October 2012

Websites are Dead. Long Live Digital Presence.

In this whitepaper you’ll learn:

£ Why the web is no longer the sole focus of how you interact with users online

£ What it means to embrace “digital first”

£ Simple ways to start assessing your digital presence

www.limelight.com

Websites are Dead. Long Live Digital Presence. Page 2

Websites are Dead. Long Live Digital Presence.Your website, as you know it, is dead. That’s because digital marketing is no longer about pushing out content and hoping that users or customers read it. It’s about engaging and interacting with your customers through your content. So you can’t just publish your videos to YouTube and be done with it. You have to do more. Your content tells the story of your brand and your company. And when it’s online, it’s your digital presence.

The death of “what you think your website is” isn’t exaggerated. New research from Google and others show that your customers are consuming content across devices. It’s a new world now—a world about consistent content experiences, about engagement and interaction using a variety of channels. About digital presence.

This whitepaper will help you understand how the digital world has changed over the past 10 years and how you need to start thinking and acting digitally to take advantage of these trends and changing user behavior. Either that...or your story will never stick.

The Web is so 1990s. Are You Still Living in the Past?It wasn’t that long ago when businesses were clamoring to get online. Not because companies felt that the Internet and the World Wide Web were intrinsically going to change the global economy. No, companies did so as a competitive response. Because of that, nothing really changed. Processes remained the same. If nothing else, marketing simply became responsible for another channel of customer communication. The website, for many companies, was an electronic brochure. Unfortunately for many that is still the case. They see their website as the “end all, be all” of an online experience or digital marketing strategy.

But that is not how customers see it. They expect businesses to have a website. They also expect those same businesses to have a Facebook page, use Twitter, and make all of their content available on mobile phones. Why? Because the world is digital…and customers have gone digital too.

Today’s Digital WorldToday’s digital world has evolved beyond websites. The growth of social media services, like Facebook and Twitter, has extended the original purpose of a website (making content about a company and its products available online) to encompass immediate interaction and engagement. Where a company’s website was once little more than a digital brochure, it is now a powerful tool that can provide visitors with a personalized brand experience.

Just as users have integrated social media into the way they interact with friends and family around the globe, they now expect businesses to provide that same interaction. Customers look for a company’s Facebook profile. They want to follow a company’s Twitter updates. They want to consume content in a form that befits what they are doing.

www.limelight.com

Websites are Dead. Long Live Digital Presence. Page 3

If they are frequenting Facebook, they don’t want to have to visit a company’s website to find what they need. They want that information in Facebook posts.

In short, websites are dead...as a standalone representation of a company’s online experience. They are part of a larger story—a digital presence that can span many channels including a website, social media, mobile, and even large screens. Take a look at the data below from a McKinsey study1 measuring digital activity of over 20,000 people ages 13-64.

What McKinsey discovered is a “digital shif t” that is happening right now—content

consumption across channels is increasing but especially in the younger demographics. Still, before you dismiss the results of their study by concluding that “these aren’t my customers,” consider the following from the same McKinsey study:

In today’s world, anything that hinders speed and agility contributes to failure. The $500 billion future that young consumers will drive has actually begun…

Ignoring this shif t could spell long-term disaster to your business! Capitalizing on it requires a better understanding of how customers are interacting with you through these dif ferent channels. First, though, it requires acknowledging that you have a digital presence.

What is a Digital Presence?A digital presence is the sum of engagement and interactivity across all of your digital touch points. Whenever customers interact online with your brand, they are experiencing your digital presence.

1. The Young and the Digital: a Glimpse into Future Market Evolution. McKinsey. January 2012.

www.limelight.com

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The key to a successful digital presence is engagement. That’s what sets it apart from an ordinary website. Rather than the traditional model of telling customers your story by presenting content, a digital presence relies on engagement and establishes a bi-directional conversation around your content and your brand.

In many cases, companies can be unaware of how extensive their digital presence has become. For example, a restaurant may have a Facebook Page and a website, but not know of all the reviews about it that exist on other sites and Web services. In essence, a digital presence can be “intended and attended” or “unintended and ignored.” While the later requires no work and reaps no benefits, in order to capitalize on the former, it’s critical to understand the workflow of getting your digital presence out to the world and how to manage it once it’s out there.

Want to Read More?Click on the link below to find out more about why your website is dead and what you can do to make sure you have an awesome digital presence.

http://resources.limelight.com/WebsitesAreDead.html

About LimelightLimelight Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:LLNW) is a global leader in Digital Presence Management. Limelight’s Orchestrate digital presence solution is an integrated suite of cloud-based applications, which allows organizations to optimize all aspects of their online digital presence across web, mobile, social, and large screen channels. Delivered exclusively as a service, Orchestrate leverages Limelight’s scalable, high-performance global computing platform to offer advanced features for: web content management; website personalization; content targeting; video publishing; mobile enablement; content delivery; transcoding; and cloud storage — combined with social media integration and powerful analytics. Limelight’s team of digital presence experts helps organizations streamline processes and optimize business results across all customer interaction channels, helping them deliver exceptional multi-screen experiences, improve brand awareness, drive revenue, and enhance their customer relationships — all while reducing costs. For more information, please visit www.limelight.com, and be sure to follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/llnw.

Examples of digital touchpoints

Your digital presence is comprised of a host of touch-points, some of which are listed below:

• Website

• Mobile website

• Email/Newsletters

• Mobile applications

• Social Networks

• E-commerce Store

• Job Boards

• Product or Service Review Websites

• News sites

• Blogs

• Discussion Forums and Bulletin Boards

• Support sites

• Video

Can you list how many digital channels your company uses? Do you think you can list some that your customers use which you may not be incorporating into your digital presence?