Equip employees with adequate digital skills
Skilling. Students attending a digital skills training at Victoria University. Photo by Charlotte Ninsiima
In today’s world, digital skills are essential for an organization’s survival. With a digitally skilled and competent team, you can soar the market heights regardless of what industry you are plying your trade in.
Mr Emmanuel Luvuma, a digital expert at DigiCon Academy explains that being able to use the Internet effectively and productively ranges from usage of management and communication tools. This goes beyond basic tasks like sending emails. This is the only sure way to thrive in this digital era.
He says these skills shouldn’t be limited to people in marketing and digital departments but should be for everyone in an organisation.
Ms Pamela Hatega, the general manager at Blu Flamingo Digital Africa explains what areas of digital skilling one must be conversant with to thrive in the job market.
Strategy
She says one should be able to carry out end-to-end strategy. This entails understanding audiences because all the digital platforms are customer centric or customer-focused. Setting strategy entails understanding exactly what the customer needs. This way, you can come up with objectives and decide which tactics to employ for your respective employer to ensure that you get the desired results.
Content Creation
“Content creation and storytelling is another skill. Your story is what sells on digital media. You need to be able to tell the story of your brand. If it’s a lifestyle brand show how it adds value to one’s life. If it’s a school, show why you ought to be educated anyway. Therefore, storytelling is vital,” Hatega adds.
Social Care
She adds that social care which translates into customer service is key.
“You put up a post and find people following your brand, asking questions, for assistance, information, putting a comment or complaint. One must be able to professionally respond to queries in a timely manner and know how to handle the various online communities,”
Making analytics work for you
Analytics show you whether what you are doing is working or not. The beauty about digital media is that it is very easy to track for every initiative undertaken.
If you have a campaign that was going to run for three months and you have a set of actions to execute that campaign, you don’t have to wait for three months to elapse to know if the campaign is working. Analytics will tell you whether to carry on or to change tactics.
“Why spend on an approach that isn’t working? With analytics, one is able to change tactics until they find one that gives them value for money.” She notes
Media Buying
Ms Hatega also hints on paid media. She says that without guidance, it is very easy to waste a lot money when it comes to buying Internet adverts.
“There is a misconception that digital media is cheap. There are some social media adverts that go for $3 to boost reach. This sounds cheap and exciting but it is important to know how exactly the concept of boosting reach works,”
Mr Luvuma adds, that it is essential to understand and research on how to use the Internet in a broader sense, about the various platforms, and to carry out competitive analysis to fully maximise the skills and have an online impact.
Delegate tasks
Ms Hatega advices organisations to have creative departments that come up with concepts, ideas and curate content.
Writers to tell stories, a copy team to edit the wording whether it is blogs or catchy phrases, strategists who set the pace and plans for brands. Making sure that strategies are executed and meeting the objectives of the brand.
There is also need for a social care or a customer service team that caters to your audience, a media planner with a good understanding of how paid media works and reporting and analytics sources that keep track of whether your execution plan is working or not.
