Author: Franz Malten Buemann

If you’re not sure what local citations are, don’t worry — you’ve probably come across them while looking for a new service-provider, brand, or company.
For example, a few weeks ago, my sister came to town and wanted to take me out to dinner. She’s unfamiliar with the area’s local spots, so my sister took to Yelp to find a restaurant we’d both love. After scrolling through Yelp, she found a Black-owned restaurant called 7th + Grove that had rave reviews.

Yelp showed 7th + Grove’s address, so we knew it was in a busy part of town and could be packed the night we wanted to visit. Fortunately, the restaurant’s phone number was listed, so my sister called and made a reservation. In this scenario, the restaurant’s listed address and phone number were their local citations — and made our visit easy and organized.

Citations can help with local SEO because they allow search engines to verify the legitimacy of your business. If the same name, address, and contact information for your brand are easily accessible throughout the web, search engines can trust that your business exists and is truthful about the service it provides.
Benefits of Local Citations
Local online searches have proven to be integral to a business’ success. According to BrightLocal’s 2022 Consumer Review survey, 99% of consumers used online searches to find local businesses in the last year. In that same survey, 78% of consumers said they searched for local businesses online more than once a week.

Types of Local Citations
There are several kinds of citations for local SEO that could work for your business. Let’s take a look at what they are:
Structured Citations
A structured citation is when the name, address, and phone number of your business are listed on relevant business directories or third party websites like Yelp or Yellow Pages. These third party websites already have huge databases of reliable information. For those reasons, search engines like Google trust them.
It’s helpful to have local citations in directories that are relevant to your industry. For more general directories, like Yellow Pages, you’ll want to ensure your business is listed in the appropriate category.
This makes it easier for Google to understand the service your business provides and connect you to your intended audience. If you’re not sure what directories you should target, our list of 50 local directories can help.
Below is an example of a structured citation on Yelp. I searched the word “cookies” and a local cookie shop was shown with its NAP listed and website linked, all in one directory.
Image source
Unstructured Citations
Unstructured citations also mention key information regarding your business, but unlike structured citations, the information isn’t grouped together. These kinds of citations are typically found on websites or apps that aren’t specifically designed as directories or business listings.
Common forms of unstructured local citations are online news articles, reviews, or blog posts that mention your business.
For example, the That’s So Tampa article below spotlights a new restaurant named Wandee opening in the city of Tampa, Florida. The name of the restaurant is mentioned in the first paragraph, while the location and link to its Facebook page (which contains contact information) is at the bottom.

There is data that supports the notion that unstructured citations, like online reviews, can be beneficial to businesses. According to a survey by Brightlocal, 77% of consumers were “always” or “regularly” reading online reviews when browsing for local businesses in 2021. This is up from 63% in 2020.
How to Build Citations for Local SEO in 4 Steps
If you want to pursue local citation building for your business, here are the simple steps you need to take:
1. Use data aggregators.
There are many online business directories that rely on business owners to submit their NAP directly to the website to be included. Business owners and marketers simply don’t have the time to submit their business’ NAP to thousands of sites. Fortunately, there is a simple way to navigate this: data aggregators.
Data aggregators are companies that collect information, including business NAPs, and distribute them to hundreds of websites, saving you time and effort.
According to CitationsCheck, the four most prominent data aggregators right now are Foursquare, Localeze, Factual, and Infogroup.
To boost your citations for local SEO, simply search for your business on these sites to see if it’s already featured. If you spot your business, claim it. If it’s not already on the site and you’ve ensured there are no duplicates, submit your business listing and its correct NAP to the website.
2. Submit your NAP to core sites.
The next step is to submit your NAP to core sites like Yellow Pages, Facebook, Yelp, Apple Maps, Yahoo Local, and Bing Places. Before submitting your NAP to these sites, make sure they are relevant to your business and worth the time and effort. This can be done by visiting the websites yourself and seeing what kinds of businesses are featured in the directories.
3. Submit your NAP to industry-specific and local websites.
After submitting to core websites, you’ll want to submit your information to directories that are specific to your kind of business. If you’re a home improvement contractor you’ll want your information on Angi, if you’re a realtor you should be on realtor.com, if you’re a hotel your information should be on TripAdvisor.
You’ll also want to be featured on hyper-local directories like the local Chamber of Commerce or other local business association websites.
3. Pursue unstructured local citations.
Unstructured citations for local SEO come in the form of blog posts, reviews, and articles about your business. Unstructured local citation building is a bit more difficult than structured local citation building because you’ll need someone to care enough about your business to write about it. But, don’t worry, it is far from impossible.
One way to pursue unstructured citations is to use Google to find supplier pages. Many businesses have supplier pages that link to the companies they supply or companies that supply them. Just make a list of suppliers and perform a site search to see if they already have mentions of your business on their website.
Another resource is HARO (Help A Reporter Out). HARO connects journalists with sources for news stories. It’s a free tool that works by sending you daily email alerts from journalists. You’ll answer the journalist’s questions or give a quote, they’ll usually cite you and your business in their upcoming article.
Local citations help your business gain visibility online, boost search engine rankings, and improve consumer discovery. Whether you’re pursuing unstructured or structured local citation building, it’s important to ensure your business’ name, address, and phone number are accurate and the same across all platforms.

