Lytron Web Agency is a web design and marketing company based in the southern Florida area, but it serves the nation due to the establishment of a website. Of course, primarily Fort Lauderdale web design, Miami web design and Boca Raton web design make up the primary customer base of this company.

There are many different services in addition to just building your website that this company offers for you. Of course, in order to establish a website, you will need a web hosting service. Lytron does that as well. Domain registration and web hosting are offered as the first services in the process, even before your site begins to be created.

After the website is developed, making sure that your website gets found is a very important thing. The online marketing services offered by this company will ensure that your website is found. Traffic has to be generated to it in order for it to be profitable, and this company guarantees just that.

If you already have a website, Lytron can help you as well. This great company offers a no charge consultation telling you how your already established website can be improved so that more traffic will come to it. This is a great service is provided at no charge to you so that you can know what needs to be done.

All you have to do in order to get your website built or improved through Lytron is send them your information. They will get back to you quickly with a price quote if you need one and tell you how they can proceed with assisting you. It really is that simple, and you will be sure to get a quick reply with their great customer service.

Lytron Web Agency is a South Florida based company that offers a great web design service in the Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton areas. In addition, web hosting and website marketing are also offered by this great company.

Historically, only 22 general use-approved TLDs, which include .com, .org, .net and a host of others, have existed across the web. A number of country code top-level domains (like .me and .ly) also exist and throughout the years, many individuals not from those countries have used those domains to give their domain or brand a more memorable (or in some cases, shorter) URL.

The promise of more generic TLDs is immense because it could conceivably open up new domain extensions and opportunities for a wider variety of brands, organizations and services.

Still, the entire TLD process is complicated and difficult to understand. We’ve been sucked down the rabbit hole of ICANN and the gTLD application process in the past, and it isn’t something we recommend for the faint of heart.

We read (or at least skimmed) the 352-page draft New gTLD Applicant Guidebook [PDF] to get to the bottom of what the gTLD process is, how much it costs, and ultimately, why regular users should care.

1. How Many New TLDs Will Be Issued?

Still, this number assumes ICANN can process and deal with that many applications in a timely matter. Thousands of applications could take years to evaluate and process.

ICANN says it is limiting the first batch to 500 applications and subsequent batches — or rounds — will be limited to 400 applications.

2. What Is the Application Period?

3. How Much Will Registration Cost?

This is just to start the evaluation process. Additional fees may be required during the course of the application review process, and this fee doesn’t include additional infrastructure fees that a gTLD may generate.

4. How Long Will the Evaluation Process Take?

ICANN expects the first new gTLDs to appear within the year, but it’s likely going to be 2013 before end users see the new domains in action.

5. What Happens if Two Entities Apply for the Same gTLD?

If neither applicant has completed the process, ICANN has a more detailed resolution process in place. The applicants will be given points in four different categories. The applicant that amasses the most points, based on this set of criteria, will win the domain. In the even of a tie in points, an auction will take place and the TLD will go to the highest bidder.

Additionally, community-based applications (that is, applications from an organization or entity and not a specific brand or company) will have the opportunity to have a priority evaluation in this process.

ICANN will notify applicants who are part of a contention set. Applicants can decide to try to reach their own resolution together (for instance, a compromise might be able to be reached for a more generic TLD like “soda” or “pizza”).

6. What About Trademarks?

Users cannot “reserve” a TLD of a trademarked name, they must go through the same process as everyone else. In addition to checking for trademarked names for a TLD, ICANN will also look at similar names that may be trademarked or might be confusing.

Additionally, trademark owners or other interested parties can file an objection during the evaluation process.

7. How Much Does Filing an Objection Cost?

One of the reasons that ICANN is charging so much for its evaluation fees is that it is doing lots of due diligence to try to settle the feasibility of a TLD before granting it to an organization. Moreover, ICANN wants to prevent domain squatters from grabbing TLDs.

8. If I Get a New TLD, Do I Have to Let My Competitors Use It?

9. Will This Have Any Real Impact on My Life as a Web User or a Brand?

Twenty years ago, it wasn’t common for brands, small businesses or individuals to have their own domains. Today, a staggering number of registrars exist. It took a long time for the TLD market as we know it today to really start to open up.

