Man verses the Machine

As Google and Facebook square up to each other it will be interesting to see how this competition influences their evolution.

They each have a fundamentally different point of departure. Google is a search engine dabbling in social media, Facebook is a social media platform dabbling in search.

Google relies on its algorithms, it has a completely data driven approach. Facebook on the other hand relies on curatorship, wherein people who are networking are creating and managing the content.

But as time goes by, Google is looking more and more at how people are consuming information to determine what they might find useful. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is all about manipulating the algorithm to surface your content first and Googlites are in the unenviable position of trying to find the most relevant information for their digital consumers, rather than surfacing the content from organisations with the biggest SEO budget.

Google is now starting to look beyond metadata, traffic and links to how digital curators manage information during the social network process.

Facebook on the other hand, is looking at using the data it has around social networking to create a useful search facility based on what your friends are posting, reading, sharing, liking and commenting on.

In other words Facebook is betting on human curatorship to move towards becoming the ubiquitous application that we turn to as our portal to the digital world. Google, in turn, is looking to enhancing its algorithm using behavioural data to enhance its value to the user.

They both are rushing to the middle, and it will be interesting to see what they look like when they get there.

About Digital Bridges

Digital Bridges creates high performance organisations by unlocking the business value of the web. We create digital strategies, user requirement and functional specifications for Intranets, websites and web applications. We also develop and implement social media strategies and create powerful digital brands using eMarketing and Communication and manage brand conversations with consumers.

Digital Bridges approaches the web from a management consulting position and relies heavily on rigorous academic thinking as well as business experience. It is headed up by Kate Elphick who has a Law degree and an MBA from GIBS. Kate has spent the last fifteen years of her career on the business side of the IT industry with companies such as Datatec, Didata, Business ConneXion and Primedia.

Digital Bridges has a broad range of experience working with significant, successful clients in the Financial, Gaming, Tourism, Pharmaceutical, ICT, Legal, Airline, Professional Services, Media and Public Sectors.

To find out more about Digital Bridges, please visit www.digitalbridges.co.za or contact Kate Elphick on katee@digitalbridges.co.za

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The changing role of public relations

There is no doubt that web 2.0 is changing the traditional role of the public relations practitioner.

In the past, PR was all about creating press releases and finding novel ways to get information into the public domain through the media or events etc. In fact for many, PR stood for Press Releases rather than Public Relations, and PR companies could get away with very junior writers who churned out press releases in the background to be spammed to journalists in the hope that they would appear in print somewhere.

These days our relationships with the world are much more directed. Companies need to manage their relationships directly with their audiences, not through disseminated one way messages in third party channels, but through conversations; bilateral, and in some instances multilateral flows of information and knowledge directly with the audience.

Digital curation in the past has been about the selection, preservation, maintenance and collection and archiving of digital assets. It is the process of establishing and developing long term repositories of digital assets for current and future reference.

Assets are what an organisation uses in order to generate revenue, they may be people, material, buildings or brands.

Today one of the most important assets an organisation can have is its relationships. In an attention deficit world, the most effective way to get people’s notice is through trusted relationships. Relationships become trust filters for sifting through what is valuable to know and what should be ignored. So the concept of digital curation is extending beyond the management of the website and social media pages into digital relationship asset creation and management.

It is no longer the job of just one person in the organisation, but in high performance organisations it is the job of everyone in the organisation.

About Digital Bridges

Digital Bridges creates high performance organisations by unlocking the business value of the web. We create digital strategies, user requirement and functional specifications for Intranets, websites and web applications. We also develop and implement social media strategies and create powerful digital brands using eMarketing and Communication and manage brand conversations with consumers.

Digital Bridges approaches the web from a management consulting position and relies heavily on rigorous academic thinking as well as business experience. It is headed up by Kate Elphick who has a Law degree and an MBA from GIBS. Kate has spent the last fifteen years of her career on the business side of the IT industry with companies such as Datatec, Didata, Business ConneXion and Primedia.

Digital Bridges has a broad range of experience working with significant, successful clients in the Financial, Gaming, Tourism, Pharmaceutical, ICT, Legal, Airline, Professional Services, Media and Public Sectors.

To find out more about Digital Bridges, please visit www.digitalbridges.co.za or contact Kate Elphick on katee@digitalbridges.co.za

The Porous Web

I often see clients who ask me to assist them in developing a web site, potentially in SharePoint 2010 or using some other open source technology. While it is important to have some kind of digital real estate, it is more important to look at how people use the web these days.

From our audience point of view the Internet is one great big environment from which they can consume information, engage with each other and entertain themselves.

Our domain is only one place they can go to to do this, but there are multiple other places. We need to consider the entire environment. The website is only one element of our conversation on line. These days our audiences practise osmosis as they flow from places of low value to high value.

High value is a product of information and context. Information is available everywhere, but if it can’t be found or it does not come from a trustworthy source its value is compromised. So how do we make sure that we deliver high value in this porous environment? We do this by designing our projects around audiences through content architectures, digital geographies, SEO and curatorship.

Content Architectures

Content architectures are thought constructs which examine how we wish to position ourselves in our audience minds, and what we need to say or do in order to achieve this. They require a thorough investigation into our audience’s motivations, worlds-views and environments.

Digital Geography

Digital geography is concerned with where our audiences are, are they on social media sites, looking through lists, browsing or on special interest sites. Do we need to make sure that we have a presence on Facebook, Twitter or that on-line newspaper? What industry forums are they consulting, who are the thought leaders?

SEO

These days, very few people type in the name of our domain to find us, they are far more likely to go to their preferred search engine, whether it be Yahoo, Bing or the ubiquitous Google and type in a search term. If we can’t be found easily, we have wasted our efforts. We need to make sure that whatever we put out there can is as search engine friendly as possible.

Curatorship

Curatorship is the human intervention which adds value. These are trusted sources of information who assemble information and contextualise it. They may be thought leaders, bloggers, on line journalists or even someone inside our own company who engages with our audience or who they follow or engage with to filter the masses of information out there and make it easy to consume.

Far too many companies develop website strategies, but to create competitive advantage in the digital world, we should rather create digital strategies which encompass the entire digital milieu.

About Digital Bridges

Digital Bridges creates high performance organisations by unlocking the business value of the web. We create digital strategies, user requirement and functional specifications for Intranets, websites and web applications. We also develop and implement social media strategies and create powerful digital brands using eMarketing and Communication and manage brand conversations with consumers.

Digital Bridges approaches the web from a management consulting position and relies heavily on rigorous academic thinking as well as business experience. It is headed up by Kate Elphick who has a Law degree and an MBA from GIBS. Kate has spent the last fifteen years of her career on the business side of the IT industry with companies such as Datatec, Didata, Business ConneXion and Primedia.

Digital Bridges has a broad range of experience working with significant, successful clients in the Financial, Gaming, Tourism, Pharmaceutical, ICT, Legal, Airline, Professional Services, Media and Public Sectors.

To find out more about Digital Bridges, please visit www.digitalbridges.co.za or contact Kate Elphick on katee@digitalbridges.co.za