In the past few months, Notes from Flat Creek has emphasized the need to recognize the growth in digital communication, and work to incorporate it into your communication strategy. But what are the benefits of digital communication? Why should you put your valuable resources into digital communication? The answer is: because that is the direction where all types of communication are evolving, and your message stands a good chance of being ignored if you don’t.

We’ve recognized the three areas that digital communication will most impact your communications strategy:

1. Delivery – Consumers today can choose the times when they want to be communicated with. Developments like blog readers and e-newsletters allow your audience to organize communication, and process it when they choose. By incorporating these features and others like podcasts, into your strategy, you will be able to deliver your message in a way that is convenient and continually accessible to your audience.

2. Access – Closely connected with delivery is access, and in two important ways. Digital communication allows consumers to access your message when they choose, and to store it for later use if it is applicable. Also, digital communication allows you access to a consumer’s undivided attention, through tools like opt in newsletters. When your audience chooses to hear your message, it will resonate much more than if they are bombarded unwillingly.

3. Management – Digital communication offers far more organizational and analytical potential than traditional methods. Email newsletters offer the ability to track open and click through rates, so you can better determine how to present your message. Customization is much easier through digital communication. You have the ability to tailor your message to virtually unlimited parameters. Also, anybody who has experience in bulk mailing knows that hitting the send button on an email is much easier that hauling bulk mail to the post office.

Beyond incorporating digital communication simply because of shifting trends, it offers significant benefits in accessing your audience, and managing your message. Recognize the benefits, and re-align your strategy.

Professionals and prognosticators are always trying to predict the future. What’s next for stocks, fashion, the Web, etc. For online professionals, the question is more narrow. Who will be the next Google? What will be the next trend to take the Internet by storm?

I have no crystal ball, but in keeping with Flat Creek’s perspective that the old rules still apply, even in the face of exciting new technology, I believe the next wave of online success will not be new applications or features but more likely adoption of existing technologies. The ones who make money aren’t the ones on the cutting edge of a brand new idea. They are the second generation who gets the idea right.

Look at Facebook as an example. Friendster introduced the Web to the new concept of social networking, but just now Facebook (and it’s grown-up cousin LinkedIn) are really starting to hit their stride. The reason? There are two steps to every great product success:

1. Introduction
2. Adoption

Introduction happens when a new product or idea hits the marketplace. Think VCRs or PDAs. But it took years for those things to be adopted as an industry. Often the first movers (such as Friendster) were crushed and follow-up companies (such as Facebook) took all the glory. Yahoo was a big mover in introducing “search” to the Internet. Yahoo is now a distant second to Google, who came along with a better product and fast adoption.

Today, we see the widespread adoption of social media - blogs, for instance. The next wave of adoption will probably take place where exciting products are still being introduced - namely, mobile devices. As consumers, carriers, and device makers all step up to the plate, mobile data adoption will follow in a cycle of growth. What will likely not grow are podcasts. Just as with cell phones, quality is key to product adoption. Podcasts just don’t have the quality products or content to make it to the mainstream. Mobile TV, however, is a great new addition and will likely grow as new products are adopted.

Do you know what’s next in your industry? Contact us. We might have an idea or two.

No, I’m not going to tell you that we’ve uncovered new magical secrets to make your website zoom up the Google search rankings. People who do tell you that, especially when they charge a hefty hourly fee to do it, are lying to you.

I’m just pointing to a terrific article by New York Times business writer Saul Hansell (”Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine“) where he was actually allowed inside Google’s Building 43, the closely-guarded facility where Google engineers tweak the mathmatical algorithm that drives Google’s search results. As the article points out,

“‘Expectations are higher now,’ said Udi Manber, who oversees Google’s entire search-quality group. ‘When search first started, if you searched for something and you found it, it was a miracle. Now, if you don’t get exactly what you want in the first three results, something is wrong.’”

Hard-core search enthusiasts are always looking for any gleaned insights into the latest tweaks to Google’s code. Those who claim to have more are, again, playing loose with reality. According to the article, here’s a synopsis of how a website becomes listed on Google:

“As Google compiles its index, it calculates a number it calls PageRank for each page it finds… PageRank tallies how many times other sites link to a given page. Sites that are more popular, especially with sites that have high PageRanks themselves, are considered likely to be of higher quality.

“Mr. Singhal has developed a far more elaborate system for ranking pages, which involves more than 200 types of information, or what Google calls ’signals.’ PageRank is but one signal. Some signals are on Web pages – like words, links, images and so on. Some are drawn from the history of how pages have changed over time. Some signals are data patterns uncovered in the trillions of searches that Google has handled over the years.

“Increasingly, Google is using signals that come from its history of what individual users have searched for in the past, in order to offer results that reflect each person’s interests.

“Once Google corrals its myriad signals, it feeds them into formulas it calls classifiers that try to infer useful information about the type of search, in order to send the user to the most helpful pages. Classifiers can tell, for example, whether someone is searching for a product to buy, or for information about a place, a company or a person.

“These signals and classifiers calculate several key measures of a page’s relevance, including one it calls ‘topicality’ – a measure of how the topic of a page relates to the broad category of the user’s query.

“The sites with the 10 highest scores win the coveted spots on the first search page, unless a final check shows that there is not enough ‘diversity’ in the results. ‘If you have a lot of different perspectives on one page, often that is more helpful than if the page is dominated by one perspective,’ Mr. Cutts says. ‘If someone types a product, for example, maybe you want a blog review of it, a manufacturer’s page, a place to buy it or a comparison shopping site.’”

