Marc Guberti is an entrepreneur and social media expert, who launched his first blog when he was just 11. We recently talked to him about his perspective on digital marketing and IT security. Here’s what he had to share:

Tell us about yourself. What’s your background in digital marketing? You’re still in your teens – what plans do you have for your career in the future?

I got started as a blogger as an 11-year-old. While I didn’t know it at the time, blogging would lead me toward creating training courses, writing books and growing a targeted audience. For the future, I see myself continuing to pursue my current course of action, but at a higher intensity (creating more courses, writing more books, etc.).

How has digital marketing evolved since you started your site? What have been the biggest changes you’ve observed?

Digital marketing in some ways has remained the same while becoming completely different. The mission is still to build a relationship with our audiences, get them to engage with our content, get them to subscribe and then some of those subscribers buy our products. The difference is the new platforms available. When I first got started, live streaming didn’t exist in the way that it does now. Facebook advertising was not the golden wonder it is now. There was a much stronger focus on organic traffic than paid traffic since the advertising was slowly getting optimized.

What should business owners be doing today to prepare for future changes to the digital marketing landscape?

Business owners should take rapid action to prepare for changes of any kind. When in doubt, I always take rapid action because by taking an intense amount of action in a short period of time, you learn new things about your current path faster. The more you learn, the better decisions you make.

What are the must-have tools for businesses to find success in digital marketing today? What tools have you found are outdated and/or obsolete?

HootSuite is an absolute must. It allows you to schedule your social media posts for a variety of social networks. Instead of having to log into and out of each social network, HootSuite is the universal dashboard. You can also use it to engage with your social media followers on a productive platform instead of one with a trending topics section.

ConvertKit is a great tool for sending emails to your email list. OptimizePress is great for creating landing pages, membership sites, training courses and just about any page on your website. By far the greatest tool is UpWork, which you can use to hire freelancers. There are so many things that wouldn’t be possible in my business if it weren’t for the help of my freelancers.

As a web-based entrepreneur, how do you approach IT security?

I made changes a while back to address IT security, but nothing recently. For instance, I limited the number of log in attempts someone can make into my blog with a useful plugin called Limit Login Attempts. After seven log in attempts, people get locked out from my blog. Currently over 600 lockouts have been enforced. I also make my passwords to my important platforms extremely long. Some of them are over 30 characters long, so it would take a very long time for anyone to figure out what they are or decode their way to it.

What are the most common mistakes you see individuals or brands making when it comes to IT security? What should they be doing differently?

The biggest mistake is to use the same password for everything. Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and several other big companies occasionally get hacked. If your Amazon account gets hacked, the hackers know your password. However, if you use the same password for everything, the same hackers can get into your Twitter, Facebook and PayPal accounts. Imagine waking up and seeing a big $0 for your PayPal account when you had thousands of dollars in there. I recommend changing your password every one to three months to make it more difficult for hackers to get to your accounts.

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