This article is part of a series marking the launch of ‘Building Digital Culture’ the new book by Target Internet CEO, Daniel Rowles.
Digital culture goes beyond the day-to-day acts of doing digital work – it describes something broader and subtler than that. It involves the appreciation, the exploration and the shared enjoyment of the various digital tools, environments and artefacts which inform and facilitate our work.
A flourishing digital culture is a tremendous asset to any digital marketing team, and can help facilitate everything from the ready acquisition of new digital skills amongst team members to the bettering of the digital environment in which they work. A digital team without a true digital culture is like a film director who never goes to the movies.
In most teams there will always have existed certain qualities which could be described as cultural – for example, an entrepreneurial culture, a culture of selling, or a culture of creativity. Digital culture should join these strands in defining the heart-and-soul of your team.
Unless your organisation is one of the world’s leading employers of luddites, your team members will already have their own digital interests – a sort of raw digital culture, when taken as a whole.
With this in mind, learning the digital interests of your team members is surely a great starting point for an initiative to build digital culture. You could achieve this by handing out a questionnaire, or simply by talking to your team.
To discover your team’s strengths and interests specifically in the field of digital marketing, try using Target Internet’s free-to-use Benchmark tool, which generates digital marketing skills profiles for individuals and teams.
Use your team’s digital interests as the launch-pad for your digital culture strategy. Hold events like coding contests or training sessions, find conferences and seminars on digital topics for your employees to attend, and make digital resources like e-learning courses and books freely available at your place(s) of work.
The advent of the digital era must have been an absolute nightmare for people of an inflexible disposition. Nowadays, workers may need to respond to customer queries far faster than ever before – for example, some public social media posts just can’t go unaddressed for more than a few minutes. On the other hand, content deadlines now tend to be more relaxed than they were in the golden age of print. Your team’s work processes need to facilitate this challenging mix of fast response and flexibility.
If you haven’t done so already, check out the agile methodology for teams. Created by web developers a few decades back, agile is the perfect working framework for data-driven, digital teams.
Video marketing is an area that didn’t really exist until about 5 years ago, but now, more and more businesses are using videos as a way to engage with their customers.