Tony Zeoli is a digital media strategist providing forward-thinking thought leadership in the development of digital media applications for corporations and start-ups. Since the early days of dotcom 1.0, Zeoli has architected digital products for AdWeek, UNC Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication, GovLoop, Sony/BMG, Associated Press, Entertainment Media Works, Cablevision Systems Corporation, Fuse, Epic Records, Smith Street Records, Melibee Global, Be-Classic, Zaah Technologies, DotBox, Celebrations.com, Capital Advance Solutions, Total Merchant Resources, Youth Mission Co, Building Link, Posana Restaurant, and more.
Tony currently resides in Asheville, where he runs Digital Strategy Works, a digital strategy company serving small businesses and independent web publishers. Tony is also the resident Digital Strategist at Mountain BizWorks, a nonprofit lending and learning organization providing affordable loans and mentorship and training programs to small businesses and entrepreneurs in Western North Carolina.
Before focusing full-time on his consulting practice, Digital Strategy Works, from 2011 to 2013, Tony led scrum/agile product development and project management of music projects, developing the connection between, fans, bands, and brands for Market America, a $600M product brokerage company based in Greensboro, NC.
From 2010 to 2011, Tony was Lead Developer in $4.1M experimental, Reese Felts Digital Newsroom, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Tony architected and maintained a WordPress multi-site hyper-local news platform, reesenews.org, while deploying 3rd party technology solutions from best of class providers, including Brightcove, MediaTemple, Omniture, Apple, GitHub, Razuna, and WebType. Tony also mentored and trained students in entrepreneurship, digital media production, web development, and usability best practices.
In 2009, Tony founded Digital Strategy Works, a digital media consultancy assisting clients with end-to-end digital strategy and building web sites on the WordPress content management system. Tony’s expertise in WordPress web site product development has led to speaking engagements at WordCamp NYC (2010) and WordCamp Raleigh (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016). A practitioner of Open Source philosophy, Tony gives back to the community through his work founding and co-organizing WordPress Chapel Hill (2010 to present) and WordPress Westchester (2009-2010).
From 2007 to 2009, Tony assisted the White Space Group as Information Architect on projects for Epic Records (ThisGirl) and 1-800Flowers (Celebrations.com); and as Director of IA/UxD at Zaah Technologies, he architected over 29 web properties for entrepreneurs and corporations, including popular marketing web sites for Zondervan, the largest faith-based publisher in the United States.
From 2005 to 2007, Tony was Vice President of Music Services at Entertainment Media Works where he orchestrated the creation of the company’s music division and led development of the organization’s online music video platform for its consumer portal StarStyle.com™. During his tenure at EWW, Tony negotiated partnership agreements with major and independent recording labels and artists, and developed the overall music content strategy for StarStyle, including entertainment news features, online music video programming, blogging and podcasting. He also closed agreements with Universal Music Group, MTV and Univision.
Previously, Zeoli consulted to the Associated Press, overseeing the development of the AP’s blog platform for its youth culture news portal, ASAP and its online video news service, which was distributed to hundreds of news web sites worldwide.
In a prior role as senior producer at New York’s MetroTV, he spearheaded the development of the network’s companion website for its popular daily music television show, “The Daily Beat.” Zeoli worked on the country’s first iTV music video VOD channel for Metro, which was re-branded and launched as Fuse On Demand for the Fuse music television networks. He also received a Communicator Award, the cable industry’s highest honor, for his work as senior producer of the New York Music Rundown, the country’s first VOD music news program available through Cablevision’s Metro Plus VOD channel.
As early as 1995, Zeoli also launched Netmix.com, the first site to air mix-sets from top electronic/dance DJs. He continues to program and produce podcasts for distribution over Netmix. Himself a prestigious club DJ and former Billboard Dance Chart reporter, Zeoli helped to spur the online DJ culture and was one of the first to convince companies like Sony Music and Arista Records to market their music and promote dance artists online.
Zeoli has been outspoken on a range of digital music and Internet-related issues and has participated in panels at the Billboard Dance Music Summit and Amsterdam Dance Event, NYU’s MBA Music & Entertainment Forum, iHollywood Forum’s Music 2.0 and was asked to lead and moderate the interactive music panel for 5 consecutive years at the world’s largest dance music conference, the Winter Music Conference.