Are you keeping up with digital marketing? Don't turn the page. You're possibly missing a trick and wiping off a ton of value.

Gadgets give the game away. You cannot miss them. All with their own content: pictures, sounds, words, graphics and video in an infinity of messages.

And the secret is out. These messages aren't all coming from the great and the good, the PLCs, the major media corporations.

It's you and me, our kids, our parents.

Peer to peer has appeared on our front lawn.

Not so much as a blot on the landscape but as a massive feature that has s prung to unavoidable prominence.

There's not enough space here to list all that's going on, so here is my own list: texting, eBay, Wikipedia, email, Google, Bluetooth.

Then - the ones I have to keep an eye on: myspace.com (how many hundreds of millions did Murdoch pay for this?!); various blogs including the incisive Ipkat for us intellectual property anoraks; and the dozens of specials that come into my inbox each day for which I think Tesco must take the prize.

The citizen-consumer now has a voice and it sure is loud.

It's a voice you have to hear if your message is going to get through.

My business depends on getting up to speed rapidly and I am assuming yours does too. So, here are ten points I would put in my blog to pass on...

1. Catch up, get ahead or lose. Play, use and understand. It's critical. Are you writing a blog? The BBC has them of course -http://blogs.bbc.co.uk/nickrobinson/ . And do you know what is being written about you - just see how many thousand Microsoft employees have a blog! I have not even bother to start counting the consumer blogs. You have to have this intelligence and use it.

2. Move quickly. This is an instant 24/7 landscape evolving as quickly as our Brummie weather.

3. Adapt. Spend and attention have already moved to digital in a big way. Have you?

4. Go global. If China is not in your analysis, why not? The BRIC economies are revolutionising our business world. I am hard pushed to think of one business I work with not affected by international factors.

5. Don't let marketing keep it to themselves. Every part of the organisation is affected.

6. Keep it legal. Some say WWW is the wicked wild west but there are laws, rules, regulators and of course the millions of empowered consumers who have their eyes on you.

7. Make up your own rules. Check out the student who auctioned off pixels on his web site and made a cool million dollars.

8. Be brief. Poor writing is a killer. Images and graphics are better. Look at your own communications and tell me if they are genuinely compelling? Why should I be bothered to read them?

9. Buy local. All the skills and resources are here on your doorstep. We are at the forefront and we need to work hard to stay there.

10. Do it now. Unless you have already started, of course. In which case see what needs changing.

* What do you think of Anthony's ten point battleplan? Logon to www.icbirmingham.co.uk/postmandm to have your say.