Creating a Successful Digital Presence

Objectives, Strategies and Tactics

Gordon Fletcher, Noel Adolphus

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000416558
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing digitale
• Index: Business

Increasingly graduates, and anyone who is entering employment, need an individual digital presence to stand out and showcase themselves to secure their first professional role. This book takes an employability approach to encourage those currently studying, or about to enter the world of work, to develop a set of skills that enables them to recognise and deliver an effective digital presence, firstly for themselves and then for the organisations who would employ them. It does not assume any prior technical knowledge and emphasises the value and benefits of creating a presence to actively participate in the digital economy.

By structuring the chapters incrementally, the reader is guided through the development of their own presence while also being given the concepts and tools that will enable them in the future to scale this activity to suit the needs of a startup, an SME or a social business. By using well-established business principles to design a strategy, the reader is guided through the creation of a personal Theory of Change that will enable them to turn an abstract goal into an individual digital presence through a defined series of stages and intermediate change objectives. The book then proposes a series of tactics to draw out concrete actions. A range of examples and case studies from around the world feature in each chapter to showcase the range of different types of digital presence that can be created.

By using a strategic and systematic process, this book draws together academic thinking with tangible and highly practical outcomes. It is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying any discipline related to the digital world, particularly digital marketing and digital business, entrepreneurship and strategy, as well as those taking employability and personal professional development programmes.

Part I
Concepts

1
What is a digital presence?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003026587-1

What you will learn

• What does digital mean?
• Your value proposition
• The key elements of a digital presence

1.1 What does digital mean?

Digital is a broad term. It is sometimes uncritically used as a badge to represent anything “new”. Often it is applied to distinguish from other practices, behaviours or products that are simply older. Most people personally have some sort of broad understanding of what digital means. But in amongst the details of each of these individual definitions there can be significant variations. This is the key explanation for why book authors on topics such as digital presence devote time to explaining their own perspective on the meaning of the term “digital”. A definition left unspoken for what might be a seemingly obvious term leads to later confusion. That ongoing need for clarity and consistency is no different in this book.

The label for the consequences of using digital technologies, “digitalisation”, is a coverall for all aspects of the economy and society affected. Digitalisation has now created vast and automated parts of the economy that function invisibly, although the consequences and outcomes can be highly visible. The impact of digital on society and the economy can be regarded as the biggest shift in behaviour and practice since the Industrial Revolution and the current culmination of the changes achieved over that previous 250 years (Arthur 2011; Hilali and Manouar 2019). An appreciation of the increasing scale and wide-ranging impact of digital technology in contemporary economic and social activity leads directly on to an acknowledgement of the importance for developing and maintaining a digital presence. In this context, a digital presence can also be seen as a specific personal requirement within the wider processes that are moving us towards ubiquitous digitalisation.

Dorner and Edelman (2015) argue for digital to be seen less as a thing and more as a way of doing things. In this way, “digital” is an enabler for action, not a goal in itself. We build on this core idea to make the understanding of the digital more concrete. The challenge is that the word “digital” is used as an adjective that describes and conditions a previous situation but at the same time marks it as being in some ways distinct. The examples of “digital marketing”, “digital business”, “ecommerce” or even “email” all evidence the prevalence of this thinking. In each of the examples substituting the adjective “digital” with the phrase, “the digitalisation of” is the wordier but arguably more appropriate way of expressing the significance of the change and enabling of each of these functions. The oldest of these example processes particularly highlights the scale of the impact with “the digitalisation of mail”.

Breaking the understanding of digital down into its constituent attributes (Dorner and Edelman 2015) also assists in better representing the impact and meaning of digital on individuals and organisations. The effective application of the “digital” creates new value for organisations and for individuals. Our own focus on creating a digital presence is instructive. In the current example, a key impact of digitalisation is that anyone can create a highly visible profile that is directed to and accessible by a clearly defined and targeted audience.

However, the need to create a personal or organisational presence has not emerged with the rising popularity of digital. As with so many practices that we now consider largely or solely in a digital context, the need to build and manage a presence has been evolving, accelerating and extending since the Industrial Revolution. Prior to digital technology’s integration into mass consumption practice (the digitalisation of commerce), the availability of the tools to create a presence were largely restricted to public figures and large enterprises. The idea that a presence was even needed was largely restricted to Hollywood icons, national politicians and multinational corporations. Technology that permits digitalisation is a significant leveller with anyone now enabled to construct and promote their presence. However, the consequences of digital being an economic and social leveller also increases the need for everyone to create a presence. As the volume, velocity and variety of the information now available about anyone has also increased, it is not just Hollywood icons who must be seen, heard and recognised. With everyone able to build a strong digital presence, anyone else attempting to secure a professional role, find a life partner or present their organisation to a local audience must also build a strong digital presence or risk being shut out.

