Digital project management – where did it come from?

Although, as I have discussed before, digital project management is a valuable discipline, I mused for a while on where it came from.  Many digital organisations came from the design and advertising industries, where, although significant project management skills are practised, it is not recognised as a discipline. Having worked in those areas myself for a number of years, I understand that the concept of a project has negative connotations. Project based work means that the company has to constantly be chasing new work – the holy grail is to turn those projects into clients requiring on-going service. The management philosophy is usually built around account handling and account management, rather than project management.

When digital media arrived, the type of work originally undertaken was the building of websites. These were usually individual turnkey projects, and as such were amenable to project management methods and approaches. But what of the other services now offered by companies operating in the digital arena? Web marketing, on-line promotion, and digital communications all can be looked at as on-going processes, rather than finite projects with a beginning and end point. However it could be argued that if a strategy is in place with defined objectives, project management is the route to go.

Okay, I admit a lot of this is semantics and depends upon the taxonomy of roles within an industry sector, and most operations will embody both account and project management disciplines, but I think it is also a reflection of the culture and business philosophies to observe which is dominant within the sector.

 

The big idea?

Working on a digital strategy brief with a client, I was told we need a ‘big idea’. Driving back from the meeting, I heard Tim Berners-Lee, ‘inventor’ of the Internet being interviewed on the radio and I thought, ‘Now that’s a big idea’. But since then how many big ideas have there been? Very few I would suggest. What we have seen are chains of little ideas. Good little ideas that agglomerated into something much bigger. Search engines were a little idea to help academics. Visionaries saw the potential and one good little idea built on another until we have phenomena such as Google. Not a big idea but a chain of little ideas done very well.

I’m not suggesting we don’t keep searching for a big idea, just don’t wait for it. All that will come are whiskers. Build those chains of great little ideas.

 

Is print dying?

Back from holiday and the first thing I hear on the BBC Today programme is a discussion as to whether Internet publishing will kill off paper publishing – traditional printed media. Scary stats were quoted on the circulation figures, especially of regional daily papers. There has been a lot of discontinuous change in the print industry.  I started my working life creating ads to appear in newspapers that were changing over from letterpress to litho: ‘It’s just a fad’, we were told. Like phototypsetting, all colour newspapers, desk top publishing, digital photography. Change goes with the medium.

Yes, a great deal of what paper publications once provided can now be delivered better digitally. But there will be a place for paper publications. Whether this will be in forms we recognize today or whether new forms of print media will emerge remains to be seen.  I think it is an exciting time for entrepreneurial publishers to be looking at how digital will present new opportunities for print media.

For those of us not directly involved in publishing the biggest impact wil be upon our promotional activity. Will all our advertising spend be directed on-line? How should digital communications be integrated with print as part of a communications strategy? Where do we place our PR emphasis?

Perhaps the most important decision is how we harness the power of social Internet. It’s easy to look at the world of publishing in terms of just the commercial media, but with an estimated 50 million plus blogs, we are all publishers now.

 

DIY

I do quite a bit of marketing training with SMEs and I am constantly impressed by the way many have embraced web marketing, particularly search marketing. Not only have they embraced it, but they are using it very successfully. There is no need for expensive search marketing companies so far as most small and medium businesses are concerned. High end software and auto bidding etc. are techniques which generally use a blunderbuss approach ideal for mass consumer brands. When my company was involved in search marketing for clients we soon realised that manual approaches were far more successful and cost effective for SMEs and B2B companies. So it is little wonder that those same companies, with a little investment in time and learning, can do a great job for themselves

My only caveat would be to get a good marketing strategy in place first, including a good digital strategy to ensure your efforts are on-course and that you are spending your time and money in the right area. A little help here will pay great dividends. And getting a little bit of training will let you hit the ground running and save you making wasteful mistakes.

 

Beauty is more than skin deep

I’ve already spoken of the problems of evaluating website proposals and so often I have been called in by clients whose lovely websites are just not delivering business results. Often the problem lies in the lack of identifying clear objectives in briefing, or the web developers being unclear of how the site will deliver.  It is the underlying structure and architecture of the site that is of critical importance.

What many clients fail to understand is that with modern web standards based sites changing the visual look should generally be very simple. So, your prime criteria in selecting a site should be the structure and whether it delivers technically. If you can get a site that really works for you you can change the visual look easily. Too often the client forgets the business objectives of a site and is seduced by the visual look of it.  It’s like going out to buy an economical three door car and buying a gas-guzzling 4×4… because you like the colour. Follow these simple rules:

• Give a clear brief on what you want the site to do from a business point of view (for example, is it to generate responses, build brands, provide technical data, drive customers to outlets?). Build this into your brief and make it the prime criteria for selection.
• Consider how the site will be maintained and updated, in view of you internal resource – put this in your brief.
• Look at other websites that deliver what you want yours to deliver – forget the looks and concentrate on technical delivery and usability – reference these in your brief and compare your developers’ solutions to these best practices.
• When you get a proposed solution that delivers, then look at the visual design. If you don’t like it as the developers to work on it until you are happy. Remember it is far easier to change the visual look than change the underlying coding and structure at some point in the future.