Everybody wants to go Digital. Nobody knows what it means.
You’re at your desk and your boss walks in with a huge smile on his face. He wears a scent labeled epiphané, and a wristband with a usb stick that holds 12 photos in TIFF format. He is clearly on top of what’s #trending and regularly shares links to Gizmodo.
If you got the 4 jokes in the first paragraph, you’re probably going to nod your head in agreement a couple dozen times through this piece. My sole intention is not to point at the obvious or poke fun at it, but rather than that, my purpose is to bring some clarity and guidance to the rapidly changing landscape of small and medium businesses in Shanghai, particularly the ones that are eager to go digital.
I’ll try to don’t use terms like SEO, CRM, QR, KOL, Tmall, although I’ll be basically talking about it. One big concept I won’t talk about (so we save it for the next issue) is localization. And I don’t mean language-localization, I mean culturally-relevant content localization. This is a big, wide topic, and it deserves its own study. Most of the following piece, however, can be applied to both English and Chinese content.
There’s simply no easy way to describe what digital means, because it’s connotation depends entirely on what kind of context you put it on. As a creative, I constantly fight the urge to answer every question with “Well, it depends” — but in this case, there’s no escape from it. To structure this piece, I’m gonna explore the diverse meanings of the phrase “Going Digital” according to different industries. I’ve had my dose of experience for a decade or so, and the friendly advise ahead comes from quite a bit of struggle to survive the digital change that showered the world in recent years.
So, if you are part of a business that really wants to go digital, below is an excerpt of some of the steps you could take to help you on that transformation. Some of the advise in other categories will fit yours too, so read thoroughly.
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