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Most entrepreneurs and small business owners are familiar with other people not understanding what the heck you do and why. Your friends ask, “You can make money doing that?” Your parents pester, “Why don’t you just get a ‘real’ job?”Well, I’ve experienced this threefold because I run three small businesses: boutique accounting firm Gratiam Consulting, content creation company The Empowered CPA, and blow dry bar GLAMbar. I get questions not only from friends and family, but also from other business owners, especially when they learn my consulting business is successful enough that I’m turning away clients. “Aren’t you leaving money on the table?” they ask. “Wouldn’t it be easier to focus on growing that one business?Maybe it would be easier, but I wouldn’t have my work life any other way. I love getting to expand my impact through my businesses, helping different types of people in different capacities. Working on a variety of project types keeps me excited about my work by ensuring that no two days are the same, and makes it feel more fulfilling because I’m impacting so many people at different stages of their lives. Plus, I love knowing that I’ve taken a very rigid industry and molded it into something that suits me.But this structure obviously doesn’t come without its challenges, especially since I’m not the type of entrepreneur who is willing to hustle for 80 hours a week. When I left corporate life, it was because I wanted to create more time for my family, my health, and my mental well-being. Even while running three businesses, keeping space for all of that is a priority.I know there are others out there like me: multi-passionate entrepreneurs who have a wealth of business ideas and are determined to find a way to make them all work together. For those people, here are a few strategies that have helped me keep my three companies running (and growing!) without sacrificing the other things I value in life.I Thought Carefully About My Business “Portfolio”I’ll start off by saying that I think the mix of different types of businesses I have—and what they each require from me—is part of what helps me succeed. For one, I didn’t launch three businesses from the get-go. Instead, I worked on my consulting business for a few years and got it to the point where it was fairly stable, with new clients coming in 100 percent from referrals and a solid waitlist, before I turned my attention to another company. I think trying to do business development for three new ventures at once would have been challenging. I also thought carefully about how much each business would need from me week to week. As a client services business in a highly regulated (and deadline-driven) industry, my consulting practice requires the most attention from me and is the least flexible on time. If I tried to take on another business with similar needs, I could see myself burning out fast. Instead, my content creation business leaves me with a lot of flexibility to adjust my schedule when urgent needs come up for my other companies. Similarly, I have a partner in the blow dry bar, which means all the responsibility isn’t on me.I Regularly Remember That Saying No to Some Things Means Saying Yes to OthersIt’s an unfortunate law of the universe that when you add on another business, you don’t get to add on more hours to your day. Instead, I have to constantly remind myself that everything I take on is going to take time away from something else, and that means making hard choices about what I’m going to cut.For instance, when I started my digital content company, I knew that I was going to need five to six hours per week to create this content. If I wanted to do that without sacrificing family or personal time (or sleep), those hours were going to have to come from somewhere else. So I made the tough decision to stop taking on any new consulting clients. That meant leaving money on the table, but I knew it was worth it to me to be able to help more people through digital content, build a more passive income stream, and do it all without working myself into the ground.When considering running multiple businesses, you have to be really, really honest about your time commitments, not only with yourself, but with anyone else relying on you, like a spouse or business partner. Understand what you can and want to bring to the table, as well as what might need to change to make that possible.I Make a Plan (With Plenty of Padding for When the Plan Goes Wrong)It probably goes without saying, but good time management is the key to making all of this work. Each week, I sit down and look at what needs to get done, prioritizing things from least to most flexible.Because they are so important to me, I always make sure I have time for my personal responsibilities first, planning out time for meals, activities with the kids, and time at the gym. Then, I’ll check if there are any tax deadlines coming up for my consulting clients or accounting deadlines for the blow dry bar and carve out the hours I’ll need to do that work. Finally, I’ll see how much time I have left to work on more flexible things, like developing my digital courses.Of course, as every business owner knows, the best laid plans never work as we want them to. So I always build in a lot of padding with the assumption that things will go wrong. I plan with my consulting clients far in advance and set deadlines far before any federal due dates. I also try to always have a few tasks on my plate that can be shifted if an emergency comes up.I Swear by Systems and DelegationThe other cornerstones of my time management are setting up systems to reduce the amount of work I need to do in the future and delegating anything I don’t really need to do myself. For instance, creating an onboarding kit for my consulting clients drastically reduced the amount of time I need to spend on that process, while still giving them the high-touch experience I aim to provide. Also, bringing on an administrative assistant this year ​​has opened up my time to tackle things more beneficial to the goals I’m trying to achieve. I made sure to find someone who was also excited about being involved in a variety of projects so they could help across all my different businesses.Whenever I find myself spending a lot of hours each week doing something, I ask myself: Is there a system I could build to simplify this? Or training documents I could make to hand this off to someone else? Often, I find just a few hours of work operationalizing something can open up tons of time to focus on more valuable things in the future.I’m Constantly Revisiting My “Why”Finally, I’m constantly revisiting my goals for each business and my motivation for building them. Even though I’m proud of the consulting firm I’ve built and the financial stability it’s given me, I know I don’t want to keep growing it right now because I’m also passionate about helping as many entrepreneurs as I can by creating content and digital courses. At the blowdry bar, I get to work with great collaborators on a brilliant business concept—I’d feel foolish walking away from such an amazing opportunity. Thinking about this helps me figure out the right balance of energy to give each company based on what it’s giving back to me.I also think that having a regular pulse on why I started each business will help me tap into the point at which my desires change. We all go through different seasons, and at some point I may decide one of my businesses isn’t for me. Or, I may decide to start yet another one! Whatever decision I make in the future, I know that these tools will help me juggle everything, including the things outside of work that matter most.

