As entrepreneurs we can often feel like the deck is stacked against us when it comes to the digital world. We don’t have the same budgets as our massive competitors, nor do we have the army of marketers that they can employ. So how can a small- or medium-sized business, against overwhelming odds, carve out its piece of the market? The tips below will show you how.

1. Facebook remarketing

Facebook is a great promotion tool whether you’re in the B2B or B2C industry. But did you know you can set up remarketing audiences in Facebook? By installing a Facebook tracking pixel on your site you can continue to market to customers who have visited your site. This is a great way to create return traffic to your business blog or website. And you can start remarketing to audiences as small as 100 visitors.

2. Facebook email custom audiences

Staying with Facebook, you can also give that email list of yours a second life. Instead of just using it to blast emails to your customers once in a while, you can upload that list into Facebook and capture the social accounts of anyone that has their email address attached to it. This is a HUGE benefit since it will allow you to market to those users on their mobile devices.

3. Twitter remarketing

Twitter remarketing works in almost the exact same way as Facebook remarketing. Simply install the pixel and you can now target your sites visitors on Twitter. The main difference is that Twitter will require a higher minimum audience count before you can start advertising towards them, 500 people to be exact.

4. Twitter custom audiences

Just like Facebook, you can target Twitter users on their mobile devices by uploading their emails into Twitter. However, if you cannot get at least 500 users into your custom audience through an email upload, then you won’t have the required minimum to advertise towards them.

5. Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards is a great tool to drive traffic to your site. They are larger tweets that incorporate images and allow you to have buttons built into the tweet. They allow you to have engaging calls to action, attractive images right in the stream, and you can even give them special functionality like having downloads attached directly to the tweet. Tweets with images get 18 percent more clicks than its text counterparts, so make sure you’re using Twitter Cards.

6. Build an email list

I just told you how you can use emails for social promotion, but they’re also an amazing tool for driving traffic through a newsletter. Make sure that you have a newsletter opt-in on your website. We personally use a great tool called Drip. It’s free and very easy to set up.

7. Spend 80 percent of your time on the ad’s headline

Did you know that 8 out of 10 people will read a headline and not read the rest of your ad? If this is the case, you should be spending the majority of your time perfecting the headline to grab your audience’s attention – and driving them to your site. Whether you’re running ads in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or pay per click, make sure that your headlines are on fleek. (Yes, I went there.)

8. Blog, blog, blog

Blogging really does drive traffic. We recently ran an experiment where we increased our blogging from twice per week to over 10 posts per week. The result was a 300 percent increase in traffic in just two months. And this isn’t an unusual occurrence. Another company called Convirza ran a similar experiment with even better results. But, if you’re going to blog, you better do number nine.

9. Promote your blogs on Facebook

You may have heard that Facebook has cut back on their organic reach. This means that almost no one will see your social media posts on Facebook. Instead, you need to put a little bit of budget behind them. A good strategy is to have a campaign constantly running that is featuring your blog posts and target that campaign towards your custom audience and remarketing audience as described above.

10. Exchange blog posts with other sites

Syndicating your blog on other sites is a great way to drive new audiences to your site. A great way to do this is to search for blogs that are in a similar industry as you and that are in a similar situation in terms of size and audience. Then, you reach out to their editor or site administrator and ask if they’d like to swap blog articles and you each take turns featuring each other’s blogs and linking back to the site. Special measures should be taken to avoid duplicate content, but this is a great way to drive new customers to your site.

11. Optimize your site for SEO

Trying to manipulate the search-engine rankings is a losing proposition at this point. Instead, what you should be concerned with is making your site look as good as possible for the search engine robots that will be crawling your website. Software like SEMrush can give you a complete SEO audit and show you what you should fix. Spending time on your site’s SEO optimization is always time well spent.

12. Automate your emails

Shockingly, marketing automation has only been adopted by 3 to 5 percent of all businesses. Yes, this number is higher if you only look at larger companies but this list is trying to help smaller companies compete with their bigger brethren. So, why aren’t you using marketing automation? It may have been that the costs were too prohibitive or that it seemed too daunting, but there’s help with that. There are new lower cost marketing automation platforms like Autopilot and Hatchbuck that are great for small businesses. But if you still have your heart set on HubSpot or a similar product, then look for a certified partner, like my firm, that can help onboard you and can even waive the kickoff fees that can cost several thousand dollars.

