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Today, the average small- or medium-sized business likely has a number of questions about how to promote itself on and offline. These questions might include "what is SEO marketing?" or "how can I use the internet to succeed in the real world?" Increasingly, companies who are asking these questions are finding answers in social media: several recent reports suggest that social media marketing will increase significantly over the next four years. After surveying more than 5,000 marketers, the cloud computing company Salesforce found that 70% of their respondents planned to boost their social media spending in 2015. Meanwhile, Forrester Research, an independent research company, predicted that social media marketing will hit $9.7 billion in the United States this year, eventually reaching $...

Houston, Texas, has topped a nationwide list of cities with the most master-planned home sales in 2014, with a total of seven of the state's communities making the cut. Yet the top seller overall was Florida, with over 2,600 sales in one community alone. John Burns Real Estate Consulting, based in Irving, California, releases a list each year of the 20 top-selling master-planned communities in the United States. Last year, around 13,200 of these types of homes were sold throughout the country. The top developer went to Houston-based Johnson Development Corp., which is behind three of the top sellers: Riverstone, Woodforest and Cross Creek Ranch. Fourteen other developers besides Johnson Development made the list. However, sales in Florida also ranked high. The Villages, developed by Vil...

If you run your own business, hiring an SEO company or online marketing firm to help direct your internet advertising campaigns likely seems like an obvious choice. These agencies are experts in search engine optimization, enabling them to help companies like yours improve their Google rankings and attract new customers with compelling content. But how would you feel about this choice if you knew that your SEO company was using a country's tragic event to help brand your business? In the past, this controversial strategy has used events like the bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013 or the Ebola epidemic to sell products and draw attention. Now, a number of businesses have reportedly begun using the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks in France for commercial gain. But does the Charlie Hebdo mov...

A Florida teen will not face charges after posing as a doctor in a hospital -- for an entire month. According to CBS Miami, the 17-year-old pretended to be an anesthesiologist at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach. According to the incident report, the teen wore a white coat with the St. Mary's logo on it and a stethoscope around his neck. What's really alarming about the incident is that is points to a weakness in hospital security -- and to the potential for dangerous consequences for patients and the hospital. If the teen had caused any injuries, there may have been the potential for a medical malpractice lawsuit -- the median damage award of which is $600,000. "If there are no damages it is hard to say that there is actual negligence," says an Attorney from Tapella &...

The medium social media marketers will need to pay the most attention to in 2015 may be video, if updates to major social media platforms at the end of 2014 are any indication. “Every social network has begun to turn efforts towards the improvement of native video distribution and promotion services,” Juan Mendez wrote for Business2Community Jan. 21. Facebook, the platform probably on most marketers’ minds, will continue to prioritize video, with founder Mark Zuckerberg even commenting multiple times that he expects much of people’s newsfeeds to be filled with videos, rather than text or photos, in the near future. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has also launched a 15-second video ad option. Twitter, too, added native promoted videos to feeds for the first time in 2014, and has ...