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At some point in your career, you’ll likely quit your job – it’s a normal part of any career. When it does come around, learning how to leave your job on good terms will be key.
However, even though quitting happens all the time. it’s easy to ruffle some feathers during the resignation process and burn bridges.

In this article, you’ll learn how to preserve a healthy relationship with your employer, manager, and colleagues.

Tell your manager first.
Give two weeks’ notice.
Organize your files.
Finish strong.
Offer to train your replacement.
Write a goodbye email to your teammates.
Express gratitude.
Don’t blast your manager, team, or the company.
Give feedback on your experience.

1. Tell your manager first.
With such big news, it’s important that your manager hear this news directly from you first.
Hearing this from someone else can cause unnecessary friction between you and your manager and end your relationship on a sour note. In addition, you don’t want the news to spread until you discussed an exit strategy with your team.
Otherwise, you may get bombarded with questions and concerns regarding the impact of your departure on ongoing projects without a clear path forward.
Instead, inform your colleagues only once you’ve had the conversation with your manager – even those with whom you’re close.
Your company may want to share the news formally through a press release or an email. With this in mind, it’s best to wait for the all-clear.

2. Give at least your two weeks’ notice.
Most people will tell you that it’s standard practice to give your employer notice two weeks ahead of your exit. However, you can actually do so earlier – in some cases, it’s preferred.
If you’re an individual contributor managing one or two projects, two weeks may be appropriate. However, if you’re a manager overseeing multiple high-impact projects, announcing earlier will give your team more time to prepare for your departure and find a replacement.
The earlier you notify your manager, the better impression you will leave, as they will appreciate having a solid window to build a plan for your absence.
A two weeks’ notice letter is a formality, but sending your resignation information to both human resources and your manager clarifies that you’re leaving the company and solidifies the date of your last day.
When you write your two weeks’ notice letter, keep it short and sweet. You don’t need to delve into the reasoning of why you’re leaving or what would’ve made you stay at the company. All you need to do is include three main elements in your resignation letter: the fact that you’re resigning, when you’re last day of work will be, and a brief note of appreciation for the opportunity.
Here’s an example of a resignation letter you can follow:
[Date]
Dear [Manager]
I’m writing to let you know that I’m resigning from my position as [position[ at [company]. My last day will be on [date].
This was a tough decision to make. [Company] has done great things for my career development. I greatly appreciate the amount of time and effort you invested into my professional growth and all the opportunities you gave me.
I will continue to support the team during the next two weeks and am happy to discuss an exit strategy to ensure a smooth transition.
Sincerely,
[Name]
[Signature]