We’ve learned a lot over the years on how to write, develop, and build websites so they are friendly to search engines. But looking at SEO is secondary to designing with the user in mind first. For professional firms, especially local and regional ones, a lot more traffic is going to come from your site directly via old fashioned referrals. Ease of navigation, compelling content, and client interaction are key points for your site design. If you let us do that — and we are very good at it — the search engine traffic will follow.

Following up on my post from yesterday about the evolution of content online, here’s a quote from Associated Press CEO Tom Curley during his speech at the Seoul Digital Forum Thursday:

“As we consider the digital future though, let’s be very clear about one thing: Technology may change how journalists work, but it has never changed what journalists do.”

Just what is it that journalists do, exactly? Other than your favorite punchlines, here’s his answer:

“Speaking truth to power or acting as the watchdog of the powerful is one of journalism’s enduring values.”

I would argue, however, that these “enduring values” are not the exclusive domain of journalists but rather our civic duty as citizens and consumers. Anyone who has experienced bad customer service is more than happy to “speak truth to power” to get a refund, exchange, or just tell their friends not to use that service. The key difference, obviously, is that journalists traditionally have had exclusive access to megaphones (print or broadcast) loud enough to share their message.

With Technorati’s estimate that there are now 82.6 million blogs online, there are a whole lot of megaphones out there. Curley didn’t answer the question of how they deal with that, and ironically the AP writer covering his speech didn’t ask…

Google’s good for all sorts of things, especially finding old dirt memories. Take my quote here back during my time with Fleishman-Hillard about changes to the Internet:

Looking back: Fastest impacts
What impacts have been felt more quickly than you expected?

The expansion of wireless access has made the Internet far more pervasive that I could have ever imagined. It’s not about going to a computer in the home or office. It’s about checking e-mail or driving directions while waiting for a cab on the sidewalk. - Allen Fuller, Fleishman-Hillard

This comment was part of the Pew Internet & American Life’s Experts Survey of Internet stakeholders. I came across it the other day when I did, finally, Google myself.

It’s funny though, even as the Internet changes and technology changes, somethings don’t change. I still stand by my quote as much today as I did three years ago.

And apparently Google isn’t going anywhere either, even as it changes rapidly. So go ahead - go Google yourself.

Do you look at technology vs. strategy or technology & strategy? As this article points out, the difference can be as real as you vs. growth or you & growth:

As a business owner you’re constantly planning for the future. You focus on company growth by offering new products and services, adding staff, or expanding into other areas of the business. But how often do you tie technology plans with your company’s future strategy? If you don’t have a technology road map, it may be time to form one. The right technology investments can support a company as it advances toward its goals; it can also launch the business to a higher level of performance and achievement.

A new study indicates that more and more people are donating to political causes online. For political junkies, this is really exciting as it opens the door to new donors.

The George Washington University Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet along with the Campaign Finance Institute found that a quarter of donations to Republicans and more than half of donations to Democrats are now made online. Especially exciting is that many of these are first-time donors:

A large portion of small online contributors ($100 or less) gave unsolicited donations. About 46 percent said their first donation was self-motivated, not triggered by a phone call, letter or email. In years past, unsolicited donators had to work harder to find a way to make a contribution.

For anyone who has ever had to file a campaign finance report, compliance can be a nightmare. Trying to hunt down a donor’s details can be time consuming and many times fruitless. Online donations don’t have that problem, as donors are required to enter their information before the donation is processed.

Through our experience designing political websites, campaign websites, and policy websites, we have found several online donation tools with reasonable transaction fees and great service. It really can open the door to new donors, both today and down the road.

Epicor has a great new white paper out on the changing trends in professional services. This affects not only how we work but how we market to professional service firms. Not surprisingly, technology is a huge driving force in this change.

Register to download the free white paper through IDG Connect.

There’s been a lot of talk about Web 2.0 and just what that means. One of the major themes of a Web 2.0 site is how well users can interact and contribute content to the site. Enter Yahoo! Sports and the 2007 NCAA Tournament.

Using the Yahoo! Sports Tournament Pick’em feature, users can join a group, create a group, or just fill out their own bracket. Completely online and interactive. Users contributing content. Online fantasy sports groups are in many ways the precursors of today’s Web 2.0 trends.

Remember when your friends used to e-mail around a spreadsheet w/ the tournament picks in it? No more. Sites like this allow users to contribute their own content and complete the bracket online. Then print it out, share it, rub it in people’s faces after three rounds… whatever.

So welcome to Web 2.0. March Madness style.

The new SharePoint 3.0 has a ton of great new tools on board, among which is the ability to create a blog. We use this internally as a knowledge management resource to store articles or websites of reference, mainly so that when one team member has found a solution to a challenge, or an innovative new technique, it is preserved for the rest of the team to be able to access quickly.

Anyway, if you are using this new technique, here’s a handy three-step cheat sheet on how to post to your SharePoint 3.0 blog:

One - Copy the Text

1. 1. From the article you want to save, copy the full text of the article, including the title.
2. 2. Open your Internet Explorer and go to Knowledge Management (on the SharePoint site).

Two - Create the post

1. 1. On the top right of the homepage is a set of Admin Links for the blog. Click “Create a post.”
2. 2. In the form, paste the article in the Body field.
3. 3. Add your own title in the Title field, or just copy the title from the article.

Three - Publish the post

1. 1. Select the category you want for your post.
2. 2. Click “Publish.”
3. 3. Your post should now appear on the homepage.

To edit a post

1. 1. Click on the title of the post.
2. 2. Click Edit.
3. 3. After finishing your changes, click “Publish.”