The busiest shopping season of the year is about to begin! People who celebrate Christmas, Kwanzaa or Hanukkah will spend an average of $804.42, up nearly 5% over last year's $767.27. Is your business ready to grab a few of these holiday shopping bucks? The awesome folks over at SociallyStacked have created the below infographic that's packed with valuable holiday shopping trends for 2014 and offers some great advice for capitalizing on your marketing efforts during one of the busiest buying times of the year.

Are you looking for effective marketing strategies to increase online sales for your business? With the holiday season fast approaching, now is the time to ready your website for the surge in eCommerce as people begin looking for gift ideas. Thankfully, ReferralCandy has created the awesome infographic below that's filled with marketing tactics and tools you can use to give your products a timely sales boost.

Successfully converting a lead into customer requires a seamless inbound marketing strategy that is optimized for the audience you're trying to attract. Good website design is essential in bringing leads to you, but the nurturing process you have in place after they've entered your site and shown interest is what closes the sale. The infographic below from ReachLocal illustrates the process of how a lead becomes a customer in a fun way, highlighting the important steps your business should be taking to guide your valued leads down your inbound funnel until they are ready to become a customer.

It's happened. You knew it was coming. The Like-Gate Ban. As of November 5, 2014, the policy is now in effect. No longer can you require a user to Like your page to gain access to contests, content, apps or anything else. And you know what? I'm a big fan of this change. At Marketing Ninjas we've always said that the quality of your fans is much more important the quantity of your fans. Here's the thing: Facebook did this because they want people (A.K.A. your fans) to like your page because, well, they like you (and your company and your brand). Not because they like the contest you happen to be running.

Have you ever done a Google search, found what looks to be a great link, clicked and it's a post from two years ago and the content isn't relevant anymore? So you head to the home page of that particular site thinking there may be some more up-to-date info and nothing? They haven't put up a new blog post in months? Blogging isn't a trend or a fad. You don't just jump on the blogging bandwagon. It should be a key part of your marketing strategy. And nothing says "we don't care!" faster than a blog that isn't active. You leave a bad taste in the mouth of your visitors and can pretty much guarantee they won't be coming back. And by active, we mean at least one post a week, but two or three is better.