I bought my first domain name in 1999, I think I paid $45 for registration that first year. Prior to 1995 or so, domain registration was a multi-hundred or multi-thousand dollar investment. I now pay $8 or $9 for a .com or .net domain, and that includes private registration.

It will take time for the process and oversight aspect of the new gTLD policies to be worked out and automated. However, we expect that community-driven TLDs for things like .music, .sports and .film become more available in the future.

Yes, actually owning a customized TLD, like .google or .apple or .facebook might be something that only large corporations or government entities can afford to do, but with time, we expect that even that process will start to change, just as they did in the .com and .net space.

Source: Mashable

You can read more news inside our latest news blog.

The independent author, a self-described “niche marketer” who attributes much of his success to his $0.99 pricing model, has self-published nine novels through the Kindle Store, including New York Times bestselling ebook Saving Rachel, as well as his first non-fiction title, How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months.

Locke pockets approximately 35 cents of every independent ebook he sells through Amazon. He has never had a traditional agent or publisher. He joins seven other authors, including Stieg Larsson and Nora Roberts, in the “Kindle Million Club.”

Source: Mashable

You can read more about independent online marketing inside our online marketing blog.

The problem is that, as marketers, we have limited staff time and budgets. Social media strategies overloaded with junk that doesn’t help drive business objectives use up precious resources and ultimately lead to the failure of the entire strategy.

Let’s end the days of bloated, junk-filled social media campaigns by making a few important changes.

7 Tactics to Remove From Your Social Media Strategy NOW

1. A Bloated Strategy Doc - Having a clear strategy is important for any aspect of marketing (or business for that matter). The problem is, some businesses use bloated, 50-page strategy documents as a way to avoid actually doing anything or accomplishing real results. Stop this today. Set a deadline for the review and approval of the strategy document and be ready to move forward. The web moves quickly, and being agile is more important than having a document that outline every “What if?” situation.

2. Product-Centric Content – Social media can provide value in all phases of the buying cycle. That said, many marketers primarily use it as a tool to build reach and generate leads at the tip-top of the funnel. At this stage of social media strategy, product-focused content should be avoided. Social media connections are often only just beginning to learn about your business. Therefore, use social media as a tool for building trust and credibility early in the buying cycle.

3. Guessing – The goal of using social media is not just to get your feet wet. Instead, it is about achieving meaningful business result in a defined period of time. A great social media strategy has clear and quantitative objectives. Another key aspect is to plan for data collection and analytics. How will you get the data to know if you’ve met your objectives?

4. Multiple Social Media Profiles on One Network – Social media marketing isn’t easy. Adding multiple social media profiles for your business on one social network makes your job exponentially more difficult. For example, don’t create a different Twitter account for each of your products. Instead create one, single account for your business so you can consolidate your reach and influence in one, centralized place. It is much easier to build a community on one profile instead of 10.

5. Useless Links – When it comes to distributing links in social media, the links you share should serve a specific purpose. Don’t send people to your home page. Instead, send them to a landing page or a blog post that will solve a problem they might have. Don’t make prospects do extra work. Make it as simple as possible for them to learn and become a lead.

6. Jargon – Using acronyms or industry jargon can be an instant death nail in social media. This type of word choice demonstrates you don’t care enough about your community to use words and terminology that resonates with them. Additionally, search engines like Google and Bing are using social media signals for ranking search results, so you want to make sure to use words in your social media efforts that your prospective customers are looking for.

7. Assumptions – The social web isn’t linear. Just because you shared a blog post on Facebook last week, doesn’t mean everyone saw it. As a business using social media, your reach is expanding every day. You can’t make the assumption that just because an idea, blog post, or ebook is old that everyone knows about it. Instead re-share content over time to reach new fans and followers.

Source: HubSpot Blog

You can read more about social media tactics inside our social media blog.

Using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare and SCVNGR, among other social tools, these brands executed successful and engaging social media campaigns worth applauding.

This roundup is dedicated to outlining each campaign. If you find a particular campaign interesting, click through to the article to read the full story.

1. Twitter + Random Acts of Kindness = A Successful Social Campaign

In its first three months, @EdgeShaveZone gathered about 1,500 followers, the #soirritating hashtag was used about 6,800 times, and attention from numerous media outlets contributed to mounting buzz — all of which likely contributed to Edge’s decision to continue the campaign throughout 2011. Mashable recently spoke with the team at Edelman Digital that runs the campaign, about the factors that have contributed to its success.

