Photo credit: carolsg on Fotolia.com

Guest post by Mihaela Lica Butler

With the June ICANN announcement that the gTLDs spectrum  will be enriched with .brands, it became obvious that the Internet, as we know it, will soon change, and the war for relevant online real estate is afoot.  Verisign predicted 1,500+ New gTLD applications for the first window , between 12 January 2012 – 12 April 2012; but ICANN will only select 500 of them all – who will be the lucky few?

Considering the  it costs $185,000 to apply for a new gTLD extension and an additional $25,000 per year to keep it active, it’s easy to assume that the lucky few will also be the powerful few, namely, those companies that understand the branding value of such domain extensions, and in the end, the PR value. PR because a branded domain is a more reliable source for the customer, and also because brand value is a part of an integrated PR strategy, after all.

Many believe that ICANN’s near $200,000 price is too high, but the long term picture seems more than rewarding. A branded domain is a stronger domain, possibly ranking higher in search, particularly in Google – as the search engine giant is already giving priority placement to relevant brands. For instance, Hilton already ranks at the top for their own brand, and for Hilton hotel deals. But there are also other travel sites selling Hilton hotel deals – and for the traveler who wants to book a room with Hilton, the latest may not be as reliable. Only the original Hilton site offers the “trust” factor, but sometimes, finding these deals on the site is not the easiest thing to do. If Hilton would structure its offerings to something highly relevant, the users, and the company, can only benefit. A .brand gTLD could be used for this purpose, and the new URL could be www.deals.hilton.

The branding benefit is here obvious: no one else, but Hilton, the trademark owner, can register this gTLD – so the brand is safe from cybersquatting, brand jacking and so on.

On another side, the .brand gTLDs open possibilities for those who want to deal with online real estate. Imagine someone buying .travel gTLD. They could be selling any domain with this extension. From france.travel, to luxury.travel and so on. There’s SEO strength in these domains, given their highly targeted keywords, and with the right content, these sites may soon supersede more established, older domains.

Then, considering the costs of registering and keeping active these domains, as well as the scrutiny involved in accepting applications by ICANN, there will be no bogus companies running them. But then, smaller businesses, that cannot afford the prices, will face hard-to beat competitors, and they’ll have to resort to other tools to keep up – namely more online PR campaigns to drive traffic to traditional domains.

In some countries, there are solutions for businesses to recoup their initial $185,000 investment. For instance, in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, businesses can benefit of 80% tax exemption derived from income generate by these domains, according to VAYTON Brand Capital. Here, IP friendly legislation provides the same tax advantage for other IP assets such as trademarks, patents, registered designs as well as copyright on software. But only companies registered in Luxembourg, companies that register their IP in Luxembourg, or companies whose IP assets are in use by a Luxembourg-based business can harvest the benefits.

For ICANN, the new gTLDs are more than PR: they mean business. Serious business, with significant revenue. The plan is to release 500 new gTLDs next year, then follow them with batches of 400. Assuming that they release 900 new gTLDs in 2012, they make $189 million revenue. Which begs the question: did they really do it out of care for brands and consumers, or was this a strategy to generate a quick buck… in this case a quick 189 million bucks.

And if this is the case, why do they cheapen on PR? For a PR campaign meant to promote the new gTLDs initiative, the ICANN will only fork over $750,000 – at least this is disclosed in a Request for Proposals  issued by ICANN to provide advertising and promotion services for the launch of new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs) on July 5th 2011:

The objective of this RFP is to retain an advertising agency to develop, implement and measure the success of a global advertising and awareness campaign for ICANN to introduce new gTLDs. ICANN has a limited advertising budget of $750,000.

With or without an advertising/PR agency to manage the campaign, there’s been enough ink to raise awareness about the new gTLDs already. But the high costs of registering such gTLDs are still not justified for many business owners.

About the author
Mihaela Lica Butler is an experienced PR professional, senior partner and founder of Pamil Visions PR. She writes about the latest in the PR field at Everything PR and is a widely cited authority on search engine optimization and public relations issues (BBC News, Force for Good, Reuters, Al Jazeera and others). She also occasionally writes for SitePoint, Search Engine Journal, and other online publications. To stay in touch with her latest work, follow her on Twitter.

A five-part series on online branding for businesses by Ryan Chaffin

1. What’s in a Name? Everything
2. SEO: Marketing in the New Millennium
3. PPC as a Model of Smart Advertising
4. Social Media: Highly Accessible Advertising
5. Freshening Up: Maintaining Your Brand Image

The proliferation of the internet has completely changed how our society exchanges information. What was once the realm of letters and paper is now the realm of e-mail and electronic documents. Just as the way of relaying information has evolved, so has the world of advertising. Billboards are now sidebar ads and the Yellow Pages are now Google Maps.

For many small businesses the internet has become a boon to their services, bringing them a whole host of new customers that they never would have seen in the years before the web. But, herein lays a problem. It is one thing to recognize the changing landscape of marketing and advertising, but a completely different thing to understand how this new mechanism works. Simply putting together a novice website and then letting is fester in cyber-anonymity is simply not enough. This is where a properly placed SEO campaign can assist your company in emerging from internet obscurity.

