With our long and ever-expanding to-do lists, it’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day digital work – and equally as easy to get sidetracked by the latest digital trend (voice search, we’re looking at you!). But sometimes, we unwittingly trade strategic focus for day-to-day work and lose sight of the big picture. Before we know it, we’re not even sure why a particular task is on our to-do list at all. Here are a few tips to help you get back on track!
Small Tasks Add Up to Big Impacts
“You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.”
This quote from American author Alvin Toffler couldn’t be more true.
Small things can add up to positive big impacts – or, they can add up to the wrong big impacts, to nothing at all. That’s why it’s critical to take the time to consider whether the day-to-day tasks you and your team are doing are the right ones. They should be purposeful and should stem directly from your digital strategy.
But first, you need to ensure your digital strategy aligns with your organization’s goals. Here’s why.
Strategic Alignment Automatically Sets You Up to Do Work that Creates Value
It sounds simple, but in practice many organizations don’t take the step to align digital and organizational strategy. While it does require up-front work, purposeful alignment is the most effective way to ensure your daily digital tasks are creating value for your organization and your end users.
Your plan should outline the top organizational goals, then outline your digital strategies and clearly show how they align with your organization’s objectives. Your tactics should directly support each of your digital strategies (and ideally should be measurable), which then form your daily work.
For example: If one of your organization’s key initiatives is to grow primary care volume, that could translate into a digital goal of increasing online promotion of primary care doctors. Specific tactics could include things like: adding ratings and reviews to physician website profiles; running a PPC campaign; expanding provider profiles with additional user-focused content, such as video; or implementing online appointment scheduling.
If you feel like you’re constantly spinning your wheels and aren’t sure why, taking the time to assess whether what you’re doing on a daily basis aligns with your digital plan, and in turn your organizational initiatives, will help you start to omit the things that aren’t adding value.
Use Your (Aligned) Digital Plan to Discern the Value of New Requests & Technologies
Once aligned, everything you and your team does will become more purposeful by virtue of that alignment. And it becomes much easier to assess the value (or lack thereof) of new requests and new digital trends and technologies.
As new requests for projects come in, and as you’re evaluating whether new technologies and trends are worth pursuing use your aligned digital plan as your guide, and ask these questions:
- What organizational strategy(ies) does this support?
- How does this fit into my digital plan?
- Will it create value for our customers? Can I measure the impact? If so, how?
- If I/we don’t do this, what will happen?
While it’s certainly not realistic to move all non-strategic work off of your plate, having a digital plan that’s aligned to organizational strategy is the most effective way to ensure the work you do have control over is making the biggest positive impact. And that’s a big win for your organization and your customers!
At Geonetric, we’re all about helping our clients develop and execute on their digital strategies. If you need help aligning your digital strategy with your organization’s goals and objectives to create maximum value, contact us today!