The value of creating a successful digital presence can be measured at its most base level through the financial rewards associated with the rise of the new and digitally enabled role of “influencer”. Successful influencers now enjoy the lifestyle of a 1950s Hollywood icon and the recognition of an international sports star. Value is being generated individually through the digital presence of the influencers and for the businesses that work with and sponsor them.

Digital also enables closer alignment of perspectives and values. For a business seeking to increase its market share, this is re-interpreted directly and becomes central to its marketing efforts. For charities and community organisations, this is about representing the common purpose they share with donors and supporters while also communicating their services to the intended beneficiaries. The importance of making connections and building relationships through digital channels as part of the purpose of creating a presence also emphasises a mindset of sharing, openness and transparency. A mutual alignment of values is reinforced by continuous forms of contact that are appropriate for the audience and the values being expressed. This might be expressed through, for example, the sharing of lifestyle experience images, high levels of data visibility or opportunities to have feedback channels from the intended audience. Maintaining a close alignment of values and perspectives with an intended audience is a key pathway to success. Social media channels, as part of their own processes to monetise audience engagement, emphasise likeness and tend to push away those with different values by demoting or not showing their presence. This situation described the key concept of the social media “echo chamber” that came under increased scrutiny during the Trump presidency and subsequently (Bruns 2017). The positive aspect of social media channels and their capability to target a like-minded audience is simultaneously negative as it limits diversity of experience, opinion and perspectives.

The pivotal digital technology for all this opportunity is the internet. Without this well-established, open and global network of computing working under the same protocols and processes, what we now label “digital” would simply not work. Increasingly the purpose of computers, laptops, tablets and mobile phones is as physical touchpoints into the internet. Exploiting the unique characteristics of the internet is at the heart of understanding how to create and capture value through a digital presence.

Building on the works of Afuah and Tucci (2003) and Laudon and Laudon (2021), we identify 11 interdependent characteristics of the internet that can be applied directly to the development of a digital presence and explain the value of creating this presence (Figure 1.1). These characteristics can also be the basis for shaping entirely new businesses, defining new ways of socialising and working together, building communities and addressing global issues. Taken entirely uncritically as having solely positive features presents the libertarian view of the digital and a type of emancipatory capacity. Through this and subsequent chapters, we encourage a more critical and nuanced perspective on shaping your presence within a digital context. This is a position that does encourage exploration of the many social and economic opportunities provided by the “digital” while still being situated within the acknowledged constraints of existing channels and practices. In other words, creating a digital presence is primarily seen as being for an individual to make themselves more attractive to prospective employers or make their products more visible to potential customers. But we acknowledge that a digital presence can also focus on the purpose of building a social movement and advocating change. While the influences of libertarian perspective can sometimes be clearly identified in social media channels, websites or other apps, there are other philosophies that equally influence our experience of the “digital”, including traditional capitalism and populism.

Figure 1.1 The hierarchy of internet characteristics

The 11 characteristics of the internet – and more broadly of the “digital” – shape how we will approach the creation of a digital presence. These 11 characteristics represent an accumulated assemblage with the result that the latter characteristics need some or all of the previous characteristics to function. Although there are many examples of different simple technical standards that provide ways of doing things (in the lower-numbered characteristics), there are very few examples of social or economic practice that enable symmetrising practices or can bring creative destruction (Figure 1.1).

1. Simple standard: The internet is built on simple technical standards that are well documented and open. The initial cost of development was underwritten by the US government, removing its conceptualisation and establishment from immediate direct commercial pressures.
2. Universality: By being based on a simple standard that can be accessed through easily reproduced processes and technologies, the internet is a global system.
3. Network externality: The network is better whenever more people use it. This characteristic benefits from the universality of the internet but can also be evidenced at more sophisticated levels such as individual social media channels or within a specific online community of practice.
4. Infinitely extensible: As a global network built on relatively simple standards and a global universality, the internet enables any channel to grow and expand to become as large as it requires. This can be considered in terms of its technical requirements as well as the size of a channel’s community.
5. Cost reducer: The initial non-commercial development of the internet removes any need now to recoup these establishment costs. The universality of the internet also enables the ongoing costs of delivering the technical infrastructure to be spread across a number of services such as electricity suppliers, services providers and specific channel subscriptions. Network externality and being infinitely extensible also bring costs benefits to individuals who share the costs of delivering a service with a far larger base of consumers than may have been the case traditionally. In combination these characteristics reduce the transaction costs of all types overall and for any individual.
6. Spaceless place/placeless space: The internet has the capacity to present digital twins of physical equivalents, a quality already well utilised for video and music distribution, while also being an entirely different place in its own right that is separate and distinctive as any other places separate by time or space. This twinned ability to echo traditional services while enabling entirely new types of experiences drives popular acceptance at the same time as encouraging innovation.
7. Time modulator: One consequence of being a spaceless ...