For example, you may be in the business of hiring truck drivers.  You may offer the highest quality truck driver hiring services available. Your track record may be sterling but no one will have any idea of your business’ quality if you don’t properly advertise it or if your name doesn’t appear in a simple web search. SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and these services accomplish exactly what the name implies: they help your website conform to the standards dictated by individual search engines. A properly launched and maintained SEO campaign can bring your name to the top of a web search, effectively bringing more traffic to your website. Think about it: when you search for a service, which web result do you usually click on? If you are like most people, the first page of results is usually as far as you get.

Let’s return to our previous example. If someone were to type “hiring truck drivers” into a search engine and you owned a company that specialized in this very service, you would want your company name to show up first. If you have correctly branded your company name online, enlisted effective SEO techniques, and followed up on your marketing campaign with solid services, then you would be in a prime place to reap the benefits of a very high ranking. All of these variables coming together and working in tandem would equate to a higher customer flow and increased sales.

A properly run SEO campaign can accentuate all the hard work you have put into your business by highlighting your products and putting your company name in front of more people than any other medium can afford. The results can truly be astounding: the investment worth every penny.

About the author

Ryan Chaffin is currently a college student majoring in Business Marketing. He loves anything technology, internet, and social media related along with sports and health & wellness. Ryan currently specializes in search engine optimization (SEO), blogging, and social media and believes in achieving your fullest potential on and off the web. You can also find Ryan on Twitter (@ryanchaffin).

Guest post by Alin Ivenţa

The process of developing one’s communication skills must currently take into consideration a wide range of books, articles, conferences, tips and tricks etc., all of which are based on things written or discussed years ago.

As a retrospective insight, the ’80s have put the spotlight on “body language”, “powerful presentations”, overall “behavioral communication” for those demanding economic business growth. Then in the ’90s, we clearly saw a revolution in all that is visual: from graphic design to subliminal messages that get stuck in our minds.

Early ’00s came up to show the World Wide Web potential: ease of access to more information, different resources, new kinds of media and so on. Nevertheless, it was impossible to predict such a high expansion in such short time, as in 2009 we now have Wikipedia, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, newsletters, virals, tons of websites, gigabytes of information and don’t forget about Google which seems to be doing everything for you.

And we’re only a click away!

I believe it’s becoming more and more difficult to address these major players on our global society with “old-school methods” only. Nowadays, communication has reached a sustained and well known rhythm of specificity and thinking “out of the box” or brainstorming your team ’till 2 AM just doesn’t seem to be as productive and efficient as it was 15 years ago.

Why does this happen? To put it simply: because human nature has a constant need for diversity – just think about the first time we found fire: we made a steak on a stick . This diversification usually ends in a discovery which, furthermore, implies a certain process of creativity.

When LinkedIn came into sight, who thought that it is going to be one of the most useful and used business platforms (from contacts to closing a deal)? What about Wikipedia, when we all had some sort of encyclopedia on our shells?

Communication is on the edge of being something different.

Most of us now pay attention to the other person’s body language; clearly, it’s easier to see whether or not he / she is a liar just by watching his / her eyes; any inflexion in the voice exposes a certain level of nervousness, while mirroring will help you in having a more relaxed and detached conversation. And you know all these, because you’ve read it in some magazines or a trainer told you so, or you’ve watched some movies or listened to some audio books about them. And the person next to you knows these as well!

We prefer to write a short email or send an SMS, just because there isn’t time to meet with that person – you’re busy running to get a seat in the metro-train; it’s so much easier to buzz them on Yahoo Messenger, while you have in mind that old “Keep it short and simple!” marketing principle – and you don’t seem to ask yourself anymore “When was the last time I saw him / her?” We tweet about what we just did or what we’re gonna do or what someone else has done, at least 3 / 4 times a day – and you do get that nice feel you’ve “spread the word around”, right?

Basically, we’ve switched from face-to-face communications to an indirect chat over an internet connection. And when we finally realized that, we had already had 5 email accounts created, 2 or 3 social networking profiles, more than 10 blog-posts per week (or per day, in some cases), wasted hours on messengers, precious time given away because we are “too tired” to do something else.

And we seem to adapt to this as it would (or must or has to) be “natural”. But I’m 24. For me, normality has that old-school feeling in its definition, I still prefer to meet with somebody for a cup of coffee (or a beer, depends) and have a nice conversation about everything and nothing at the same time. I’d rather call them, than buzz ‘em over messenger, if these were the only communication ways I had. I love to read a good book and have it in my hands, rather than on my Blackberry and I most certainly believe that the friends I have can tell more about me than a public social network profile. Yes, I do use them, but I do not want to make them the biggest part of who I am!

And now I think about 5 to 10 years old kids… who were born in this internet era… They are all logged in – multitasking – results oriented – highly capable – bla-bla-painful-bla. For what, really?

Alin Ivenţa is a poet, a sales specialist and an amateur actor, all uniquely mixed, stirred and served. He currently manages the South Asian and Pacific sales accounts at Gecad Technologies, developer of the Axigen Mail Server. He also runs a very interesting blog, Reality 2.0 – in Romanian – and I invite you to visit it to find out more about him.