Looking ahead to 2013, much of the Internet marketing buzz is circulating around local search. This is great news for local small businesses, because it means that the small guys can finally get some love from search engines!  One of the best ways to ensure that local customers and businesses recognize your brand is to focus on local online business listings. 

Well, it's award season for celebrities (isn't it?).  Since many of us will never have to prepare an acceptance speech for the Oscars, let alone a local talent contest, we at Blue Archer have decided to hold our first annual "Social Media Outstanding Citizen" Award show. The name was chosen mainly for the incredible acronym it forms. SMOC? That's catchy right? "SMOC award winner" - hey, we like it.

By now you may have heard of this totally new app that just came out at the end of January as a new component of Twitter; it's called Vine. Just as Twitter condenses updates to 140 characters or less, this app forces users to constrains tiny video clips into just 6 seconds. It sounds daunting, but many brands have already used this video sharing platform to create some really quirky and cool marketing.

We all know by now that adding quality-rich images to a website will not only add to the overall design and user experience but also enhance SEO opportunities using alt tags. Images are a necessity for the success of any kind of website including blogs.