Doin’ It Digital
by Kate Rados
After reading Ami’s article about essential digital positions in Publishing, I thought about how most people in our digi-nerd positions, especially in publishing, come from another neck of the business woods like marketing or production. Why is that? How did we get there?
For me, I’ve been asked more than a few times ‘well, how did you get into digital publishing?’ And the answer’s never fun. Because you don’t want to be an asshole and say ‘I just read stuff.’ But that’s actually 75% of it. The other 25% is having a passion for the digital side of things, but I’ll get to that later.
You really don’t want to read about my background. Trust me, I’ll fall asleep typing it. But maybe you are interested in hearing about how pretty much anyone with enough testicular fortitude (tm Mick Foley) can be that Digital Evangelist without specifically beginning your career as such.
It’s not for the weak-hearted. Nor for the wallflower. But it does come down to a few simple rules:
1 – Be A Sponge. To be a digital whatever*, you have to absorb every bit of material pertinent to the industry. Read every pundit blog post (yes, even Godin). Read Twitter feeds of smart publishing people. Read Tech blogs, especially those outside of publishing. Attend every conference your budget will allow, especially those outside of publishing. There are free webinars, tweet-ups, networking lunches, working groups, party lines, soul trains, world of warcraft meetings…ok, getting carried away. Just be there and be ready to learn.
2 – Try Stuff Out. Don’t have an iPhone? I hear ya, they’re expensive and AT&T sucks. But you probably know someone who does, so go find them, ask them to download that eReader app you wanted to try out and buy them lunch to let you play with the phone for an hour. Don’t have a Kindle? You could hit up your old friend Techie McGadgety and see if he’ll let you take it for a weekend. OR you could go on YouTube and watch a bunch of user demos to get an idea of how these things operate. The important thing is to be familiar with how your readers are finding your content.
3 – Make Friends with the IT department.
4 – Work Your Ass Off. Sorry, there’s no short cut. You’ll be up most nights reading Gizmodo’s latest review of the Atari eReader 5000**, or debating the unicorn with your new friends on Twitter, or trying to remember the formula for Pecha Kucha while signing up for Thursday’s webinar. This is where the ‘Passion’ I’d mentioned comes in. Look, we don’t have the answers, but we’re so excited to try to solve the digital business model mystery that we’re spending countless hours doing it. If you’re just as jazzed about it, you should definitely hop right in!
*There are way too many different titles for this position, but all are acceptable: Digital Marketer, Online Director, Digital Evangelist, Webmaster, Director of Digital Initiatives (zing!), eCommerce Dev Guru, Digi-Ninja, Gary Vaynerchuk.
**Not a real eReader. But here’s what it would look like.
Comments
I couldn’t agree more, Kate. This a great overview of how folks in publishing tend to arrive in the digital field. The path is usually a crooked one!
AMEN!!!!
Seriously, it really is that simple. And if your response to this post is anything resembling, “Yeah, but…” then STFU and get out of the way.
and do something that you love, so that you passion shows!
You’re not going to “practice, practice, practice” unless you “love, love, love” it…
Yes and to get to grips with Google Reader, Google Alerts, Twitter and a bunch tools that help you manage the information tsunami!
This is a really good post and I like how you really emphasize the need to keep up with tech news outside of the publishing world. A lot of times we get so hung up on how the book world HAS been and how we can keep it from changing too much and going under rather than the infinite possibilities. Except if we look at other industries and how many can thrive in this “revolution” we might actually see publishing as a growing, exciting thing rather than a failing – and ultimately doomed – industry.
[...] akin in our techno/bibliophelia. Like we would hang out if they were Canadian. Also we definitely got into digital publishing in the same way.(Also I swear as much as the good folks at Quit Being a Hooker, Hooker. Like all the time. [...]