Nashville, Tennessee has had one of the hottest real estate markets in the United States for nearly five years now. During that time span, home values rose by more than 30%.  As it turns out, businesses don’t like being taxed to death and will relocate to cities like Nashville that are friendlier to small businesses. Who knew? What follows business relocations are low unemployment and the need for a skilled workforce. An influx of skilled workers relocating to new cities creates housing shortages which drives up home prices. That’s Nashville’s economic and real estate market in a nutshell. Similar events happened in San Francisco during the “dot-com bubble”.

Read more: When Will Nashville's Real Estate Market Slow Down?

Over the past year, Google has made several updates to their Google My Business (GMB) platform by allowing business owners to better optimize their listing to attract more customers. The first change was allowing business owners to publish posts inside their GMB listing. Virtually any kind of information can be included in these posts from store promotions to holiday messages to changes to store hours. The next change allowed restaurant owners to include their menu items in their GMB listing. Most recently, Google allowed business owners to publish a business description inside their listing; a feature that was discontinued in 2016. The most recent change allows all businesses, not just restaurants, to include their services in their GMB listing. The motive behind these changes is to allow businesses to list as much information as possible without customers having to actually visit a company’s website.

Read more: Businesses Can Now List Services On Their Google My Business Listing

Over the last two years, Google has made tremendous strides in improving the user experience on mobile devices. The latest change includes the addition of the “more results” button at the bottom of the search results. What this does is it allows readers to see the next line of search results without clicking onto another page. On desktop computers, users will click on pages 2, 3, 4, etc. in the search results. Previously, when users were searching on mobile devices, users would click the “next” button to view the next batch of search results.

Read more: Google Introduces "More Results" Button For Mobile Searches

Inbound marketing is a form of marketing that is centered around digital practices such as search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing (blogging), email marketing and social media marketing. Through search engine optimization, businesses are able to present content that solves problems or answers questions for their ideal customers. In return, the business gets free branding and the possibility of converting new customers into regular customers. However, inbound marketing requires a lot of time and resources.

Read more: What Is Inbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing is best defined as the older and more traditional forms of marketing. Prime examples of outbound marketing include cold calling potential customers, sending unannounced emails to potential customers, direct mail advertising, other forms of print advertising, and any other form of interruptive advertising. With the efficiency of search engines like Bing and Google, inbound marketing has suddenly become the new wave of marketing. But what is inbound marketing?

Read more: Are Traditional And Outbound Marketing Dying?

Influencer marketing is when a brand reaches out to a well-known individual or another company in the same niche and uses their influence to help market a product. If you’ve ever seen a commercial with a celebrity promoting a product or service, then you’ve seen influencer marketing in action. In 2018, however, the term is often used in reference to the digital marketing world and is slowly replacing outbound marketing.

Read more: What Is Influencer Marketing?