Searching for Seth – Access, Knowledge & Choice

We only started digging into the musings of Seth Godin a short while ago – it’s a little like discovering Led Zeppelin in the late eighties…feeling like you missed out yet happy you have uncovered something outstanding.

Seth comes across with a certain clarity:

No, we don’t have an endless supply of the resources we used to trade and covet. No, we certainly don’t have a surplus of time, either. But we do have an abundance of choice, an abundance of connection, and an abundance of access to knowledge.

For Godin, it’s about engagement and accession. Oh, and the choice that knowledge provides. How we not only adapt to the digital age, but lift off. Propel ourselves.

Perhaps it’s time we examined what we have: our ICT infrastructure sitting under the desk, in the cupboard or in the rack, the systems software and myriad business systems to connect and report, monitor and secure; our websites and social; laptops & tablets, smartphones & bring-your-owns, search & keywords, our online shop…. Time to determine how we manage the abundance of choice, connection and access to knowledge….

As a recent startup, we have faced the same considerations – how do we develop our internal and external connections quickly without too much effort and cost? How do we build agile digital elements end-to-end across our business to allow access and choice for our team and customers?

Our aim like Seth Godin is to protect our precious resources, work in harmony & balance, and grab the opportunity that choice and knowledge offers.

Smart Work Hubs Project

We headed along to a showcase this morning put on by Regional Development Australia in the ACT and the Southern Inland to demonstrate the establishment of telework centres around the Capital region. These are part of the Federal Government’s funding to promote NBN readiness in regional Australia.

The project will undertake a “readiness assessment” to determine what is required to establish a professional office environment that utilises the NBN to provide conditions that may not be available in a work-from-home environment.

Mick Chisnell, Executive Director of the ACT Government Information Office, pointed out that there is a triple bottom line outcome from teleworking – economic, social and environmental. The other important point from Mick was that in 10 years we won’t be talking about teleworking, we’ll just be doing it.

This is something the JAM is highly conscious of – business and the community are already taking action with the opportunities presented by mobile computing (laptops, tablets & smartphones) and online tools and platforms. Government must act quickly in public policy to keep pace with the strategies and actions organisations are already implementing.

Younger people are also expecting to be able to bring their own devices into the workspace, engaging in social media platforms and presenting employers with the opportunity to change their work culture. To quote Cisco, “to transform a business, you have to transform the way work is undertaken.”

Providing flexibility and mobility in a workplace helps drive a business’s competitive advantage – not only in increasing staff retention but also driving workplace productivity and efficiency.

Robin Eckermann, who led the creation of TransACT, made the point that the digital economy has already been with us for decades. “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The 2nd best time is now”. This certainly reinforces the JAM’s view that the time to act is now.

Further gov info can be found at telework.gov.au

Why Online Marketing is not Digital Strategy

People have been asking: just what is digital strategy? Trawling through the web you would think it was all about online marketing. SEO, keywords, social media. But it’s not. It’s much broader and deeper than that. And frankly, more strategic!

Think about how you build a business plan – looking at the various elements of your business, your value proposition, your go-to-market strategy, your marketing strategy, your delivery strategy, your HR strategy, the strategy for managing your financials. Then think about how you execute – what are the processes, tools and resources you need to have in place to deliver the actions required? Then think about how you measure success, how you baseline where you are now and your progress into the future; how you build continuous customer engagement & improvement into your business, how you build innovation and collaboration.

Then think about what digital tools and activities you utilise to help you execute. How you use the web, the Cloud, systems, infrastructure; how people find you online, how you establish a dialogue with potential customers, partners, staff and others in your industry. How you convert bricks & mortar into online connection.

That’s your digital strategy – the means to execute your business objectives, the alignment of objectives and outcomes, the convergence of business, digital and the personal.

Online marketing is but one tool, one method of enabling engagement. It is one element of a much broader digital strategy that will drive your business success.

A Leap of Startup Faith

Our favourite saying at the moment is: “Just because you’ve done it once, doesn’t mean to say you can do it again”.

It’s a little like our sales mantra: “You’re only as good as your next sale”. That is, don’t take anything for granted, don’t assume, don’t presume. You can rest on your laurels for approximately one nanosecond and then it’s refocus and back into it.

We’re in the startup boat at the moment, putting together our content and program – a program we know will help organisations take the great digital leap from uncertainty to confidence, from disconnected to converged.

But we’re not taking anything for granted. No stone is being left unturned. And the elements we hope are certainties are being broken down and challenged.