Related: Generate Traffic With a Well-Rounded Content Marketing Strategy

Now that you have your software set up, you need to ensure you have email campaigns set up for everything. There should be an automated email campaign when someone fills out a form, downloads some content or signs up for the newsletter.

By staying in front of your customers through email you’ll continue to drive relevant traffic to your site.

13. Become a contributor

Contributing to other websites is a great way to drive traffic to your site. I myself write for about a dozen major media site, and while it may not result in immediate customers, the benefits are definitely felt throughout the organization. And our referral traffic from these sites is a huge boon.

To become a contributor you need to start small and work your way up. Also, you need to hone your craft when it comes to writing. To do this you need to be writing every single day. The more you write, the better you’ll be come and the better your chances will be at becoming a contributor.

14. Create a quiz

Quizzes are fun pieces of content that work really well at driving engagement with your visitors. Plus, they’re a cinch to promote on social media using the techniques presented earlier in this article. Sites like Quizzr allow you to create free quizzes to then post on your blog and drive traffic to your site.

15. Host a webinar or webcast

Regardless of your industry, I can guarantee there’s a topic you have enough expertise on that your customers would come to listen to you speak. The trick is to identify this topic and then to create a fun and engaging presentation. Carol Tice put together a phenomenal guide on putting on a great webinar.

16. Create a podcast

If you’re worried you can’t present to a live audience or develop the right message, then instead consider a podcast. Podcasts are great ways of distributing your expertise and are a surefire way of driving traffic to your site — but you need to be consistent and promote it.

When you first start off, it will seem like you’re talking into a black hole and no one is listening to you. But if you stay persistent and promote your podcast on social media, your audience will grow and your future episodes will gain more and more listeners.

Another great trick to getting a boost in your podcast audience is to invite a guest that has a large social following and asking them to help you promote it. You’d be surprised who would say yes to joining your podcast, if you only ask them.

Zach Cutler put together a great article on getting your podcast off the ground.

17. Find partners in your industry

There are usually dozens of partnership opportunities for any business out there. The trick is to find those partners and establish a working relationship. To give an example of this, we signed up as a partner for Unbounce. They’re a landing page creation software that helps companies optimize their marketing campaigns. It was free to sign up as a partner and they then featured us in their partner section and allowed us to do a little write up on our firm. Before you knew it we were getting leads from their site and it’s been a great source of traffic for us.

Most undertakings will do well with simply covering the nuts and bolts, yet others should burrow more profound to discover substance to best depict the organization and give sufficient data to your user base.It is imperative to locate an appropriate educational parity (a lot of versus insufficient) to guarantee that clients will discover what they are searching for in only a few moments without being overpowered.

Content accumulation is the most imperative piece of outlining a site and other extended activities. It can have the most noteworthy potential for troubles and is the single most prominent deferral in making a standard business site.

Subsequent to your site should be a finished representation of your business, your message and your image; it is imperative to be extraordinarily careful in social event content for your site.

For some exceptional destinations, you might require more noteworthy expert help, however for most activities, you and you’re existing representatives can accumulate content and submit it to EBD for association and usage on your site.

Giving crude substance to use on your webpage is the most economical course as our Website Packages do exclude extra time spent finding content. While 1-3 sections of duplicate accompany the vast majority of our bundles, propelled duplicate written work does not.

Thoughts to offer you some assistance with gathering content for your site

Distinguish your essential objective of the site. Go past unimportant advancement, what should your site really do to serve your clients?

Distinguish Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. The responses to these inquiries will lead you to the most pertinent substance of your site, the things that should be highlighted. For a ton of locales, this data and a couple photos are all that is required.

Portray in a couple passages your organizations ‘story’. Review its beginning, development, where you are today and most particularly why that offers you some assistance with succeeding.

Discover special identifiers about your organization. Venture into what separates you. Now and again this idea can initiate a promoting effort.

Assemble a rundown of testimonials from present or past clients.

Assemble worker bios and photos to put an individual face to what your organization is about.

