Digital Literacy and Transmedia

If you Google "digital literacy," you'll see there is a broad perspective as to what it all entails. It's everything from learning to turn on the computer, search the web, create a spreadsheet (really?), learn about operating systems and software, to using social media.

Digital literacy, however, must begin with the basics. This is a tower, monitor, mouse, laptop...this is how you set it up and turn it on for the first time. This is how you access your files ... and of course, all these steps are different on every operating system, and on different computing devices.

Our transmedia marketing strategies are only as good as our audience's digital literacy.

Most marketing plans are geared towards those who already know the drill. The audience ranges from comfortable to expert. Meanwhile, there is a novice demographic that may be interested, but their lack of understanding computers and digital media keeps them off your grid. Find a way to reach them, too, without alienating the core.

If we stop and think about how our message can be understood and received by the digitally-challenged, we can rewrite the words so they can be understood by all. That's when everybody wins.

A Digital Footprint Is Your Connection to the World, and to Life

Google is not always your friend, but digital and social networks are. Why? You can't control what gets said about you on your Google search but you can control what shows up on your Facebook.

Smart Insights published global social media statistics for January 2016. I urge you to click the link to see the whole comprehensive report.

There are 3.419 billion global Internet users, to which 2.307 billion are active in social media. There are 3.790 billion unique mobile users, and 1.968 billion of them are active in social media.

Facebook has the highest penetration of users between ages 18 to 34, then Snapchat and Instagram.

The most popular networks are in this order:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Google+
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Tumblr

Social media isn't just a fad. It isn't just a personal thing. It is your connection to the world. How you use it will determine your experience.

If you shut everyone out except the people who are in your immediate circle, you miss out on personal growth and connections that could make the world a great big beautiful place.

If you use it to exclusively flog your wares, send a bunch of group direct messages, spam your friends with direct messages to "like" your page, you'll lose connections in a hurry and the ones you keep will just put you on mute.

If you keep an open mind and connect with people you don't know, even if you don't have any mutual connections, you never know what will happen. Of course, you can vet those requests by looking at the profile to see if there is any information that might flag them as a fake account. But connecting with people outside of your sphere can bring you many wonderful treasures: friendship, great and inspiring images, educational and informative posts, business leads, and close friendships that can even move offline.

I vet people by not only if they're a suspected fake profile (usually the army photo is a dead giveaway), but also by what they post on their timeline. If they post continual negative and racist/bigoted links, I will pass on connecting. It is my profile, my platform, and I get to control what I see in the feed. I've done a pretty good job. I don't get a lot of trash or people I have to unfriend.

Social media provides a true digital footprint because you control the outcome of your profile page. Your social pages determine the public's first impression of who you are as an individual. It determines if you are approachable. Will people regret trying to reach out to you? Or will you welcome their social sphere and allow others to champion you?

Your digital footprint in a social media world from Anton Koekemoer

Crowdsourcing Engagement

Before you build your transmedia platforms, it's important to know where your audience lives and how many demographics you will be approaching.

In using +Marvel Movies as an example, an audience can stretch over several generations. There is no one size fits all for demographics. Even though they may all come together for their love of Spiderman and Captain America, the interests and platforms of a 10 year old will differ largely from that of a teenager, from a twenty-something mom, to a 40-year-old professional, to a retired tradesman.

Know where your audience "lives" and what they look for (how they want to be approached). Ask them to participate. I don't mean "like my Facebook page." That means dick squat. What milkshake does your Facebook have to bring all the people to your yard? Once they are there, do you ignore them? Also, when you do ask for their participation, don't waste their time. Be brain-dead clear and concise.

Here are a couple of tips from the Australia website www.8ms.com.

1. Most people want advertising to feel like a story or game (see every Super Bowl).
2. Most want brands to treat the real world like a platform.
3. Most feel more compelled to jump in if the activity is in real time.
4. Most of all the media people consume is screen-based.

Managing audience engagement is crucial. Silence begets silence, and it is also important to make your content easy to share. Replies to comments and queries should be timely. If email, sometimes a few days is okay to wait, but in Twitter or Facebook, if you don't respond within a day, people have moved on and it seems like you have disregarded them.

If you make it hard for people to share your content, they won't. Digital currency is based on likes, comments, and shares. There are some traditional media sites that still throw up roadblocks to sharing online content. If your blog or post doesn't have a relevant photograph (we also see some media posts that don't), you won't be able to pin the story to Pinterest and if it just shows up as text in a feed, it may get glossed over.

There are a whole host of platforms one can use to extend their storyline: blogs, videos, podcasts, special Twitter hashtags, email, social media, web series, website, book, music, SMS, location-based games, novellas, comics, memes, the list is endless.

The following Blab offers up a few examples of getting audiences to engage in multiple platforms. You don't have to go very far to find ideas to inspire your own projects. These two creative websites are the ones mentioned in the video: www.conducttr.com and hitrecord.org.