchased advertisements.

But the lower costs and ability to reach a huge audience come with other challenges. There is so much marketing “noise” out there, it will be tough to stand out, to find potential customers, and to connect with them in meaningful ways. When you do, however, the likelihood of generating sales skyrockets.

Here are 9 proven ways to find and connect with the right customers.

Social Media Marketing Safety and Protection Techniques

Ever since MySpace, social media has been developing into one of the most important customer acquisition and marketing tools around. The ability to speak directly with consumers, for eCommerce and brick and mortar stores alike, has opened up so many opportunities to make lasting connections.

The sad thing for marketers is that as the value of their social media accounts has risen to them, it has also risen in value in the eyes of hackers. A hacked social media account can result in humiliation, and the theft of valuable information about your company and your followers.

How do hacks of social media accounts happen? Any number of reasons:

• An employee falls for a phishing scam.
• Public WiFi results in a data leak.
• Old apps aren't updated with new security measures.
• Failing to use and update security software.

Those are four common ways, but there are others. For common ways that hacks happen, which you can fix yourself and protect your business and your fans on social media, keep reading!

Tip for Cleaning Blind Slats - Today's Homeowner

Follow this tip to clean blinds easily using kitchen tongs and a sponge.

What Social Network Is Best For Your Small Business?

Marketing on social networking sites has become a standard way for many small and large companies to further their business objectives.

Some experts suggest that where a company is heavily reliant upon the Internet for lead generation, having accounts on all the major social networks including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter is one way to ensure maximum exposure. As a small business, however, you may not have the time or money to do this. A targeted approach will ensure that you know exactly where to focus your efforts and which social network is best for your small business.

Successfully engaging customers on any social media site means that you will need to provide quality content. The networks can be differentiated, however, by the types of content that are more popular on each, with sites such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram, for instance, rather more geared towards visual content including photos and videos. Twitter has proven effective for the promotion of written blog content, not unlike LinkedIn, a platform where business professionals share written expert opinions and evaluate market trends in a range of industries.

To design an effective strategy it helps to know about the reach of each platform and which businesses are more suited to each. Here is an overview of some of the most popular:

Gone in Sixty Seconds: How to Market to Millennials on the Web

Marketing on the Internet isn't as similar to regular marketing as many would like to believe. The "culture" of the Internet has a fairly consistent history of being skeptical about most commercial endeavors and also has what some might call an over-sensitive sales pitch detector.

In no generation is this more prominent than among the millennials, which includes everyone born between 1980 and the early 2000s. Getting the word out to these folks, even in a video, about something you charge money for can be more difficult than it needs to be if you don't follow a few basic rules.

100+ Fascinating #SocialMedia Facts & Stats: The Continued Growth of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ Pinterest - #Infographic

Did you know that Facebook has 1.55+ Billion monthly active users who collectively generate 4.5 Billion likes each and every day?

What if I told you that more than 2.1 Billion people have social media accounts, that Snapchat users watch 4 Billion+ videos per day, or that Pinterest has 100+ Million monthly active users - where an average user spent 21 minutes on a daily basis.

Perhaps you'd be interested to know that 47 percent of internet users are on Facebook and that over 37 percent of Twitter users will buy from a brand they follow.

This infographic from Search Engine Journal provides a snapshot of active social media users on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, GooglePlus, Snapchat, Tumblr, Pinterest and LinkedIn.