Last month OnlineDomain covered this news and while Neustar’s Best Of Boroughs contest is well underway (now in its voting phase) I thought it was worth looking at how different cityTLDs are promoting themselves.

Here are the videos Minds + Machines (.Miami’s registry provider) produced:

 

My initial reaction with the first video was to reject #1 selling point to be forward the .miami to the .com (shouldn’t people who love Miami or any other city/cityTLD forward the .com to the .city?).

After watching the whole video (and the second video) I think it differentiates well. It’s compelling for those who want a quick marketing option, web-forwarder (to old site or social media profile), email update, to show their pride for their city. Maybe these first steps lead to more sites being built on the .miami domain (as shown in the second video).

So maybe these types of informational videos along with the cameo showcases of cityTLDs in use by mom-and-pops and the various ways they can be used (from forwarders, to secondary marketing sites, to ‘ideal emails’, etc.) can really help awareness and lift registrations and use. It definitely cannot hurt and I believe the ROI on videos like these can easily justify the small investment – especially if there are efforts to get the video out there, around the web and to local news.

.Miami launched in October 2015 one year after the launch of .NYC and currently has approximately 10,000 registrations down from it’s peak of around 15,000. You can register a .Miami domain at http://getmy.miami