Tag: Best Practices
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Understanding and Using # Tags (hashtags) and @ Tags (at tags)
Many (most?) people are confounded by the differences between # and @ tags; and as a result, they tend to use them interchangeably. Doing so, however, can undermine the goals one is trying to achieve by incorporating tags into their social media communications. This article clarifies the differences and offers guidance on how they work…
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New Dimensions of Leadership for the Digital Era
There are five new dimensions of leadership necessary for success in the Digital Era. This article provides a summary of these dimensions, along with related action items. A fuller description of the dimensions and recommendations is available via TD Magazine, in both text and audio (podcast) formats.
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The Key to Digital Success? In a Word, Discipline.
Digital success does not come easy or cheap, and it requires a lot of time and effort. It demands commitment, focus, organization, rigor, persistence, resilience, ruthlessness, self control, efficiency… none of which is possible without both mental and emotional discipline. To achieve digital success, leaders and others must have the discipline to lay a strong…
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Five Key Digital Transformation Mistakes
Key digital transformation mistakes include not having an executive in charge,inadequate leadership buy-in and support,having decisions related to social and digital technologies made by people who lack sophistication, multiple fragmented, tactical approaches rather than a unified approach that is strategic and integrated, and executives who lack the proper perspective on revenues and expenses.
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Hiring Social Media and Digital Expertise: A Hierarchy
The approach to hiring social media and digital expertise used by most organizations is perfectly backwards. They usually start with part-time internal help that is either a junior staffer, an enthusiast with some knowledge, or both. A better approach is to start with a true expert who can help define a strategy, outsource engagement to…
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A Digital Transformation Framework, using a Bricks-and-Mortar Metaphor
This digital transformation framework calls for strategic leadership as the architect and is built on a foundation of strategic goals and objectives.The building blocks are tactical leadership, governance, digital competencies, education and training, and change management. An organization’s culture is the mortar that connects and binds everything together. Each element requires a unique set of…
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5 Digital Engagement Questions Every Organization Should Address
To optimize their digital engagement, organizations should address five key questions focused on strategy, audience, value, feasibility, and when to exit.. These questions should certainly be tackled before establishing a presence and committing to engaging on any social or digital platform or channel, but they’re also useful in evaluating whether it’s worthwhile to continue in…
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5 Digital Resolutions Everyone Should Make (and Keep!)
Digital resolutions should be a key part of our annual effort to be better, more successful people. Given how integral digital technology is to managing both our personal and professional lives, one could argue that these resolutions are more important than some of the other improvement goals we set – and that they’re the ones…
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Job Search in the Digital Age
In the Digital Age, professionals must provide the same level of care and attention to their professional identities in cyberspace as they do to their presence and reputation in the physical world, especially when they are looking for their next career opportunity. Job search in the Digital Age requires establishing and managing a digital professional…
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Social Media Screening: Guidance for Individuals and Organizations
Social media screening (aka social screening) has become a common practice among recruiters and hiring managers, as well as some coaches and college admissions offices. This white paper consolidates and updates previously shared guidance about this practice, providing recommendations for both individuals and organizations. It is primarily focused on job candidates and employers, but it…
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Digital Property is Real Property: 5 Ways to Treat it That Way
Recognizing and respecting that digital property is in fact “real” property requires organizations to (1) make sure they own their own domain name(s) and lay claim to related social media properties, (2) require all official email be sent via domain-linked accounts, (3) take cybersecurity seriously, (4) maintain a presentable web presence, and (5) create policies…
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Optimizing Blog Posts: 11 Essential Considerations
Optimizing blog posts requires both art and science. This piece supplements the guidance offered in Blogging: A Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide, covering factors like developing post standards and creating templates, the importance of excerpts and featured images, SEO optimization, promoting reader friendliness and engagement, and more.
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Digital Literacy: Helping Learners Learn in the Digital Era
Digital literacy is a critical component of learning in the Digital Era. Organizational leaders and learning professionals must understand the digital competencies required for learning success, create a digital learning culture, assess employees’ baseline competencies, leverage both formal and informal learning to help them increase their digital literacy, identify and promote subject matter experts and…
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Culture Change is Critical for Successful Digital Transformation
Adopting digital technologies is not about replacing an existing system with an upgrade or building a new website. Rather one of the most important impacts of these technologies is to essentially change the way people work. Adopting digital technologies needs to be seen as first and foremost a culture change or probably more appropriately a…
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A Comprehensive Beginner’s Blogging Guide
This beginner’s blogging guide is intended for people who want to incorporate blogs into their organization’s digital engagement efforts but aren’t sure where or how to begin. Individuals interested in blogging for personal and career management reasons may also find the guide useful. Its primary focus is on external blogs used for marketing, branding, and…
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Managing Comments Online: 10 Recommendations
If your organization is struggling with developing a best practices approach to managing comments online, these recommendations will help. They include debalkanizing approaches to engagement and moderation; creating simple yet comprehensive posting guidelines that are clearly visible and consistently enforced; letting the community help manage rule violations; and making sure staff are properly trained.
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Managing Digital Era Risks: Social Media Policies and More
Managing risks is part of the cost of doing business, and managing them well can be a competitive differentiator, in both the economic marketplace and the war for talent. A relatively small percentage of organizations have addressed Digital Era risks in a meaningful way, however. This post provides an overview intended to help organizational leaders…
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Website Upgrades: 5 Essential Considerations
Organizations are increasingly realizing they need to update the look, feel, and functionality of their websites. The process for website upgrades has changed significantly in the past few years. The days of hiring a web developer to “hard code” a site. A better alternative is to go with a platform like WordPress.org, which enables the…
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Digital DIY: Penny Wise and Pound Foolish?
For a host of reasons, many organizations have been taking a Digital DIY (Do It Yourself) approach to pursuing technology initiatives, both externally and internally. Though the motivations for these approaches are understandable and seem logical on the surface, more often than not they are suboptimal strategies that aren’t in an organization’s best interests. A…
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Trickle-Up Socialnomics: How BtoB Firms Can Leverage Social Media
This post introduces the idea of Trickle-Up Socialnomics™, which describes how BtoB (business-to-business) firms can view their supply chain as a Social Media Chain and leverage it to identify business opportunities and increase revenues. It includes links to a white paper that describes the Social Media Chain more fully and provides examples of how participants…