The internet is changing every day with new ways to exchange information. The information that is being shared has also become more personal and easy to access. This change has been driven by the innovation of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogging. 

The question for business owners is not if they should utilize social media it is what is the best way to.  I have mentioned in my earlier posting, How Social Network Pages Help with Search Rankings, that it is not enough to just sign up for a social network. You must use the 3 C's of Social Media Marketing so that you can gain followers who not only read your postings but interact with you. It is important to target relevant consumers and post information that will be useful to them and make them want to frequently return to your page.

Facebook is becoming the most visited website taking over Google and may soon become the number one search engine on the internet so it is imperative for every business to have a social media presence.

What kind of email do you have when sending and receiving business emails? Is it yourname@yourcompany.com or is it a gmail, hotmail, cable provider or even AOL address?

If you and your employees don't use a professional email address containing your company web address you need to change that as soon as possible. There are a few reasons why this change needs to happen. 


1. Any other email does not look professional. If you are sending a business email it needs to look like it is coming from your business not from joesomebody44@aol.com. 


2. It can also be free advertising and a lead for customers or potential customers to visit your website. If they see the address on every one of your emails it will resonate with them.


3. It is a good way and easy way to separate business from personal emails.


Small and medium sized businesses can created free business emails with google apps for business. For more information on this contact Dominate Digital™.

It has been a while since I have blogged because it has been a very busy month but I am back to give you some more information on  digital marketing that is important to any business' success.


I have noticed that many companies that might have a website do not take full advantage of social media because they believe that having a website is enough or they do not think that their target customers are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.  


Having a website is NOT ENOUGH. Let's say that company X is a website that sells hats and has a website and nothing else and company Y also sells hats but not only do they have a website but they are on 3 social networks. If a consumer looking for hats searches hats on google, bing, yahoo, etc they are going to get ONE result link for company X and might get up to 4 result links for company Y because the social networks will appear in results as well. So essentially a company will gain more links in SERPs(search engine result pages) for each social network page they are listed on.  


It is also NOT ENOUGH to just sign up for a Facebook or Twitter. The pages need to be optimized and updated just like a website so that just like your website it can climb higher in multiple searches. This Social Network pages can act as micro websites and provide links to your main website.


Yes, it will take time and effort but will be very beneficial in the long run to a company's overall internet marketing strategy.  

Recently, Dominate Digital Founder, Gregory Wright was interviewed by Bentley MBA student Daniel Cohen about his entrepreneurial experience. Here is part of the outstanding final product that Dan put together.

The Story Behind Dominate Digital


Dominate Digital is the brainchild of a May 2009 graduate of Babson College. Those who know about Babson know that it is renowned for Entrepreneurship which is one of the reasons as to why Needham, Massachusetts native Greg Wright elected to attend Babson. During his time at Babson, he earned a degree in marketing and was able to take some entrepreneurship classes where he become attracted to starting his own business once he graduated. However, it was not until the summer before his senior year that he found an avenue that he wanted to focus his business on. He interned at an internet market company where he “became very interested in all of the aspects of online marketing and saw that it (digital marketing) really was the future of marketing.” Shortly after he graduated, armed with a strong business background, he conducted some further research on internet marketing all while coordinating the digital marketing activities at a local law firm called Trinity Law Group. It was this experience that opened his eyes as he “saw the importance it (digital marketing) was making for all size companies,” and had the realization “that that there was very little overhead and would not cost me much to start my own company.” The concepts all came together rather quickly for Greg as he now had the idea to create a digital marketing company that specialized in search engine optimization, pay-per-click management, and social media marketing. Now that he had the vision in place, he saw the potential opportunity and went for it. 