3. Organize your files.
In the days before your departure, make sure to review the projects and files you manage. Are there important documents you should share with your team? Are your files easily referenced? Can someone easily pick up where you left off?
If not, this is the time to do it.
Think of this as the last impression you leave. What do you want people to say once you’ve left? Making things easy for people will make people see you as a valuable, organized team member they were lucky to work with.

4. Finish strong.
While it’s tempting to slack off the last few days on the job, maintaining your productivity will show your team and your manager that you are reliable.
Humans have a recency bias, which means they tend to remember and emphasize the most recent observations about people more than the ones in the distant past.
If you slack off during your final weeks, especially when your team is working on a big project or if you have several important tasks to finish, you’ll leave your team with the burden.
You might be thinking, “Who cares? I won’t be working with them anymore.” While you may not ever return to this company, you could work with your colleagues again somewhere else.
You could also leverage them for future opportunities down the line. With this in mind, you want to keep your foot on the gas until that last day.

5. Offer to train your replacement.
Helping your replacement learn the ropes of your position will accelerate their learning curve and help greatly with the transition. Why do it? Well, it’s an opportunity to display your gratitude to your former employer for the opportunity and ensure they’re not left lost.
It’s an extra step you don’t always need to take (and oftentimes won’t have the opportunity to). However, your generosity will leave a mark on your colleagues and pay off in the future.
If you can’t directly train your replacement, you can write a training guide that covers key processes and contacts.

6. Write a goodbye email to your colleagues.
Out of all your colleagues, you’ll usually grow closest with your teammates. They deserve to know about your future plans directly from you. Seeing your Slack get deactivated is a sour way to find out.
There are a few ways you can do this:

Send a heartfelt goodbye message.
Set 1-on-1 coffee chats to share the news.
Have a group in-person or virtual lunch to announce the news.

Whichever method you select, use that time to discuss positive moments you shared with your teammates and express your gratitude for working alongside them.
You can also give them your personal contact information to stay in touch.

7. Express gratitude.
The people who impacted your career the most deserve a personal thank you.
Even if you didn’t have a close relationship with your manager, their job was to oversee your growth. As such, they likely invested time and effort to help you grow in your career.
As such, take the time to give thanks and express your gratitude. This is especially important if you’d like to use them as a reference for future opportunities.

8. Don’t blast your manager, team, or the company.
When you’re leaving a job, it’s tempting to go on a Twitter rant about all the things you hated about your workplace. Before you do that, take a breath.
In fact, wait a few weeks after leaving your company to share anything on social media. Emotions are usually high when you’re leaving your job and you want to avoid saying something you’ll regret later.
That’s why it’s better to wait a few weeks, once the anxiety and stress have hopefully subsided, and you have a clear mind.
While it’s fine to critique your former company, avoid making unsubstantiated claims, name-calling, or anything that you wouldn’t want a future employer to see.

9. Give feedback on your experience.
If you really want to share constructive criticism with your former manager and employer, an exit interview is the best place to do it.
You’re able to share your thoughts with an HR representative and dive into your experience in this workplace. Many people shy away from the exit interview but don’t be afraid to be candid.
You can be honest about your experience – the good, the bad, and the ugly – while still maintaining your professionalism. Plus, your employer will appreciate you disclosing your concerns in a closed setting instead of on social media.
Regardless of the situation you were in when you left your job, quitting is always nerve-racking. You’ve built relationships with your boss and colleagues and you may be stressed about their reactions. What if your manager gets mad or frustrated at you? Will you seem ungrateful for leaving the opportunity they gave you?
Despite all these scary thoughts, you must remember that you’re almost certainly not the first person who has left the company, and you definitely won’t be the last.
Quitting your job is a delicate process. Taking these steps now to leave on good terms is an investment in your future because you never know who you’ll need down the line.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

A 2021 Wyzowl report found that the use of video content from brands has increased roughly 25% over the past six years.