2. How Social Media Helped Toy Story 3 Win at the Box Office

Months before that, Disney and Pixar embarked in a wide-scale marketing blitz that covered television, print and social media. Using Facebook and YouTube to help promote the film, the studio raised awareness and successfully targeted demographics that don’t traditionally flock to Disney animated feature films.

3. Lessons Learned From The Old Spice Campaign & Its Imitators

The campaign launched just over a year ago — centered around the theme “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” — and captured the imagination of the public. Case in point: The original ad has garnered more than 30 million views to date on YouTube.

Its success also earned Old Spice a legion of students, as it were — folks who cribbed ideas from the ads and applied them to their own marketing efforts. Mashable chatted with a few of these businesses — who have all enjoyed success from following the Old Spice model — about what aspects of the campaign worked for them.

4. Was the Charlie Sheen Tweet a Win for Internships.com?

The latter is based on the belief that any publicity is good publicity. If you get your name out there, the rest will fall into place. A good example of this philosophy is GoldenPalace.com, which recently bought Justin Bieber’s hair, and in the past has purchased William Shatner’s kidney stone for the free publicity.

At the moment, Internships.com fits the latter category as well. If you’ve heard of the brand, it’s most likely due to a single effective marketing campaign: An endorsement by Charlie Sheen via Twitter.

5. How Barbie & Ken Were Reunited by Social Media

We spoke with Lauren Bruksch, director of Barbie marketing at Mattel, to get the inside scoop on the success of the campaign’s social media components.

6. Sock Puppets & Social Media: Inside Ford’s Risky Marketing Campaign

At the center of the campaign is Doug, an irreverent and absurd tweeting, Facebook updating and YouTube uploading sock puppet serving as the spokesperson for the new car.

Mashable spoke with Kelly extensively to get a behind-the-scenes look at the campaign and a progress report on how it’s going.

7. How SCVNGR’s First National Brand Partnership Scored Big During March Madness

In January 2011, SCVNGR partnered with Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW) — at all 730 of its locations — for a 12-week campaign leading up to March Madness. The competitive game layer of SCVNGR worked well with the BWW patrons, who thrive on competition, community and games. SCVNGR’s SVP of Marketing Chris Mahl says that what differentiates SCVNGR from other location-based services is that it’s “not a checkin-based service, [but something] that goes further into brand goals [and] consumer goals.” The success of the campaign indicates that may be true. BWW was the first national SCVNGR promotion, and in the first three weeks, the game accrued nearly 30,000 players. By the end, the campaign had 184,000 players at 730 BWW locations.

8. The Voice: How a TV Show Became a 24/7 Social Media Conversation

Mashable spoke with Nicolle Yaron, the show’s supervising producer, Andrew Adashek, the social media consultant, and Alison Haislip, the social media correspondent, about the show’s social media integration and why it’s effective.

Your Favorite Social Media Campaigns

Source: Mashable

You can read more about social media marketing inside our online marketing blog.

A Lesson About Frameworks

Dan shared a video on his blog in which he tells the story of the “most interesting teaching experience” he’s ever had. He was teaching an introductory marketing class to MBA students at MIT, and he opened up the class by explaining that he was not interested in the textbook, and would teach them other things. As the class continued and he seldom referenced the textbook principles, his students began to complain with growing frequency that they wanted to learn marketing frameworks. So Dan decided to teach them a lesson.

The students were thrilled and paid close attention as Dan spent the class explaining that there were two important frameworks, FN and LN. The FN framework consisted of 3 principles: design of the product, adoption of the product, and new product cycles. The LN framework had 6 components: attitude, research, image, education, learning, and yield. He and the students had a lively discussion about each of these elements, why they were important, and how they help us organize our thoughts when thinking critically about marketing.

Then, for the big finale of the lecture, Dan explained that, just like all other great frameworks, FN and LN had acronyms. He revealed that the FN acronym for Design, Adoption, and New product was DAN, and the LN acronym for Attitude, Research, Image, Education, Learning, and Yield was, of course, ARIELY. Naturally, FN stands for First Name and LN stands for Last Name.