It’s a balancing act – on one hand, starting up takes assurance, attention to detail and focus. On the other, it is a leap of faith, a plunge into the unknown. But unless you take the leap in the first place, success cannot be possible. As Arnold Palmer, one of the world’s greatest golfers said:

“If you’d like to win, but you think you can’t,
It’s almost certain you won’t”.

Tinkering with Evernote – the jury is still out

At the JAM we’ve recently been playing with Evernote, a cross-platform productivity tool for capturing and storing info. Evernote allows you to write and store notes on a location basis, adding visuals, tags, web clips (including whole web pages) and audio notes. Because it works across all devices (desktop, tablet, smartphone), you have access to the info wherever you go.

There appears to be two camps of people about Evernote – those who use it for everything aka “capturing their digital life”, and those that cannot see what the fuss is all about. At the moment we’re sitting on the fence – curious about how it might be used ubiquitously, but not exactly jumping out of our skin at the prospect.

Like all tools, you should briefly explore & play to see what’s possible and how it fits into your work and personal life. If it grabs you straight up, use it in anger for a period to determine if it lives up to your first impressions. Otherwise, get an understanding of what it does and move on.

This article from Lifehacker last November casts more light on the possibilities. The tip we would emphasise is to tag, tag, tag. That way you will be able to find info later when you have forgotten the context.

Digital Enterprise Online Marketing Workshop

ScrivenerJAM had the opportunity to sit in on the 2nd workshop in the ACT’s Digital Enterprise program held at the new Digital Hub in Gungahlin Library. The workshop was run by the very entertaining and knowledgeable Todd Wright from Threesides.

The concept of online marketing is at the heart of helping organisations grow their business on the web.

The full house of participants demonstrated the range of unique businesses in Canberra. From life coaching through financial planning, to dog grooming, landscape design and a natural deodorant product, there is no shortage of entrepreneurs willing to have a go at developing their own business in the nation’s capital.

The workshop looked at developing an online marketing plan, social media tools and practical information on what to do now, what to do next and what to do later.

Some of the key messages included:

• All roads don’t lead to your website, they lead to your customer
• Focus on your keywords
• Help Google search across all areas of your site – video, images, maps, text etc
• Create search engine friendly content
• Utilise Search Engine Optimisation to help drive traffic:
  • Develop content that can be linked to from reputable websites
  • Don’t link to poor websites
  • Create titles and labels
  • Create social media links
  • Develop a Google site map in XML (using the BetterWP plugin if you have a WordPress site)
  • Develop a clean menu structure; and
  • Optimise for people first.
• Use Google alerts to develop free media monitoring
• Use Google Places to define who you are and what you do
• Pay for individual keywords in Pay per Click advertising
• Use Google Analytics to determine how customers get to your site and what they do while they’re there and afterwards
• Turn your Analytics into the real world – for instance, how can you develop partnerships with organisations that refer traffic to your business?
• Make sure you use a call to action on every page
• Make sure your contact details are on every web page of your site
• WordPress has taken nearly 12% of the world’s CMS (content management system) market and is an excellent platform to get up and going
• Invest time in email marketing
• Have a two way conversation via social media platforms; and
• Create a culture of content, because remember, content is king!

Finally, don’t wait, get up and going, and do it quickly!!

10 Tricks to Make Yourself a Dropbox Master

Gizmodo has a new article to help take advantage of the features in Dropbox, our favourite and corporate cloud storage app.

Built to be accessible across a wide range of devices, Dropbox allows users and teams to share files and folders in the cloud while keeping local copies on your hard drive.

One of the best tricks is to look for the the many increases in space you can get from your starting point of 2GB.

10 Tricks to Make Yourself a Dropbox Master

Digital Strategy – Keep it simple and keep it relevant

Some do’s and don’ts about the digital strategies you are employing in your small business – build your digital strategy as a component of your broader business strategy, simplify your online presence, make sure you use the platforms you have, and review these regularly to maintain relevance and focus.

Don’t Make Customers Pay For Your Digital Marketing Mistakes

The Data of Death – A Visualization

The Information is Beautiful group in London has developed a dataviz showing the mortality data from the entire 20th century. The result is a 6m x 2m “visualisation art-piece” currently showing at the Wellcome Collection in London.

The Data of Death – A Visualization

ScrivenerJAM on Pinterest

The JAM has an active Pinterest presence which keeps evolving the more we get in to the totally visual nature of the platform.

While we capture interesting pieces on Gov, Biz and Community, we’ve extended our interests across Social Media, Canberra, Tech, Music, Jam (of course!), Jimjams, Pearl Jam & The Jam.

Come and check us out on Pinterest.

ScrivenerJAM on Pinterest