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Digital Ecosystem Interaction Map
I’ve created the digital ecosystem interaction map to answer the following questions:
- How do I tie my different digital properties together?
- How do I achieve successful community integration throughout my marketing & communications channels?
- What type of content should I be focusing on creating?
- What metrics should I be monitoring? How do I respond (if I need to respond)?
- What can I expect from social networking channels?
The Digital Ecosystem Interaction Map
This worksheet is intended to visualize all digital marketing & communications efforts with their desired outcome. It can also align and draw synergies between online and offline marketing/communications. I encourage anyone with large international communication strategies to use a map like this to bring consistency and continuity to all levels of your customer communications. Although designed for large corporations, this map has proven valuable for the majority of clients I work with; from small regional marketers, to non-profits, to governmental organizations, to international marketing giants.
(view full size) | (download PDF)
Example/ Description
I was able to get this high-level information out of a 30 min workshop with a national retailer. Although high-level, this worksheet’s already beginning to show some insights & opportunities.
The first sections on the work sheet focus on publishing activities. Publishing is an interesting way to think about marketing communications, but more, and more people consume digital information everyday.
This area is used to define what content you plan to publish and where you plan to publish it. (Tip: Categorizing the “What” in this section is very important. A category called “marketing material” is generally not a good category. Ask yourself how you’d respond to “Would you like to hear about the latest _______?” where the blank is the category you plan to put into the “What” column.)
In this example we established 4 streams of content that would be published on a continuous basis: Sales information, New product information, Contesting information, and Category specific information defined by a greater business objectives (i.e. a business focus on Hockey, Running, Biking, or Golf). Those streams of content were published to the internet through several channels (note: I was only engaged to architect the social media component of their digital ecosystem, which is why owned properties aren’t in the list.) Facebook (Fb), Twitter (Tw), Email (E-m), & Mobile (Mob). Category specific information is aggregated on Facebook through several category-focused fan pages to prevent alienating subscribers when business focus’ change.
The remaining blocks within the publishing hemisphere of the worksheet serve to visualize how your content drives users to pre-defined “destinations”.
In this example we show that the CRM program can use data we collect through several channels to increase the chances of driving users directly to specific destinations (or goals). The next areas within this worksheet are only defined at a very high level. We’ve defined the ratio at which we’ll publish marketing-type content to the ratio of sharing “found” content. (Note: Sharing “found” content is a good way to show users that you care about more than yourself. You should always link directly to the original location of the “found” content and specifically cite who created it, if available. Always try to share content your audience finds compelling; try to offer a way to filter content or opt-out of certain content.)
Normally, this section describes how your content mix facilitates driving users to the pre-defined “destinations”. In this case, we did a deep-dive on this section & developed a complete content strategy. This notation is just intended to be a continuation point, referencing the content strategy document. For smaller ecosystems, you can define facilitation tactics right on the worksheet (i.e. digital coupons to drive people in-store, contest leaderboards published to Facebook to drive brand awareness)
The right-hand edge of the worksheet is the block allocated to “destination”. This area is a simple list of all places you want to drive users, and what you want them to do while there. (i.e. Go to the store & shop, Go to my site & subscribe, etc.)
The “destination” block connects the publishing “facilitation” strategy with the “affinity” listening strategy.
In this example, the listening strategy we use to build “affinity” was defined through another document called the “Response Assessment & Workflow Guidelines”. Again, you can define some “listening” guidelines directly in this section that build affinity.
The “affinity” section drives to listening funnel mix. The listening funnel, in this high-level example, simply defines the ratio of brand monitoring to industry monitoring. Again, this is because we have a document that defines additional details.
We also show that there are customer service channels & artifacts (i.e. a # tag) that can facilitate response times.
The listening funnel leads to the first blocks in the bottom “listen” hemisphere. This is where the channels we’re listening to get defined & mapped back to business goals (not shown).
In this example, we defined that we’d be monitoring Facebook, Twitter, an Email tracking & response system, a system configured for brand & industry alerts, and a customized dashboard that feed real-time analytics and ‘sentiment’ data.
Through these channels, we could configure the various systems to track the progress of certain business goals. (In this example, the retailer required that these goals be hidden from this post.) A good example would be monitoring multiple channels for insights on unmet customer needs an innovative product could fill.
There are many techniques you can use to get more value out of this worksheet. I’ve been working with several agencies & individuals across Canada on developing new ways to use this to visualize interactions within digital (and other) marketing & communications ecosystems.
P.S. I know there seems to be a lot of purples & pinks in my worksheet example. It looks a lot more masculine when you print it & mark it up with darker colours. (If you’re concerned about that.)