Lately, the conversation has been focused on short-form video lately, but interactive video is one we should be talking more about.
Learn what interactive video is, how to create one, and examples from some top brands.

You can use interactive videos for a number of purposes, including increasing engagement, fostering two-way communication, and boosting conversions.
In Q1 2022, we surveyed over 500 global video marketers to ask about their video strategy. Roughly a quarter of marketers surveyed (28%) said they currently leverage interactive content in their videos.
Of those who do leverage it, 8% plan to invest in it more than any other video type.
There are multiple types of interactive videos:

Branched stories – This allows viewers to choose their own path when watching a video and decide what they will watch.
Hotspots – These are clickable areas within a video that allow viewers to discover something new in the video.
Polls and quizzes – You can engage your audience with questions related to the content in your video.
360-degree view – This allows viewers to immerse themselves in the video and get an augmented reality experience.

Interactive video is still relatively new to many marketers with 27% leveraging it for the first time this year. Considering leveraging it? Let’s go over the benefits of this strategy.
Benefits of Interactive Videos
The biggest reason to leverage interactive videos is the high return on investment.
Our video marketing report revealed that interactive video offers the fifth-highest ROI, behind product-related, funny and trendy, and behind-the-scenes videos.
In addition, 47% of marketers surveyed say interactive content is one of the most effective lead generators.
When it comes to engagement, interactive video is also one of the best performers. In fact, 47% of marketers surveyed say interactive content is one of the top three video types that get the most engagement.
This video type can also leave a deeper impression on its viewers. With so many brands fighting for our attention, one way to keep them engaged longer is through interaction.
Doing so can help your brand awareness and recognition, helping you stand out from the competition. In fact, 7% of marketers say interactive video is most likely to go viral.
Lastly, you can gain more insight into your audience through interactive content. Say you include a quiz in your video, not only do you get insights from the video itself (views, time watched, etc) but you also learn more about them through quiz results.
So, you end up getting more data through a single piece of data.
How to Make an Interactive Video
1. Brainstorm your concept.
Before you create your interactive video, you have to build a concept. What will the video be about? What’s the journey you want to take viewers on?
Your answers to these questions should be driven by your marketing objectives. Otherwise, it will be difficult to create a successful concept.
Once you have that sorted out, how will you engage the audience? Given the various types of interactive content you can have, you’ll need to determine which one will work best.
2. Choose your video platform.
The platform you choose will depend on the type of content you’re creating and what you want to accomplish.
Popular interactive video platforms include:

Eko
Verse
Adobe

Once you select the right platform, it’s all about putting the pieces together, creating a draft, reviewing it, and re-editing until you have a great final version.
3. Analyze results.
Once your video goes live, the hard work isn’t done. It’s now time to assess its performance.
During your concept phase, you ideally set some KPIs. If this is your first time creating an interactive video, use your other videos as a benchmark.
This way, you’ll know what numbers to expect and have a baseline to evaluate your results.

Interactive Video Examples
1. Mile 22
To promote this new action movie “Mile 22,” the marketing team behind the film created an immerse, interactive video that allowed you to choose your path and get snippets from the movie based on your selection.

What makes this video interesting is that it doesn’t rely on just the trailer to build excitement. It takes the viewer on the journey of the characters and gives them a peek into how things play out.
2. Sweet Digs
Usually, if you want to catch the latest episode of Sweet Digs, you head to YouTube. However, recently, Refinery29 decided to switch things up with an interactive video instead.

In this interactive video, viewers get a tour of someone’s home, as usual, but this time, they get to make guesses as they watch about costs, designs, and more.
It’s a great way to bring some freshness into an established series and keep viewers engaged.
3. Boursin
Ever wonder what a fridge full of Boursin products looks like? With this interactive video, you can.

This brand reimagines what a food commercial looks like by offering viewers a 360 virtual experience through a fridge.
As the gold carpet guides them through the fridge, the viewer sees various Boursin products and can move the mouse to see other items in the fridge.
Like all new technology, interactive video might have started as a sort of fringe technology that seemed slightly intimidating and inaccessible. Now, that’s changing.
There are lots of exciting things happening in the world of video marketing but interactive video might just be the most exciting of all.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in May 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.