Frameworks Stifle Creativity

At this point, maybe you’re laughing — or maybe you’re marveling at Dan’s creative sense of humor — but that’s not the lesson here. As Dan explains:

“The point is that we often can create frameworks, and even though I made fun of them, the fact is, we create these frameworks, and at the moment when we think about them, they make obvious sense. And the way you think about it is, what else could it be? And if it doesn’t get you to think differently, how useful is it? And those things that look so intuitive are often not very useful. The other point is that we can all often force the world into some framework without it being very useful, and by doing that, we often don’t look at the nuances and don’t evaluate situations close to each other.”

Marketers: Think Outside the Box!

So what’s the takeaway here? Sometimes you need to think outside the box. Broaden your perspective, and look at the big picture. If you just focus on fitting everything perfectly into where it belongs and following exactly the guidelines outlined for you by a textbook or some acronym, you’re probably missing something, and it might be something important. Dan questions how useful a framework could be if it doesn’t get you to think differently. So take the time to reevaluate the frameworks you use, and ask yourself, “How could I look at this information in a new way?”

Here are some ideas:

• Instead of following a specific framework exactly, expand upon the factors it includes. This way you can build off of a solid foundation and still make sure you cover everything you need to take into consideration in order to fully evaluate the situation.
• Try to view the situation from the perspectives of others, like your customers or co-workers. Compare what you think their perspectives would be with your own perspective.
• Collaborate with another person and see if you take different approaches to the same situation. Figure out what reasoning you’re each using and try to determine what components of the other person’s approach you should incorporate into your own.

Whatever you decide to do, just make sure you keep an open mind when you face your next marketing challenge. Take a lesson from Dan Ariely, and don’t let the joke be on you.

Source: HubSpot Blog

You can read more about marketing inside our marketing blog.

But as the best engineers, designers and marketers flock to this tech hotbed, the competition for the brightest minds heats up all the more.

Last fall, as anti-poaching agreements between top tech companies were dissolved by the U.S. Department of Justice, the door was opened for even more competition for the best tech employees.

In this infographic from online learning company Udemy, we take a look at the facts behind the tech talent wars, including which companies are building an all-star roster and which are seeing a not-so-slow brain drain.

Source: Udemy & Mashable

So, in both types of searches, online tools have become invaluable. But while tweeting out a call for a good real estate agent is fairly straightforward, using social media for recruiting has nuances that, if overlooked, can render the process far less useful. Here are a few key pointers from experts in the field to remember when getting started.

1. Start Early

Simply tweeting out a link to a job posting might get you some viable candidates, but to really make sure you’re reaching your target audience, it’s important to cultivate your personality as an employer early on. “Social recruiting is about getting engaged and having conversations with people before they’re even thinking about you as an employer,” says Bruce Morton, CMO of Allegis Group Services, a company that provides human resources consulting. Morton also suggests that recruiters could “learn a lot from the consumer industry” in terms of marketing. In that analogy, your company is your brand, and the available job is just one of many products you have to offer. Keep that in mind when cultivating a social media presence for your brand that will eventually allow you to incorporate job announcements.

2. Know Your Audience

These days, it’s the rare holdout who has avoided creating a Facebook profile. But just because potential candidates have a presence on a given social network doesn’t mean that it’s the right site to use when targeting them. Debbie Fischer, human resources manager for advertising agency Campbell Mithun, found resounding success by using Twitter as a recruiting tool for summer interns. But, she cautioned that “you have to think about the types of roles you’re recruiting for,” because while college students can be open about their job hunt, more seasoned professionals may not feel comfortable publicly sharing that they are considering a career move. For those types of roles, Morton says that LinkedIn can be a good place to start, because, as he puts it, “what LinkedIn has done is given people the permission to put their resume online,” without fear of repercussions from current employers.

3. Get Creative

When you make the foray into social recruiting, you are entering a space in which both passive and active job seekers are already receiving a massive amount of information on a daily basis. So, to get the best results, your message has to stand out enough to make people take note. Additionally, presenting your job openings in a creative way allows companies to show more about their personalities as organizations, which in turn helps potential candidates get a feel for whether or not the culture is likely to be a good fit.

