What is Digital Knowledge Management (DKM)? Is DKM the future of marketing? Is the role of digital knowledge manager going to replace the role of the marketing manager?
On this week’s #MarketingBuzzword Podcast, Ben M Roberts speaks to Rev Ciancio & Duane Forrester about ‘Digital Knowledge Management (DKM)’. As always the aim of the podcast is to debunk, demystify and bring back some meaning to the marketing buzzword.
Rev, serves as Director, Industry Insights for Yext, where he works to ensure customer success as they deploy the Yext Knowledge Engine on behalf of their businesses. Over his 20+ year career, he has managed business development, digital marketing, and social media strategies for a wide range of entertainment and hospitality companies. When not preaching the gospel of Digital Knowledge Management, you can find this expert Burger taster discussing the virtues of what makes a truly great hamburger on his Instagram account, @revciancio and hospitality marketing tips on his blog, Burger Conquest.
Duane Forrester is the Vice President of Industry Insights for Yext, leading industry outreach, evangelism and authorship for the company. Between Microsoft and Yext, he was the VP, Operations with Bruce Clay, Inc, where he lead the operations for organic and paid search, social, content and design.
Prior to moving to BCI, he was a Sr. Product Manager responsible for Bing’s Webmaster Program, focused on helping small, medium and enterprise businesses improve their digital marketing efforts. Previously, he was an inhouse SEM running the SEO program for MSN in the US & Americas. He’s also the founding co-chair of SEMPO’s In-House SEM Committee, was formerly on the Board of Directors for SEMPO and is the author of two books: How To Make Money With Your Blog & Turn Clicks Into Customers.
Duane has written for publications ranging from SearchEngineLand and DuctTape Marketing, to Entrepreneur Magazine, the New York Times and Inc. He actively advises startups and large corporations, and even spent time advising the staff who maintain the White House’s websites.
You can find the Yext website here.
You can find a full transcript of the conversation between Ben, Rev and Duane below, but before that I want to let you know that The Marketing Buzzword Podcast is now powered by Talkative. Talkative is a company that brings live chat, voice calls, video calls and co-browsing together, in one package. This allows you and your business to truly engage with your customers, offer quick and effective resolutions to questions and improve the customer experience. You can find out more at Talkative.uk
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Enough small talk . . . let’s talk “Digital Knowledge Management”
Digital Knowledge Management (DKM) Interview with Dave ‘Rev’ Ciancio, Duane Forrester and Ben M Roberts
Ben : Rev, Duane. Welcome to the podcast.
Guest 1: Thank you Ben.
Guest 2: Same here Ben like to be here. Thanks for having us.
Ben: I’m so excited to have you guys on and I’m really excited talk about this. This too and this potential positive potential buzzword [Inaudible] and we have a little thrill about that we have a wrestling match, we have a boxing match. We have a little sort of a little tug of war. Maybe about this buzzword And this word is digital knowledge management and I’m going to throw it straight out to you guys. I know a big left hook in there and say that this is just a BS term that no one really needs to care about.
Guest 1: You know I’m just I’m just going to block your left hook give you a right cross on this one Ben. So you know from the beginning of time in marketing it could be argued that every concept we come up with is that the star. That ultimately is in the eye of the beholder. Some people will be impacted by something they will see every moment be a positive or negative. Other people, it won’t really have an impact on them and they’ll just look at it and say HI! You know I think you’re just making something up to sell good in this case it is an actual action that is happening. And it also defines a career path. So digital knowledge management. I think we’re going to be able to show you as actual meaning to i may be new in concept and people might just be hearing about it. But the implications of it are very real and important.
Ben: That’s intriguing. I know you’ve got sort of a definition of Digital Knowledge Management a huge sort of shared. So we give some context to start with and by what we’re going to be talking about.
Guest: 2 Sure. So, Digital Knowledge is basically all the facts about your brand your business like you know your name your address your phone number your hours of operation your products or services your menu basically anything that would live online for a customer to find and search and then. So Digital Knowledge Management then would be the process by which you’re sourcing and managing and making that digital knowledge available for customers for customers and moments that matter
Ben: It’s an interesting theory and I can see it from me from someone who’s not deal into the topic so much. I look at and go Is this not just a marketing manager with it with a new fluffy exciting title put on it.
