Umm, what is digital strategy?

Facebook amassed users, then sold our eyeballs to the highest bidder. At first people thought that social media was this massive microphone, but decreased organic reach has significantly turned the volume down. The idea went from getting "Likes" to figuring out how to make sure the people who had "Liked" your page could actually see what you were posting. The page turned, and people who had thought ahead were already creating great content via newsletters that were chock full of value.

I, personally, am annoyed at how long it took me to see the light with respect to this exact pivot.

The takeaway for me has been about making sure we're agile enough to understand the platform (whatever it is), how it fits into our overall strategy, then see where it's going and adapt preemptively.

The questions for any business owner with respect to digital strategy are:

• What is our digital strategy?
• What components does it include and in what proportions?
• How often do we evaluate the strategy?
• What indicators will we use to measure effectiveness?

And perhaps most importantly, how will this work best connect us with interested partners, collaborators or clients?

Outreach, marketing, and advertising are never free, and the cost goes up without a strategy.

Visualizing information

I'm fairly obsessed with infographics these days. They've taken storm over the last decade, proving to be an effective way to communicate granular information that people might just glaze over if embedded among 1000 words.

In writing an article about the decay of media standards for Mode, I found this awesome infographic entitled Media Consolidation: The Illusion of Choice. It shows just how unilateral the media is, & does so with imagery not alphabet.

One solution is for us to create the media outlets ourselves, especially because of my belief that advertising as a means of funding media is the inherent problem, but that's another post altogether.

The idea I wanted to chat with you about though, was this notion of making information more real for our communities. Images, illustrations, video, and increasingly flat tools for creating those assets allow a larger segment of the population to utilize them every day. We have the ability show instead of tell.

By turning our words into visual content, we help bridge the gap. Instead of eye test their way into alignment with us, why don't we make it easier for our advocates, communities, supporters, and confidants to message for us?

Part of that is why we created the IPaintMyMind 2015 Annual Report Infographic. We wanted to make our impact easier to understand, and I'm super happy with the results. I hope it shows people that our mission is not only worthwhile but picking up steam.

Going forward, regardless of the project, I wonder how we can all distill our verbose concepts into meaningful visuals that cut to the chase. It's an exercise of turning words into images and thus reducing the essence to the point where clarity is inevitable.

How can your company, project, movement, or idea communicate better?

How could visualizing information be an asset to you?

I need to find the manifesto I wrote about IPMM before we incorporated. Way too many words.