Assemble your latest printed promoting materials, for example, pamphlets or notices.

Tie in your latest publicizing effort, incorporate significant substance or consider growing the crusade to the web.

Assemble all official statements, photographs of appearances, recompenses, productions, recordings or whatever other material you or another media outlet has distributed about you or your business.

Gather data about any conceivable philanthropy work.

Incorporate general data about your industry. Consider written work industry particular articles or articles disclosing your industry to your clients.

Incorporate any conceivable data on how your business has ‘practiced environmental awareness’.

Set up a Facebook account which is looked after every now and again. It will offer you some assistance with being so as to grow your client base more noticeable to new individuals and reconnecting with existing clients. The potential for nothing or economical publicizing here is verging on vast. It additionally gives numerous gadgets to offer you some assistance with connecting with your clients specifically from your site. On the off chance that you have membership administrations, you can permit them to sign into your site with their Facebook account which enormously builds the possibility of rehash guests.

On the off chance that you have more seasoned articles, pamphlets or photos with applicable information, think about making as a file or database to make that data publically accessible.

Items – in the event that you have items you incorporate on your website (regardless of the possibility that you don’t plan to offer them online) – every thing ought to incorporate as much data as important to offer it. Precisely what is fitting might differ from business to business. Clear, energetic and brilliant photos dependably help incredibly. Never depend on a camera telephone and it is ideal to have no photos than low quality ones.

Attempt to build up if a serialized posting of data would advantage your organization, then set up a site to distribute the data. It can differ from industry to industry and requires propelled research. This aides your SEO and in addition accommodates “free” publicizing for your organization. Each new article included gives your site more clout in web index rankings, and after some time – with a little exertion you can command certain catchphrases in Google and other internet searchers.

In the event that you offer things from makers or suppliers get in touch with them to check whether they have any ‘seller bundles’ or offer free computerized data to post on your destinations. Numerous producers have broad data accessible on the off chance that you do a touch of burrowing.

Accumulate outer connections that advance your industry or organization, for example, fan locales of an idea your business utilizes or fan destinations of comparable standards that are important to your business. Particularly incorporate any investigative information that demonstrates why your item, thought or brand might be better than the option.

Any archives individuals may should have the capacity to download, similar to paper shapes or client manuals.

Find important outer gadgets you might use to have the capacity to give dynamic breakthrough data, for example, a news or climate gadget. More gadgets are discharged each day from numerous organizations, and can pull in and keep clients ‘on location’ longer.

SEO friendly structure – Website designed in WordPress platform easily gets indexed on search engines and helps in improving ranking.   Your website is likely to get ranked for your business related key words and can get traffic of targeted audience!

Online reputation management  is a set of actions that must be done before and after a communication crisis event, to protect a brand, a person, or an organization from reputation damage. Here are the steps that you must follow to prepare yourself for a crisis event:

Protecting the reputation of a brand has become a difficult task. Internet has made it possible for customers to talk directly both to the companies and to their audience by using social networks and other online channels. As a result negative comments for a particular brand can affect the online reputation of the company and if they are not handled properly they can lead to “no control” situations. In this post, we will share with you 10 steps on how to deal with online reputation management for a brand or organization.

1. Be prepared

The subjects of online reputation management have to be prepared to react on any possible reputation damage. This can be achieved by defining a crisis team to co-operate fast and effectively when the crisis event occurs and efficiently manage the online buzz.

2. Define spokesperson & Channel

Make sure you define the spokesperson and the media that you are going to use. It is very important this person to be trained (media training) to speak to the public and to respond to questions from the press. It may sounds “traditional media” but this person can reply with a blog post, a tweet or even a video on youtube.

3. Publicity list

The Publicity list is a very important tool for every communication professional. It must be kept up-to-date and include the channels related to the industry and the general sector, the on and offline channels, the bloggers and the other opinion leaders of your field etc.

4. List the possible risks

Create a list of all possible risks drawing different scenarios for each case depending on your industry field. For this, you can brainstorm with the heads of all departments of the organization or to advise an insurance consultant.

5. Allocate a budget for crisis event

During the communication crisis event it is certain that you will need additional funds. They can be used for various services, including renting meeting rooms or using press release distribution services or placing ads on news portals.