The very first obstacle that Greg faced is a common one among first time entrepreneurs in the sense that he found it difficult to start a business by himself. He had to come up with a name, purchase the rights to the name on the internet, think about getting clients, and perhaps the most daunting task he faced was creating a website (because he had very little idea of how to do so). Once he settled on a catchy and purposeful name, “Dominate Digital,” he set out to purchase the domain rights on the internet and learn how to build a website. Thanks to his uncle who has some background in the field, Greg was able to learn a little bit about building a website and graphic design, so after months of diligent work he was able to launch DominateDigital.com. Greg received “a lot of good advice from family and friends” along the way to creating his website, but now that the business was live, he needed to go about finding clients. Since Greg was a recent college graduate when he started the company, a significant problem for him was a lack of capital, so he could not aggressive market Dominate Digital like he wanted to. Instead of waiting for potential clients to find him on the internet, he capitalized by using social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) as well as an extensive network of family and friends to track down potential clients. Greg was able to secure some clients shortly after his official launch using these methods and got his business off and running. This was a significant milestone for Greg and proved that a combination of good old fashion word of mouth marketing as well as a blend of new age social networking marketing had worked. 

Now that Greg had a couple clients, “it was essential to do quality work for them because if the job was done well, it will turn into sales for their company and hopefully they would tell other people about my service.” For a business that does not have a lot of capital, referrals are the best type of marketing because they are free. As the business continued to evolve, Greg found himself meeting with more clients and found his first couple meetings with clients a bit of a challenge. However, like any good entrepreneur Greg realized that he had to be more prepared for the meetings and started writing up a specialized digital marketing analysis for each company that he met with describing what he could do for them. This type of personalization is a rare treat in today’s business world, which is why Greg was able to acquire a couple more satisfied customers.  Greg is really still at the start of this entrepreneurial endeavor and is constantly looking for new and unique ways to attract attention and clients to this young and growing business. 


For a business that has been around a little less than a year, there is no doubt that it is successful this far because Dominate Digital has clients and a presence online through a website and many social media networks. 

Happy Holidays everyone. With the holidays being so busy I haven't had a chance to update the blog in a while. But I am back with some great SEO and Social Media Marketing tips.

Many small businesses are not getting the most out of their marketing budget. Having a well managed social network page can go a long ways in terms of web presence and achieving a higher rank on Google and other search engines.

I have come up with a list of actions a small business should do to get a start with Social Media Marketing.

1. First is to decide on 3 or more social networks that you will commit your time to updating. I suggest LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. However, the networks that you choose to pursue first depend on what type of business you are running. A resort hotel may want to pursue a YouTube site because it gives the customer more of a visual of what the resort offers. LinkedIn isn't the ideal place for a children's clothing store because the audience is older. You should start with 3 and then try to eventually use as many as you can.

2. Update, Update, Update. A facebook fan page, twitter account or a blog will be almost useless if the content isn't updated as frequently as possible.

3. Create useful content directed to your target market. What are they searching for? If you own pizza place you want to write about pizza (duh!) but not just about why your pizza is the best. Write about pizza in general. How it is made, different ingredients, and recent news about the pizza industry. Someone may be hungry and want to know how pizza is made, read your article and decide to buy from you instead!

4. Don't forget to post pictures, videos and links on your social network page. This is a great way to interact with your customers. It makes everything feel more personal and you can begin to build relationships with your customers.

5. Updating these sites often can be difficult for a small business owner so if you find you don't have that much time you should look into hiring a online marketing company. Make sure that you sit down with the company and make sure they know your business and marketing strategy before you hire them.

It is absolutely essential for a business, small, medium or large to capitalize on social media and building their online presence. However, marketing on social networks must be approached in the right way or it could hurt your brand reputation.




*I encourage anyone to comment on my blog entries if they have any questions or general comments.

Today Google and Bing, two of the top search engines, announce that they have added real time search which will feature results from Twitter and soon Facebook updates. Here is a link to give you an example of what I mean by this: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&esrch=RTSearch&tbo=p&q=Google+real+time&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g1g-z1g8


As you can see halfway down the page is a real time results box which is being updated every second with twitter posts, articles and blog postings.
This means a lot to the SEO world and the organic listings. What it means is content must be updated frequently and keyword research must be done often. 


This is a huge step for Social Media Marketing. Businesses who were making the decision to get into the world of social networks have their question answers with the introduction of real time search. Twitter and Facebook are essential to climbing on search rankings. However real time search will only be beneficial to the companies that constantly update their social network pages. Just having a Twitter or Facebook page means nothing unless it is active. 


Overall real time search can be a very beneficial for the social network gurus and the companies with very hardworking, knowledgeable and active digital marketing departments or have hired the right online marketing company to work for them.