Effective Wednesday, October 15, 2013, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act passed a new rule that states any company that sends SMS marketing messages (texts to your cell phone) without prior written consent from recipients could potentially face fines of up to $1,500 per text.

Have you noticed something different while scrolling through your Pinterest lately? Like a pin from someone or a company who you don’t follow? Well, if you haven’t heard, that’s because Pinterest recently rolled out its first paid advertisements, “promoted pins.”

Ever regretted a picture you uploaded to Facebook? Or a tweet you tweeted on Twitter?

Well, you’re not the only one and California legislators have taken note. Under Bill 568, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and similar social media platforms will soon be legally required to remove content or information posted by the user, if they request them to do so.

Before you get really excited, there’s a catch here. That magic digital “eraser button” is only available for minors. Dang it, right? I guess adults will have to remain responsible with their online posting.

It comes as no surprise that Google has released yet another algorithm update. This time it’s named after a more dynamic species, the Hummingbird, and rightfully so, because its aim is to provide you, as the searcher, more dynamic results.

If you're reading this then you are probably wondering what did Google do again. 

Well it took away a major piece of reporting from all of us in regards to how you evaluate your company's effectiveness in the Google Search. You and I can no longer see what keywords people are coming to our site from. Whether you are a small business or large one or somewhere in between this impacts you. If you are monitoring these things on your company website then you rely on this data to make informed decisions and adjust your SEO strategy.  If you aren't monitoring these things then you need to. Google is the most important source of traffic in any succesful online strategy for any size business. 

When I was a Droid user (gasp!) I still got excited about Apple’s newest iPhone reveal. Why? Because Apple is cool and I wanted to be informed of the latest coolness. I’ve since crossed over and become an iPhone user, which doesn’t really matter except that now I’m even more aware of Apple iPhone announcements and pay closer attention. But Apple and iPhones are constantly in my world, and might not be in yours. So in case you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard about Apple’s big, shiny, new announcement – times two – keep reading today’s internet marketing tips to get brought up to speed.

Double the Fun

Google has once again changed the way it does something and this time it is all about keyword research, which will affect you when deciding how to add keywords to a website.  It has changed the way you and I can search for keywords by taking away the old interface on the Google Keyword Search tool and replacing it with the Keyword Planner Tool.  Change is always a bit annoying and when software is involved you never know if it is a good change or not.

For some strange reason America has become desensitized to the death of large and small businesses. It’s almost like Darwinism, in the strong surival kind of sense. According to the SBA, over 50% of small businesses fail in the first five years. What goes wrong? The death of these businesses is often blamed on a number of reasons including: Lack of experience, insufficient capital, poor location, poor inventory management, and low sales. The scary thing is, a lot of business owners believe their doors will never close and that these outrageous numbers do not apply to them, after all…they are special. Right?

As I was sitting in church on this Labor Day weekend I found myself wondering what Labor Day is really about. 

I know I've asked the question a million times and I know I’ve looked it up before but for some reason I couldn't find it in my head. So in a moment of distraction with my cell phone in hand I went to trusty Google and asked for a definition of Labor Day and this is what I got.

Wait for it....

Wait for it....

Wait for it....

Well that's what we have been doing for the last month here at the Bubble! We have been waiting and waiting; waiting to share with all of you the amazing new inbound marketing tools we have available with HubSpot.

For those of you who don't live in our "bubble" we have been working with HubSpot as a partner and implementing their Inbound Marketing Software since December 2012. We have been, and still are, excited about this partnership, learning a ton and watching the leads roll in, both for us and for our clients. It's been FUN to say the least!

So, what have we been waiting for then?