How to Make Your Business Fit for a Digital World

News flash: there’s no such thing as “business as usual” anymore; we’re living in a very fast-changing world. And while many of us, as social media marketers in the social media bubble, are embracing digital strategy and forging ahead, there is an ever-increasing digital divide and hundreds of thousands of businesses that are falling behind. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Using David Taylor’s SocialDay session “How to Make Your Business Fit for a Digital World”, including his six steps towards getting your business thriving in digital, we’ve put together this quickfire guide to help get you started.

Why are businesses struggling digitally?

Many businesses are suffering with digital pain, whether it’s falling sales, inability to reach new diverse (often millennial or zoomer) audiences, feeling overwhelmed by data, or losing the ability to retain control over their brand. Though there are many complex reasons that businesses struggle digitally, often it is quite simply because the digital world is evolving so quickly; it’s easy to fall behind digitally when you just can’t keep up with what is changing. Even successful digital businesses need to revisit and revise their digital business plan to keep up to date with the latest digital trends, platforms, and audience demands.

And that is yet another challenge to add to the equation: people are changing too. With six generations living in the UK right now, businesses need a strategy that allows them to communicate with all of their audiences. And while there are certain digital preferences of different generations, businesses can’t simply make assumptions on their audience members based on their generation; there is plenty of overlap between and variation within generations too. For example, these different audiences are demanding different styles of content, such as younger audiences generally shifting away from traditional, long-form written communication and towards more visual, shorter-form communication like videos, emojis, filters, and infographics.

Six steps to get your business thriving in a digital world

Though it is clearly difficult to stay relevant in a fast-moving digital world, it is entirely possible. During his SocialDay session, David outlined his six-point plan to help get your business not only surviving, but thriving in the ever-changing digital landscape.

1. Strategy: Create a digital business plan

Before implementing any kind of digital strategy, it’s important for any business to have a proper digital business plan. This should include who your customers are, where they’re doing to be (i.e. which social media channels), the challenges your business may face, the state of your industry and competitors, the state of your business’ digital footprint, etc.

2. Culture: Harness all your resources

When living in such a quickly-changing world, businesses need to be flexible, creative, and adaptive. It’s therefore important to foster a positive, outward-looking culture within your business which values human capital and innovation and finds new ways to do things, including breaking barriers. You don’t want a company where everyone is content with “business as usual”, because there is a real danger of becoming uncompetitive.

3. Content creation: Create great content

Businesses need to start thinking and acting more like a broadcaster or publisher: they should be developing a deep reservoir of content. It doesn’t have to come from you and you alone; in fact, harnessing content from your employees (employee-generated content), your audience (user-generated content), and a mixture of external sources and internal sources can be invaluable to your diversity and content production. Basically, concentrate on harnessing all the resources your business has access to in order to create as much engaging content as you need to power all of those different social media channels. 

4. Community management: Manage your digital channels

A truly social business should be proficient on multiple channels, but it should also have as many people within that business being as actively social as possible, and this includes the social media profiles of its staff (e.g. LinkedIn and Twitter). Developing a corporate LinkedIn strategy (in a safe, professional manner, of course) and introducing proactive social media guidelines can be one way of creating a productive, creative online presence for your business and employees. This includes senior management; they are at the top of the digital ambassador pyramid, after all!

5. Digital advertising: Understand how digital advertising works

Business owners must understand how modern digital advertising works. It is an excellent way of reaching new, diverse, inclusive audiences, strengthening your brand, as well as an opportunity to do some product research!

6. Big data: Get your head around it

In this modern digital world, everything is powered by data; even a micro-business is still going to be generating lots of data. The final step towards getting your business thriving in a digital world is getting your head around big data and asking yourself: Is your data secure? Are all your systems secure (including emails, devices, cloud-based servers, etc.)? And what are you doing with all of your business’ data and the data around you? 

Once you’ve asked yourself these questions, you can start to synthesise that data and use it effectively to enhance your business.

David’s 3 key takeaways

Innovate: Nothing stays the same and pace of change is only speeding up, so it’s time to start innovating and pushing boundaries.

Educate: Educate yourself, educate your team, and even educate your customers on the ever-changing digital world.

Relate: Relate both internally with the people within your business, so that you can get the most out of them, but also externally with your customers and stakeholders. Identify where they are and start reaching them!

Find out more...

If you’re ready to start making your business fit to thrive in the modern digital world, take DNAsix’s free online digital health check for your business or check out the free self-help videos they offer.

David’s fantastic SocialDay session is available on-demand over in the SocialDay Club now!