Marketing has shifted from a static PR driven world to digital.

Your biz has to be digitally competent to survive in today’s tech drenched world.

The web is littered with lousy domain names: how to avoid this fate.

Great domain names blend creativity and have finite attributes.

• A brandable domain has to work across social media accounts
• No hyphens: people on smartphones hate them for good reason
• Concise – shorter is better (under 12 characters if possible)
• Easy to Pronounce and Spell
• Not similar to another Domain
• No Trademark Violations
• Passes Phone Test – grasp spelling and wording quickly. You don’t want “what was that domain again” on a call.
• If commercial business .com is the only way to go.
• GoDaddy is the market leader for good reason. Don’t waste your time on anyone else.

Content defines your business and you should spend 50% of your time promoting your content. It’s noisy out there.

Today’s “prosumers” (professional consumers) have the attention span of a gnat.

Noise levels are high everywhere and your content has to stand out.

Great content and cool images are prerequisites of digital strategy with these hallmarks.

Remember to write with your ears.

• A great blog post is between 700-1,500 words, has three images, with a conclusion section, integrates calls to action to drive a desired action leading, uses lots of “white space” and font size is from 10-12 points.
• Mobile usage is driving 30-50% of content “consumption” (be mobile savvy) but “brand stories” may drive significantly more engagement: mix and match the size of your content (long or short form).
• Content syndication is critical in today’s “technology drenched’ world: use rinse and repeat cycles to reach today’s distracted consumer and professional. (Note: embedded link will take you to a post with a list of the top 25 platforms & more).
• Personalty still drives content engagement for both B2B and B2C brands and it’s becoming increasingly more important to use imagery that gets attention in the marketplace.
• Content Measurement is Critical: have a finite grasp of these ROI drivers: Unique Visitors, Page Views, Return Visits, Time on Site, Bounce Rate, Engagement, Virality: (ReTweets, Shares, Likes, Comments, Revenue or Lead Generation.
• Mix and match “snackable” short form content (images, video, infographics) with “evergreen” high value content to drive brand engagement, incremental traffic and revenue.
• Build in cross platform marketing on all top tier platforms: Tumblr, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook using plugin like Snap to automatically “push” content to other platforms or pure play content syndication cloud based services.

Standing out in today’s crowded markets is difficult and challenging.

No agency, consultant or “other” can tell you how to do this.

It’s about creating and listening to the market. How it engages (or not) with your content.

As below, self educated buyers are driving engagement and revenue.

• 50% or more of your customer engagement will be on smartphones #bemobile
• The “Google Effect” determines how consumers find you via smartphone, device or web search.
• Nothing is new forever: product life cycles are shorter and more compressed.
• We are seeing a shift to self educated buyers; this goes for consumer focused brands and B2B.
• Content is everywhere and anything: your brand voice gets heard via content creation and syndication.
• It’s a 6-8 second click of death competitive world. Image trumps content early in the sell cycle.
• Technology is embedded in every marketing activity. Tech savvy brands are winning in the marketplace.
• It’s an iterative virtual global economy and don’t be the proverbial frog in the water.

Picking the right social media channel is another prerequisite of digital intelligence and tactics.

The landgrab phase of social media is gone.

Whether your business to business or consumer focused, any social media channel selection should be built on a Persona Profile Analysis.

Blogs still rock: don’t think about embracing social until or unless you have 30-50 blog posts to share. Blogging is still one of the best ways to generate web site traffic, SEO and connectivity with “prosumers.”

Facebook is a must for consumer facing brands. But, it’s crowded, competitive and many of these consumers have the attention span of gnats. So, create stellar content and advertise to generate ROI.

Twitter is best B2B platform along with LinkedIn. It’s a tech savvy, geeky water cooler great for brands marketing to other businesses.

LinkedIn is great for biz focused brands (company and profile pages for all staff): it’s getting crowded and publishing content is now a must to stand out. But, having said that, I’d recommend cross posting your content. You probably don’t need to create original content.

Google+ is starting to get traction; best place to share content and drive SEO results (it’s Google). Gorgeous interface that makes it easy to share content and interact with others.

Pinterest rocks for any brand targeting consumers and the female demographics are stellar. Like other social channels, its morphing to a full blown eCommerce platform and with broader (mainstream and male) demographics.

Instagram is getting waylaid by SnapChat and other apps/services that appeal to younger more fickle demographic; but, it’s “fighting back” with an increase in functionality. Great for targeting millennials, boomers, not so much.

Critical takeaway for success with social media. You need to advertise, especially on Facebook, to really get traction on these channels.

Know going in social traffic is very fickle. We see conversion rates of anywhere from under 1% (depending on the offer) to 5%.

Referral traffic via any search engine is always going to trump social traffic. It’s been that way since the dawn of the web.

30K Foot or Meters Perspective

Digital strategy defines your brand.

Success will be determined by sharing stellar content across the right social media channel.

The land grab days are over via social media marketing.

At least 20% of your overall marketing budget should be used for social media marketing