1. Strategic Planning For Digital Media

Digital media requires strategic planning to reap maximum benefits.  It needs resources, ample time and investment to reach out to the desired target audience with effectiveness. A brand/company/organization has to play a decisive role in making the best use of these platforms where people are connecting and communicating every other second and for that strategic thinking on social media platforms usage is must.

2. Moment of Truths

This was quite revealing to me. Personally,  i am not very much fan of jargon but i liked the “Moment of Truth”, jargon, a lot.   It took me on to the journey  of a consumer/buyer and what process he/she/other goes through before making that final decision to buy a product or service.  Also, what happens after the users consumes a product or service ?  The three different stages of  truth, the Zero Moment of Truth(ZMOT) where buyer and seller has no connection with each other.

The First Moment of Truth (FMOT) and Second Moment of Truth (SMOT) captured the decision making process of a customer.  Also, the notion of customer and consumer  explained well, a customer buys the product and consumer uses the product and then chooses to shares his/her experiences on online platforms or through word of mouth or both.  This becomes crucial for any  brand as they have to keep a close eye on what consumer is sharing on their brand experience. A positive sharing will attract more customers while a negative one will may leads  to down-slide in sales.

3. Digital Media Maturity Pyramid of a Brand /Organization

This was an apt analysis of brands/organizations on  digital media exposure.  It starts from non-digital where brands/organizations have no connection with digital platforms. As a first step, they create their web presence through a dedicated website and make their presence felt. When brands  add  social media channels like facebook, twitter and instagram, they open themselves for engagement with their consumers.  It becomes a two way communications.

In “e” engagement level, the brand integrates at all the levels. In my limited experience, the brands /organizations and institutes in India  are still struggling in level 2 – presence and level 3 – engagement. And most of the time they are skeptic about the  privacy issue,  burden of handling customer care queries on online platforms and  lack of skilled man power to manage digital media platforms properly.

4. Digital Media Mantra

It is really important to start at a right note and with a detailed social media planning.  The real life examples from the companies in the course gave a better insight on how to move ahead on digital media platforms. It is also a great learning experience to listen people who are using it on a daily basis in the course material.

These  following five basic points sums up well the digital media journey of a  brand/organization/institute or an individual. It starts from identification of brand audience, documenting core brand  messages, developing presence on social media platforms, to launching  of digital media campaign,  to measuring engagement and then going for course corrections.

5. Digital Media Is Wait & Watch Game

Many of the times, we take social media platforms as shortcut for success and set unreasonable target  to achieve which many a times lead to confusion and chaos in communication planning of a brand or an organization. I agree with this observation that social media platforms need a minimum of one year to set it base, understand its audience and  engage them accordingly. The usual journey in digital media starts from owning, to shared and then paid online efforts to gain positive results from digital media platforms. It is like baiting for a fish, we have to wait silently and provide right content  as per the context to gain out of social media efforts.

Credit: Kumar Manish via LinkedIn