digital strategy

The cart before the horse

“We need a digital strategy to map out our roadmap to success”

“We’ve got to use <insert Content Management System / Product> because we’ve paid for licences for it”.

No you don’t.

You need to think about the what, then just get going on the how.

To overuse the metaphor, you need to stop thinking you need a horse and a cart.  Don’t spend your time  designing the cart, or worse still putting it in front of the horse.  You’ll never get anywhere. Your horse will be perfectly good to get you started on the journey.  If it is an old nag you won’t have invested much time and effort on designing a cart that’s not fit for the horse.  And if it’s a thoroughbred you can build a cart that is fit for the journey when you need it.  And that roadmap? What use is it in uncharted territory?

How to monetise in the world of free

Paying for media content through a pay wall seems to be a daft idea. Why pay for stuff that is free elsewhere? That’s not to say people won’t pay for content, look at the success of iTunes and app stores. (Their success is due at least in part to the ease of making payments).

We see challenge. For consumers there’s just too much noise in the Digital Landscape. It’s random, raw, repetitive. And for content providers, in this Digital Land of the Free, where’s the revenue?  So here’s an idea. People won’t pay for most content (why should they? It’s free somewhere else isn’t it?) But they will pay for some content.

Our hypothesis is that there is a market for content that is original, timely, novel, exclusive, unique or has quality and authority… that is relevant to me, the individual. With that in mind, Duncan and I present a model underpinned by a media broker, where content is priced according to its relevance.

(Slides best viewed on full screen so you can actually read the commentary at the bottom of the page!)

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