6. Brand monitoring

Brand monitoring is the second most important step, after the preparation because it will help you protect your image. Daily monitoring will help you identify a communication crisis from its start. There are millions of tools for brand monitoring across the web, covering news and other websites along with social media conversations. One of the tools that have been released recently is the Brand Watch. Brand Watch is a very user-friendly and easy to use tool that allows you to monitor conversations across the web and evaluate your social media reach.

Nevertheless if you can’t afford a brand monitoring tool, you can simply do a search using your brand name as a query and read on daily basis  all the industry news along with the CGM (customer generated media) of your field (i.e forums or product-review websites). This is more time consuming but still it will help you detect a communication crisis from its start.

7. Reputation management and Search results

Within online environment, all brands have a common threat: the fast moving news and the fast indexing of Google. Since there is no way to ask Google to remove negative content for your brand (because it is useful for the customers), you can “push” the negative results down by sharing your position before and after the communication event. On the one hand you have to upload your positive content proactively and on the other hand you must respond to people and to the questions of the press and also share the honest truth and your brand’s official statement.

8. Blogger relations

Same as conventional media relations, bloggers are the “journalists” that will probably cover your story and influence your audience. Create a list of the most important ones and build long term relations sending them information and exclusive news about your brand.

9. Share proactive content

Share your brand’s story in various types of media. Make sure you use the official website, social networks, email campaigns and press releases.

10. Setup accounts for communication services

Create accounts for communication services including an Adwords account along with online press release distribution services. This is very important task that will enable your “crisis team” to act effectively and place the official voice of the brand or organization, a step ahead of the press.

Communication crisis and reputation damage are terms that should be very clear to your communication team. During a crisis event all negative publicity can and will communicate the wrong messages for the brand or the organization. The key to take advantage of the online environment is to be prepared and to react as soon as possible. Finally don`t forget that SEO, Press Releases, Ads and Social Media are tools that can help you reach your audience and resolve the crisis, thus make sure you use them properly.

Content marketing is more than advertising, it is all about showing your customers who you are, rather than just telling them. 

It has transformed the way businesses interact with their customers. Since the rise of social media, brands now have to become closer and more communicative with their customers if they want their loyalty and trust in return.

Simply broadcasting advertising messages is no longer the only strategy available and it’s not advisable if your customer has made the effort of including you in their ‘social’ circle. Today – it is important to give out advice, engaging stories and information that is of genuine use or interest.
Whilst there are many companies still adjusting to the idea as well as the effort required to create content, because they cannot always quantify the ROI on the process, here are some reasons why content marketing is important:

• It makes your brand an authority
  Quality content delivered on a regular basis makes your brand an authority on your subject. Being an authority is important as it builds trust and trust is something that customers make purchasing decisions on.
• You get to know your customers
  Content – when delivered through social media allows for feedback. It means you can gauge your customers’ attitude and get to know their needs and demographic better. Content at its best can inspire discussion, allegiance, provoke thought and get everyone talking.
• It builds a community of loyal customers
  Giving good free information out can build a tightly-connected community of customers who are loyal to your brand which they have chosen to follow. By giving your customer community valued content for following you, they have a reason to invest time in your brand. If you publish content at regular intervals, followers effectively ‘check-in’ with your brand.
• Generating content improves SEO
  Here’s one that we know all too well at Varn. Good quality content is gold for SEO. If you decide to generate a blog with quality content and connect it to your brand this can have positive repercussions. Long gone are the days of writing poor quality keyword-loaded copy on websites and blogs. Context, meaning and genuinely good, relevant writing will not only be picked up by customers for a read but also by search engines as a preferred ranking.
• Content adds value
  There is a new rule in business – that whatever business you are, you now need to also be a publisher to be competitive. People expect your business, your website and your brand ambassadors (whether that’s managers, staff, hired freelancers or even customers) to deliver insight or entertain. People want to go to your website and social media because they get something worthwhile back from the experience. Using video for short films, posting amusing pictures, delivering handy and helpful guides will make your website worth returning to as a routine.

Keyword Analysis is the lifeblood of search engine optimization. Finding the right words to include in your on-page content and your META data (the information search engines use to populate search result snippets) is key to your online success.

