Confident Digital Content

Master the Fundamentals of Online Video, Design, Writing and Social Media to Supercharge Your Career

Adam Waters

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• ISBN:
  9780749480950
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Digital Media
• Index: Computer Science

Confident Digital Content gives you the opportunity to become digitally multi-skilled and learn the fundamentals of the most important types of digital creativity. Whatever your career path, being able to produce exciting and creative content online, whether through video, design, digital journalism or social media, can supercharge your professional career and empower your entrepreneurial pursuits.

Confident Digital Content teaches you valuable hard skills, including how to create and upload great video content, graphic design, photography for social media, community management, digital strategy and metrics, and helps you learn them through practical exercises in every chapter. It also provides insightful guidance on how to boost your career and employability by honing your leadership, creativity and entrepreneurial skills in the world of digital. Case studies from inspiring individuals at organizations including CNN International, Mumsnet, Bunster's Hot Sauce, HuffPost UK, and Crocstar Media show you real world examples of excellent digital content in practice. This book is your ultimate guide to achieving the technical proficiency and confidence to start an inspiring digital career path, whether your ambition is to rise to the top of your chosen industry, be a successful freelancer or become an entrepreneur.

01

Why digital content skills are essential for your career

• All organizations need great digital people.
• It doesn’t matter what career you want – digital skills will help you.
• Digital content isn’t just about communications.

Digital content is essential to any sort of organization. In this chapter you’ll see that by learning these skills you’ll be giving your career a real boost, and we’ll also look at the fundamentals of why digital content skills matter.

Digital platforms have two important functions – they are sources of information and they let people communicate. Understanding how people share and respond to this information is essential to succeeding at digital content.

You may already be a diehard user of social media. You may even have built a large following because you’re passionate about a particular subject. But have you run digital accounts for a major organization?

You may be able to produce incredible video. But have you shared those skills with others?

You may be an experienced digital community manager. But have you built a team with people who are nervous about digital?

You may be an experienced teacher of digital skills. But have you convinced sceptical bosses to invest in digital for your organization?

In this situation your passion for the networks you use or the stories you tell will help to achieve success. It’s crucial you combine that knowledge and advocacy with an understanding of how the organizations you want to work for can use it strategically.

What if you have never used a social network? You may think there’s no way you could produce a video or tell a story, let alone publish it to millions of people.

What has digital changed?

Major news stories are frequently broken directly on social media. With the popularity of smartphones around the world people can share information instantly from wherever they are. Events such as the Arab Spring or presidential elections have played out simultaneously in the ‘real world’ and on social media. Information, images, videos and opinion can be shared instantly. Smartphones, with their powerful cameras, allow people in the right place and at the right time to become instant citizen journalists. Newsrooms around the world have teams of reporters who solely monitor social media for breaking news stories, trending themes and powerful imagery.

A few years ago a helicopter crashed in London. At the time I was working as a journalist in a TV newsroom. As with any breaking story, we rushed a reporter and camera crew to the scene. It took them a long time to travel, to get an understanding of what was going on, to prepare for a live broadcast and afterwards to come back to the office. At the same time, my team was monitoring social media for the photos and videos people posted as the event happened. We sought permission and got them on air instantly, without having to leave the office ourselves (and while our own camera crew were still travelling). If you want to develop strong digital journalism skills, understanding the tools and techniques available to tell stories quickly and clearly on digital platforms will allow you to thrive.

More government services, such as registering to vote or paying tax, are handled online, with social media support teams on hand to answer questions. This is a strong example of how any major organization, commercial or public, needs to adapt for the digital age. While you might not work in the public sector, you could work for a large complex organization that provides vital services.

Government bureaucracy often (with good reason) has a reputation for being opaque and complicated. Anyone who has had to fill out a tax return will tell you that lengthy forms, slow response times and a lack of user feedback are common complaints. Important information and announcements are frequently just sent out as a traditional press release that few people see. Thankfully, many governments around the world are realizing the potential of digital. Not only does it make citizens’ lives easier; it helps governments save money and become more efficient. Many have set up dedicated digital departments such as the United States Digital Service or the UK’s Government Digital Service. Government communications teams have invested in digital training for their staff and stressed the importance of evaluation. Often, policy will be informed by digital research and data. So learning how to speak to citizens, hear their views and convey what government is working on in an engaging way is essential. As public sector communicators learn to produce clear, engaging content, they can make sure citizens are aware of important announcements and messages.

Perhaps the biggest impact of all has been on advertising and marketing. The popularity of smartphones and social networks combined with incredibly accurate data and analytics has made advertising more accurate and effective than ever before. Let’s say you wanted to show an advert to every oenophile in Haslemere for your new luxury wine delivery service. In the past, you could put an advert in the local newspaper perhaps, or put leaflets through people’s doors. How would you know how effective it had been? You might see a rise in sales, but was it because of those leaflets? Even before setting up your business, how would you find out how many wine fanatics there were in the area? How could you stop your leaflet deliverer from wasting their time by delivering only to wine lovers?

With digital advertising, you could show adverts only to people in the area who like buying wine and have enough disposable income to sign up to your delivery service, and you pay only when they visit your website. The fun doesn’t stop there – you could capture demographic data about your customers and use those to improve your service. Perhaps you thought people from Haslemere would love claret. Instead you discover that Pinot Noir’s all the rage and that people tend to order it on a Monday night. You could then start sending them vouchers for Pinot Noir every Monday and make a compelling video about the best foods to serve with the wine.

Digital content has also transformed charities – sometimes by accident. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) was, until recently, a poorly understood disease. That was until Pete Frates, a Boston College student diagnosed with it, started pouring cold water over himself to fundraise for charities researching the disease. It became a viral trend as the Ice Bucket Challenge. World leaders, celebrities, sports stars and perhaps your friends and family began dumping buckets of water over themselves in social media videos and challenging others to do the same.

In a month, $115 million dollars was raised. Great digital content allows charities to spread their message, share the good work they are doing and build an audience of dedicated supporters, while keeping costs low.

And what if you want to be your own boss and set up your own business? Digital gives you a fantastic opportunity to promote your service or product in an accurate and cheap way. By understanding how to make great content you can get your customers to do your advertising for you as they share your posts and watch your videos. You could create compelling stories and campaigns that help you raise funds to launch your business. The case study for this chapter shows exactly how useful digital content can be to an entrepreneur.

These are simplistic examples, but they show you the breadth and power of digital communications. Hopefully, by now common sense will tell you that virtually all organizations therefore need people with great digital content skills. You may want to go into business, work for a charity, become a journalist or even help run a country. Very different industries – yes. But all need to be effective at communicating digitally, with great content as the best way of doing so.

Everyone’s digital now

It used to be the case that most organizations would never have to speak directly to the public. They might hire an ad agency to produce a flashy TV advert for them occasionally, or have someone send out a press release now and again. Since social media became so popular, all organizations are now publishers as well. It’s quite rare for organizations not to be on social media. Naturally, they therefore need to put out great content on these channels. Skills that many organizations would previously just have outsourced are now a vital part of their workforce – content production, storytelling, editorial judgement, community building, advertising and so on. Without good content, organizations are wasting their time on social media.

Therefore, by gaining an understanding of how to produce digital content you are giving yourself a massive boost to how employable you are. It also means you can easily switch industries if you ever wanted to. Sick and tired of the big bank y...