This year, Campbell Mithun hired for their “Lucky 13” internship program through a process that required those interested to apply by submitting 13 tweets over 13 days. Due to its novel use of social media, the campaign garnered press from national outlets like AdAge.com, as well as Mashable. Even a straightforward job description can spread like wildfire on social networks if it’s written in a way that sparks discussion, like this announcement from a Florida newspaper that readers found refreshing for its candid and witty tone. And if you have more resources, you might consider creating a short video, as corporations like Facebook have done, to present your material in a more engaging manner. Morton says that when seeking Generation Y talent, recruiters can’t assume that candidates will read a page of text, “but they’ll watch a video.”

4. Be Open in Return

Image credits: iStockphoto, SchulteProductions

Source: American Express OPEN Forum

You can read more about social media inside our social media blog.

That’s right — he deleted all of the content he’d created and started with a clean slate. Um…what?

Discussing his reasoning for his use of the scorched earth policy in a recent blog post, Steve said he moved his digital presence to Tumblr because, with Google’s increasing focus on social signals, it was the best social platform available. So why delete his old posts, too? Steve says it’s because he wanted to centralize his web presence, and he didn’t want to confuse Google with multiple sources of content and a scattered web presence.

Only time will tell whether this was the right move for Steve, but he still admits that while the move to Tumblr and adoption of the scorched earth policy might make sense for thought leaders’ personal brands, it might not be the best strategy for businesses. Here’s why…

Why Deleting Blog Posts Is Stupid for Businesses

1. You’ll lose all that coveted SEO juice you built. If you’re a regular blogger, you like understand and value the SEO benefits of blogging frequently. You know that every new blog post you create is more real estate for your business to rank in search engines, and that each new piece of content affords you some extra SEO juice for the keywords you want to get found for. And if you’ve been blogging for a while, chances are you are actually experiencing those benefits and generating more traffic to your website. Chances are, you also remember all of the time and hard work you put in to get your blog where it is now. If the thought of losing all of that previous SEO authority you’ve generated and starting from scratch scares the bejesus out of you, congratulations — you’re a sane human being.

2. You’ll sacrifice a whole lot of inbound link love. While blogging is a great way to boost your on-page SEO, off-page SEO and inbound links to the content you create are even more powerful influencers for your website’s authority and its ability to rank in search engines. By deleting your blog posts, any inbound links you’ve generated will disappear. If someone linked to an article on your blog in their own blog post, that link will essentially be worthless (it won’t work!), and it will ultimately affect referral traffic to your website.

3. You’ll miss out on valuable lead generation opportunities. Steve argues that being in a social platform like Tumblr is more important than having old blog posts, but this is definitely not a best practice for businesses. Old content, or “evergreen content” as we like to call it at HubSpot, can be a valuable lead generation tool. In fact, HubSpot still generates leads today from blog posts we published three years ago. Some of these posts have risen to the top of search engine results and are found via searches every day. Each article includes a call-to-action that leads visitors to a landing page with a lead generation form, and we still collect leads from those pages. Just because content is evergreen, doesn’t mean it’s still not useful or that it can’t continue to generate leads for your business.

4. You’ll be retroactively wasting a lot of time (and burning a library of resources!). Particularly in the world of inbound marketing, time and brainpower is money. While blogging may not cost anything besides the platform or tools you’ve built your blog on, creating, nurturing, and maintaining a successful blog still takes a lot of valuable time and effort. Think about all the time you spent creating the content that has built your blog up to what it is today. Throwing away all that content would be like throwing away money and burning a library of resources. What a waste!

5. You’ll limit social media mentions and content sharing. Ironically, Steve made his move to Tumblr in an effort to be more social, but let’s face it, the content people share in social media isn’t always brand new. Just like businesses can still generate leads from evergreen content, they can also generate traffic and get found in social media through the sharing of that content, too. Eliminating old content altogether will severely limit social sharing and negatively affect social media referral traffic to your website.

In Steve’s case, his dramatic change is only affecting his personal brand, not a business. And because he is already so well known, he can afford to take the risk. That said, for small businesses that are trying to make a name for themselves and beat out their competitors on the web, such a radical move would be ridiculous.

Source: HubSpot Blog

You can read more about online marketing strategies inside our online marketing blog.