Using the Target Model in Your Keyword Research

1. Research your audience. What terms does your audience use to describe your products or services? What other relevant terms do they use in their day-to-day lives? Look at blog posts and comments, forums, LinkedIn groups, and your own support requests.2. Find the search terms in use now. Use your analytics tool, Google Webmaster tools, and your weblogs to see what search terms people are using to get to you. If you have access to data on your internal site search, look at those terms to see what people are looking for.

3. Get some suggestions. Soovie is a tool that lets you enter a keyword and see what the top autocompletes are for a number of different search engines and other sites. It’s not worth running every keyword through Soovie, but you might try a couple to see if you missed anything.

4. Check out the competition. Tools such as SpyFu or SEM Rush let you see what competitors are bidding on. As with Soovie, there’s no need to spend hours on these sites. But it can be helpful to put in a few competitor names or key terms to see if there’s anything you didn’t think of.

Why do so many people around the globe use Google Analytics? There are many more tools available. What does Google say about their product? Let’s take a look:

“Google Analytics not only lets you measure sales and conversions, but also gives you fresh insights into how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site, and how you can keep them coming back.”

I started working with Google Analytics in the early days. Not only do I use Google Analytics on personal websites, but also in my daily job to measure, analyze and optimize client sites.

In this article I provide you with 25 reasons for using Google Analytics.

• Relatively easy basic setup; a basic implementation is easy compared to tools from many other vendors. However, in order to fully benefit from all the features of Google Analytics, deeper knowledge is required.
• FREE to use; you don’t have to pay any (monthly) fees for using this product. This way you can invest a decent budget in resources, instead of only/mainly in tools.
• Documentation available on almost every aspect; on both the implementation as well as the configuration part thorough documentation is available. This Google Analytics Tracking code library is a great start.
• Intuitive tool; set aside some time and you will soon understand the interface, the different report sets and how to work with the tool.
• Powerful customizable reports; create your own reports with an easy drag and drop interface. Add many different dimensions and metrics in one report.
• Great Analytics API; for more advanced users, you will love the Google Analytics API.
• Handy way of tracking campaigns; you can literally track any campaign that is driving traffic to your website. In order to get this right, you have to understand how to work with utm parameters.
• Integration of WMT; it’s easy to connect your Webmaster Tool data to Google Analytics. For anyone serious about SEO, this information is great.
• Lots of great add ons available; add ons can make your Google Analytics implementation, configuration and monitoring life a lot easier. Check out this great list of 12 Google Analytics add ons.
• Send reports periodically via email; it may be useful for you to send out powerful custom reports to clients or internal stakeholders.
• Easy to connect to other tools; I am a huge fan of exporting data and automatically building reports & dashboards via Next Analytics. And there are many more ways to automate data reporting and uncover insights more easily.
• Export to Excel at a breeze; the data export function works flawlessly and the opportunities are endless.
• Setup custom alerts to save you time; uncover insights more easily.
• Easy use of annotations; you can add private or shared annotations. In this way the data gets more meaning and causalities can be shared on the surface.
• Ability to measure internal site search; know what people on your website are searching for. Make effective changes to your navigation and product offers.
• Advanced segments for ad hoc analysis; powerful on the fly analysis on a group of visitors.
• Setup profiles for long term segmentation analysis; you can choose to exclude ‘own’ traffic, focus on certain traffic channels, include only traffic from a specific region etc.
• Powerful real time reporting; great way to get direct feedback on campaigns you are running. Very effective when testing implementations.
• Powerful integration with AdWords; it takes a few steps, but it’s worth it. Many insights on your AdWords campaigns are waiting for you in Google Analytics.
• A large group of specialized consultants to offer help; Google Analytics has an enormous network of qualified consultants around the globe. So in case you need help, it is easy to find someone who can assist you.
• New features added periodically; the Web Analytics package has evolved to become a high-end solution for small, medium and large (multinational) companies.
• Monitor your mobile and tablet traffic; it is easy to see how your mobile and tablet traffic is growing and whether this visitors segment is converting or not.
• Easy testing via experiments; if you want to try out testing, start with experiments in Google Analytics. Later on you can choose to invest in a paid solution.
• Easy integration with survey and testing tools; great to enhance your quantitative data with other data from tools like Qualaroo, 4Q survey, Google Website Optimizer and Visual Website Optimizer.

