by Cristian De Nardo | Mar 22, 2019 | Marketing
Choosing a domain name for your business often goes something like this: 1. After hours of brainstorming, you discover the perfect domain name only to find out it was registered 20 years ago. 2. After a few more hours, you settle on another choice only to find out a payment of $50,000 was required. 3. After more hours and more iterations, you end up buying a .com domain name that you don’t feel great about. This often happens due to the limited supply of top-level domains (TLDs) combined with the recommendation that all businesses should choose a .com or country-code TLD. But does having a common domain extension still matter? Should businesses still buy a .com domain name? What is a top-level domain? Before digging into the pros and cons of .coms vs. other TLDs, here’s a brief refresher on domain name terminology. A top-level domain or TLD is the last segment of a domain name. For example, the most common TLD is .com. Other popular TLDs include .gov, .net, .and .edu. There are also country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) like .ca (Canada), .uk (United Kingdom), and .in (India). One other note is that top-level domains are sometimes referred to as domain extensions or domain endings. For brevity, I’ll call them TLDs going forward. To learn more about other terms like subdomains and second-level level domains, check out our guide on What is a Domain? Per ICANN, there are currently 1,532 TLDs for businesses to choose from. That’s an almost endless number of combinations. But should businesses use one that doesn’t end with .com? Read on to learn more about...
by Cristian De Nardo | Mar 22, 2019 | Marketing
Nowadays, account security is a major concern for companies and their employees. It can pose a major threat to your employer if you’re hacked — if someone hacks your Gmail account, for instance, he will have access to company contacts, as well as your calendar, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and other private company information. For this reason, Duo Mobile and other two-factor authentication apps have risen in popularity. Two-factor authentication (or 2FA) is a safety process you can enable on any of your devices, including your iPhone, Mac, Gmail account, or social media accounts like Facebook. And it’s a smart idea, too — particularly since the total cost of a successful cyber attack is over $5 million, or $301 per employee. Here, we’re going to tell you what two-factor authentication is, and how you can enable (or disable) it on any of your accounts, to ensure your information is protected in 2019 and beyond. What is two-factor authentication? To understand what two-factor authentication is, let’s start with an analogy. Imagine you live in a dangerous neighborhood, and you only have one lock on your door. Alternatively, your neighbor down the street has a top and bottom lock, and each lock requires a separate key — which means, to break into his apartment, you need to break into two locks, not just one. Who’s safer? Ultimately, two-factor authentication is your neighbor’s top and bottom lock — but for your online accounts. It significantly decreases the risk of getting hacked by combining two methods of protection. Two-factor authentication uses two methods to ensure you’re the correct user. It combines something you...
by Cristian De Nardo | Mar 22, 2019 | Marketing
With all the excitement that comes with starting a new company and gauging its industry’s profit potential or forecasting a revenue goal for your business, you must remember to root these figures in reality. If you don’t, you could enter a market that doesn’t have a large enough market size to convince investors to back you, or you could set an unrealistic revenue goal for your business and burn your employees out. To help you avoid these issues, we’ve put together a guide that’ll teach you exactly how to calculate your industry’s total addressable market, serviceable addressable market, and share of market. Read on to start setting realistic revenue goals and entering markets that are worth your time and resources. TAM SAM SOM Template TAM (Total Addressable Market) Total addressable market or TAM refers to the total market demand for a product or service. It’s the maximum amount of revenue a business can possibly generate by selling their product or service in a specific market. Total addressable market is most useful for businesses to objectively estimate a specific market’s potential for growth. According to MIT’s Global Startup Labs program, the best way to calculate total addressable market is by running a bottom-up analysis of an industry. A bottom-up analysis involves counting the total number of customers in a market (which you can do by adding up the amount of customers each company in this market has) and multiplying that number by the average annual revenue of each customer in this market. SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market) Unless you’re a monopoly, you most likely can’t capture the total addressable market for...
by Cristian De Nardo | Mar 22, 2019 | Social Media
Does social media distract you from work and life? Wondering how to stay focused despite online interruptions? To explore how to avoid distraction as a marketer and as a human, I interview Brian Solis. Brian is a digital analyst and futurist at the Altimeter Group, and author of the book Engage!. His latest book is […] The post How to Avoid Distraction as a Marketer appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner. from Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner https://ift.tt/2TlonrG via...
by Cristian De Nardo | Mar 21, 2019 | Marketing
Contrary to what your friends’ photos suggest, Instagram isn’t just a social network for selfies and brunch pics. In fact, Instagram has a whopping 1 billion active monthly users as of June 2018 — the last 200 million of which joined in the prior nine months. In a time when visual content remains a crucial part of any business’ marketing strategy, Instagram marketing presents a unique opportunity to visually represent your brand, celebrate its personality, and keep it top-of-mind for all those users who scroll through their Instagram feeds every single day. Although they’re few and far between, there are some brands out there — in every industry, and with every type of target customer — who are doing really, really well on Instagram. These industries include skincare, lifestyle, education, shoes, interior design, entertainment, and even office supplies (one of the most B2B markets you can think of). Ready to get inspired? Check out this list of brands that are thriving on Instagram right now, and what about their posts sets them apart. For each of these brands, we’ve included examples of their best posts. For some of them, we’ve also included their most popular Instagram post of all time in terms of engagement (i.e. combined total of likes and comments) thanks to data from Instagram analytics and management platform Iconosquare. Best Brands on Instagram Lego Califia Farms FollowMeTo Lorna Jane Letterfolk Apartment Therapy Paris Opera Ballet Tentsile Desenio No Your City Vans Divinity LA Bracelets WeWork Finfolk Productions Shiseido Sephora Collections Staples (Psst — Want to get a stunning Instagram Story auto-magically created for your brand? Check out...
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