Sometimes I pinch myself and think about what an interesting time we live in. So many changes happening in the world and the effect the Internet is having on this. Every day I read and about new technologies that are changing the landscape for so many industries. How is it possible that in the last handful of years the music, print publishing, radio, TV, financial, etc. industries – all have been materially affected by technology and the Internet, thus changing decades of process and business models? What’s next? How can we all understand the changes and keep ahead of the curve?
Learn by doing.
I was one of those kids growing up that could not put down my erector sets. I worked on projects for way too long, until I figured out how to tweak the pulleys and motors to do exactly what I wanted them to do. I had to master it before I was able to move on to somethings else. Call it a personality flaw, OCD, or whatever – this drive kept up with me through my first Commodore VIC-20 and so on until now. Basically, I like to dive in, get my hands dirty, figure out the details, and then try and master the challenge before moving on.
Unfortunately, there are so many folks in the digital media business today that are overwhelmed by closing deals, raising capital, day to day email, Facebook, IM, etc. to actually use and engage with some of the key industry-changing products out there. I would even go a step further and suggest that some media executives don’t even use and fully understand their own companies web products and services.
Just about everyone uses Google to navigate the web – does everyone in the digital media business know the basics of organic SEO? Should they? I say – if you have a website for your business and you use it as a means to acquire and/or communicate with customers – a definite YES. Time for SEO basics to be taught when folks learn where the bathroom is.
Learn by doing.
What other things are staples of the digital media business that, at a minimum, folks should know about?
- Buying a domain name
- Taking, saving, and loading digital pictures
- Backing-up your data
- Text messaging
- Commenting on an article
- Signing-up and participating in a social network
- Joining a group
- Basics of web analytics (PVs, Uniques, etc.)
- Basic traffic to conversion metrics
What do you think?
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