Content Management System – We design your website in WordPress platform. It’s a most popular Content Management System (CMS) in world. Once the website is ready, you can manage contents of your website through web browser. You can add, modify or delete the contents of your website very easily. There would not be any dependency on any third party web company or developer.

B2B Marketing Horizon Web Technologies Akola

There are many similarities between B2B and B2C when it comes to e-commerce. Some of these overlaps are easy to spot: key elements like intuitive search, high-quality product images, and the need for simple navigation.

However, due to challenges such as longer buying cycles, higher volume sales, lower price points, and multiple decision makers, the path to B2B success requires a subtly different approach than plain-old B2C strategies.

In fact, there are at least four commonly overlooked factors that — if harnessed correctly — can elevate you to B2B e-commerce domination.

Not surprisingly, each of these factors is rooted in B2C best practices. But what matters is how you augment, correct, and — in some cases — supercharge those B2C building blocks for a B2B audience.

what is B2B marketing?

B2B describes business transactions between businesses, say, between a retailer and a wholesaler, or a wholesaler and a manufacturer. This can be contrasted with business-to-consumer (B2C) businesses, which basically involves commerce transactions between a business and a consumer or end user.

The overall volume of B2B transactions is substantially higher compared with the volume of B2C transactions. The main reason is that in a typical supply chain, there are many B2B transactions involving raw materials and sub components, and just one B2C transaction, specifically the sale of the finished product to the consumer or end customer.

B2B marketing is thus about attaining the needs of other businesses, although ultimately the demand for these products and services made by these businesses are likely to be driven by their consumers in their homes.

B2B marketing webmasterkey akola

Is B2B marketing really different from B2C marketing? A fair question. After all, B2B marketers share many concerns with their B2C counterparts. Both groups deal with product distribution, branding, development, and promotion. In addition, the line between B2C and B2B marketing is often blured. For instance, Dell Computers successfully markets to both audiences.

But yes, real differences exist between B2B and B2C marketing. Here are ten main factors that make B2B markets special as well as so different to consumer markets.

 B2B markets usually have a decision-making unit that is more complex

In many households, even the most complex decisions (such as moving to a new house or where the children will go to college) are confined to the entire family unit, but items such as food, clothes, or cigarettes are usually decided by just one person.  In B2B markets, the decision making unit (DMU) is highly complex—or at least the DMU has the potential to be so.

Buying low-risk and low-value products (say, the ubiquitous paper clip) may very well be the duty and responsibility of the office junior.  However, buying a new plant or office that is important to a business may very well involve a large management team that will make the decision over a certain time period. The DMU at any point is often ephemeral—specialists come in and leave to make their various contributions and, of course, at some point people leave the organization or shift jobs far more frequently than they modify family unit.

This dynamism and complexity has several implications for B2B markets. The target audiences for the B2B communications are regarded as amorphous, made up of groups or teams of constantly changing individuals that have different interests and motivations.  Buyers would want a good financial deal. Production managers prefer high throughput. Health and safety executives want prefer low risk. These are just their functional, simple, needs. Each individual who is party to the DMU will likewise bring their psychological and cultural baggage to the group’s decision and this will create interesting variations to the selection of suppliers and products.

B2B purchases can be divided into four categories based on their financial value as well as the level of business risk that is associated with the purchase.

• Low-risk, low-value acquisitions are considered least distinct from consumer purchases. These often involve just one, usually junior person. There is little business or financial risk involved in case the decision is wrong, meaning the thought that goes into the decision is relatively little.
• Low-risk, high-value purchases such as raw materials usually involve a combination of technical and purchasing personnel, and usually very senior people like board members. This complexity is needed to ensure that price can be brought down without affecting quality. Purchasing personnel are usually key decision makers of a company on a transaction-by-transaction basis, aided by the more technical employees, who in turn would review suppliers periodically.
• Low-value, high-risk acquisitions like office insurance would similarly need a combination of specialists and purchasers. As the “risk” is more in the product rather than the price itself, and as each business transaction is likely to be unique, an expert (or even probably an in-house legal expert) would probably be the key decision maker.
• High-value, high-risk acquisitions are considered the most distinct from all consumer purchases, with a huge number of senior decision makers assessing a wide range of purchase criteria. For plant equipment for example, expect a CFO, CEO, R&D Director, Production Director, Head of Legal Department, Purchasing Director, and some upper-management department heads to be part of the decision-making process.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)  is a nonprofit organization that is responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces of the Internet – thereby ensuring the network’s stable and secure operation. ICANN performs the actual technical maintenance work of the central Internet address pools and DNS Root registries pursuant to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function contract.

Much of its work has concerned the Internet’s global Domain Name System, including policy development for internationalization of the DNS system, introduction of new generic top-level domains (TLDs), and the operation of root name servers. The numbering facilities ICANN manages include the Internet Protocol address spaces for IPv4 and IPv6, and assignment of address blocks to regional Internet registries. ICANN also maintains registries of Internet protocol identifiers.

ICANN’s primary principles of operation have been described as helping preserve the operational stability of the Internet; to promote competition; to achieve broad representation of the global Internet community; and to develop policies appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.

ICANN was created on September 18, 1998, and incorporated on September 30, 1998 in the state of California. It is headquartered in the Playa Vista neighborhood of the city of Los Angeles.

Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP)

One task that ICANN was asked to do was to address the issue of domain name ownership resolution for generic top-level domains (gTLDs). ICANN’s attempt at such a policy was drafted in close cooperation with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the result has now become known as the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). This policy essentially attempts to provide a mechanism for rapid, cheap and reasonable resolution of domain name conflicts, avoiding the traditional court system for disputes by allowing cases to be brought to one of a set of bodies that arbitrate domain name disputes. According to ICANN policy, a domain registrant must agree to be bound by the UDRP—they cannot get a domain name without agreeing to this.

Examination of the UDRP decision patterns has caused some to conclude that compulsory domain name arbitration is less likely to give a fair hearing to domain name owners asserting defenses under the First Amendment and other laws, compared to the federal courts of appeal in particular.

Proposed elimination of public DNS whois

The initial report of ICANN’s Expert Working Group has recommended that the present form of Whois, a utility that allows anyone to know who has registered a domain name on the Internet, be scrapped. It recommends it be replaced with a system that keeps most registration information secret (or “gated”) from most Internet users, and only discloses information for “permissible purposes”. ICANN’s list of permissible purposes includes Domain name research, Domain name sale and purchase, Regulatory enforcement, Personal data protection, Legal actions, and Abuse mitigation. Whois has been a key tool of investigative journalists interested in determining who was disseminating information on the Internet. The use of whois by the free press is not included in the list of permissible purposes in the initial report.

As a decentralized network of networks, the Internet does not have a single governance structure. Much of the governance occurs in various standards-setting bodies  that decide uniform technical specifications for each of the building blocks that comprise the modern Internet. For example, the Internet Engineering Task Force is responsible for setting core networking standards, the World Wide Web Consortium is responsible for web-related standards (e.g., hypertext transfer protocol, or HTTP), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers develops Ethernet and Wi-Fi standards.

Still, some core technical functions have a more centralized management structure. Computers communicate with each other on the Internet using unique identifiers, such as domain names (e.g., .com or .net) and Internet protocol (IP) addresses, which must be unique (like phone numbers, for instance) for the system to function. In the Internet’s early years, Jon Postel, an academic, managed the process of assigning domain names and IP addresses. That changed in 1998, when the responsibility was transferred to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based nonprofit organization operating under a U.S. government contract, as part of an effort to privatize the management of the day-to-day operations of the Internet.

ICANN manages the allocation of IP addresses and the domain name system (DNS)—the Internet’s address book that translates easy-to-remember domain names, such as CFR.org, into Internet protocol numbers (e.g., 75.101.137.229) that computers require to connect to each other. The policies by which ICANN carries out its functions are set in a multistakeholder fashion, whereby anyone—a business, a nonprofit, an individual, or a government­—can participate in the policymaking process, and where decisions are generally reached through rough consensus.

In the late 1990s, as the Internet gained popularity beyond the United States, particularly in Europe and Asia, policymakers began calling for greater government involvement in Internet policymaking for a number of reasons. Many governments were interested in deploying broadband and improving connectivity to drive economic growth. Governments wanted to respond as criminal activity moved online, and a number sought to block certain types of information and monitor online activity.

In addition, certain governments were dissatisfied that a global communications network was primarily being managed by a U.S.-based nonprofit. Russia, for example, raised concerns that as a strategic asset, the Internet should not be under the control of one government. Others claimed that the United States might abuse its role as steward of the domain name system to wipe all websites based in a country’s domain (such as .cn for Chinese websites) off the Internet

Many of these governments, particularly authoritarian ones, have opposed ICANN’s multistakeholder approach. Others, particularly in the developing world, have objected to the proliferation of Internet governance meetings around the world, since they lack the capacity to fund personnel and travel to participate in every event. A single venue, such as a UN body, could offer a one-stop approach for countries with limited means to participate in Internet-related policymaking.

As a result of these concerns, governments prodded the United Nations toward greater involvement on Internet governance issues. The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), two global summits that occurred in 2003 and 2005, produced an outcome document called the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, which

• affirmed that governments, the private sector, civil society, and international organizations all have roles to play in the development and governance of the Internet;
• recognized that all governments should have an “equal role and responsibility for international Internet governance and for ensuring the stability, security, and continuity of the Internet”; and
• created the Internet Governance Forum, a venue where governments and Internet stakeholders could learn about Internet policy issues, such as cybersecurity, the digital economy, human rights online, and critical Internet resources like the DNS.

In an effort to address calls for its internationalization, ICANN created a governmental advisory committee (GAC) to give governments more input into the policymaking process. For example, the GAC provides advice to the ICANN board when it is considering policies that could affect domestic or international law, such as allowing for the creation of new domain names that might conflict with protected geographical areas (e.g., .amazon) or trademark protections (e.g., .champagne) within a country.

Although the WSIS and the GAC made some progress in integrating governments in the management of the Internet, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and others have pushed for a stronger decision-making role for UN institutions.

In 2012, the ITU hosted the World Conference on International Telecommunications, a conference that sought to update the International Telecommunication Regulations, a treaty that regulates international telecommunications traffic. Russia, China, and many developing countries attempted to bring the Internet within the scope of the treaty, which they asserted would give governments more direct input into the Internet’s management. The United States, the European Union, Canada, and Australia fought the effort, countering that ICANN and other technical organizations were more qualified. In the end, eighty-nine countries signed the new regulations; the United States and fifty-four others refused to sign the treaty.

Tensions over the management of the Internet resurfaced in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations, which indicated that the United States was leveraging its dominant position as a hub for global Internet traffic to collect intelligence. The United States managed to dampen some of the rising protest by announcing in March 2014 that it would launch a transition process to relinquish its contractual oversight of ICANN. The move soothed an irritant that partially drove some governments to demand a greater UN role in the management of the Internet. Nevertheless, countries that advocate for a larger role in the management of the Internet are unlikely to radically alter their position.

ICANN and the ITU have attracted the lion’s share of attention, but there are other international institutions that already contribute to the governance of the Internet. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is examining the issue of cybercrime and initiated a draft study [PDF] to examine countries’ ability to tackle it. The UN Economic, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is exploring the importance of language diversity, online ethics, freedom of expression, and privacy. The UN General Assembly is providing guidance to states on the applicability of international law to cyberspace, the right to privacy online, and the benefits of using information and communication technologies for development, as well as developing a framework for improving the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure.

Outside the United Nations, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is developing rules for electronic commerce, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is providing guidance on cybersecurity, data security, and Internet policymaking. Regional organizations are also developing new capacities. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), for example, has a working group led by ministers from member economies to improve digital trade, privacy protections, network infrastructure, and online trust. The Organization of American States (OAS) has adopted a cybersecurity strategy  for the Americas region and the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) have negotiated and signed an information security  treaty. The European Union has developed an international cyberspace policy and seeks to promote a digital single market within Europe. State and nonstate actors have also developed their own informal issue-specific groupings, such as the Freedom Online Coalition, to promote human rights online and the London Conference process, which seeks to promote certain norms for state behavior on the Internet.