Guest 1: I mean I was going to say you know look I think there was a point in time where you know the centre of a business’s Digital Universe was their website. Right. And so all the facts about their brand would just go on their website and they go back to doing whatever they do. But you know the world doesn’t work like that anymore. You know when you do search you don’t get 10 blue links anymore. They’re there they’re just. You have to scroll past all the stuff that actually matters. Right. And so people are finding businesses are lied in other fashion they’re finding them on Facebook and Yelp and Google My Business and being in Yahoo and literally information about business lives everywhere on the Internet. Well you know you need to take control of that and taking control of information about your business in the places that people discover new business is digital knowledge management. And you know you could say that it’s a B.S. term but like I would say to somebody that’s not managing the Digital Knowledge probably has a B.S. business that they’re not going to be in business.
Ben: It’s not gonna be a mean business. [Inaudible]
Guest 2: So I mean to expand on that just a little bit. You know I think I think the interesting part of this is you know whenever a new concept comes up people are you know in some ways skeptical of it in other ways. They immediately understand it and they gravitate toward it. There’s a lot about digital knowledge management that will feel familiar and to your point that you know like it or we really just may be hyper defining a role of marketing management. You know in some ways yeah I could understand how it might look like that. But in other ways and I’m sure we can get into this a bit more. The depth of experience needed to manage digital knowledge across a company’s footprint properly extends well beyond a single person. And this is where we start the journey on. Okay. So we’ve talked about digital knowledge management in terms of digital assets identifying those categorizing those managing those extracting value from those positioning those policing those and so on. Now we’re going to start talking about what is required from the human being in order to be an effective manager for Digital Knowledge. And I was fortunate enough I spoke about this topic almost about a year and a half ago now and I’m a person who was in the room worked for one of the large health care providers in the United States and about a month after that we got an email from them saying hey we love that concept of digital knowledge manager we want to hire a job called Digital Knowledge manager. Do you happen to have a job description for that job?. And I remember sitting in my office thinking to myself what when and why don’t I have a job description for that job for someone else’s company. And then I thought you know I’m just going write one day. You know it took me an afternoon I pulled it all together. Luckily for me my wife is actually a human resources professional so I got some immediate feedback on how to structure this thing properly and what should be included and what shouldn’t be included. I ran it past our team at the company. You know everybody said yeah that’s reasonable. And then we handed it over and this health care company they loved it. In fact within two days that was a live job posting on the Internet. And they’ve since hired their digital knowledge manager. The critically important part about this is that to be an effective digital knowledge manager means you have to have influence across and within the groups in your company. So you might be depending on your company you might be touching on legal I.T. digital marketing so search SEO social media the c suite of executives who have signed up and authority and finance could be involved in this. And then again depending on the structure of your company you may have external partners whether they be actual partners retail partners. They could be franchisees and so on. You have to be able to you have to be able to get everyone to march in time to the same drumbeat and that is not a skill that a junior person in marketing would necessarily possess. It is also not a skill that you would necessarily possess if you only have a specific discipline of marketing in your background. If you do not understand how search works you can’t give direction in how to better extract value or better align an advertising program in a search with other programs. If you don’t have experience with PR then it’s really difficult to understand the impact and positioning of a PR program against a campaign you’re having.
So, if we look at this from the human side there is a lot more to it. So I’ve had this conversation a number of times where I’ve had a conference and an SEO raises their hand and says I want to do this. I think that’s me. I can do those things and we sit down when we start talking and they’ve been an SEO for three years. This sounds exciting to them because it sounds like a senior position. They think that means more money so they’re willing to give it a try. And this is most decidedly not a role that emanates from that type of positioning within an organization. This is a senior level role that impacts and influences all the way across a company and can have a big impact on budgeting and spending on cost efficiencies and so on. So ,one hand yes there is some it springs from general marketing management. On the other hand it is a very clearly defined set of circumstances.
Ben: Yeah I can see that it’s it. It’s almost like when you’ve put through and a senior marketing manager see just below maybe sea level marketing management role in almost like a project management role almost within a consultant role as well as [Inaudible] if you take an almost important bits from each. And that is actually Nady what’s created a new role any easy in New Role in itself it’s made up different elements that in my writing sort of saying actually that it is not from the bullshit in that soil and just that it’s marked the market with a new fluffy pink title with bows and ribbons and all that stuff. It’s actually its own defined set roles that sort of goes in in between those three roles.
Guest 1: Absolutely in fact this is a role that fills a position that has been opening up over. I would say the last five to eight years. So during that time we’ve seen senior level as CEO roles dwindle we’ve seen fewer of them coming to market. Companies are positioning SEO as a tactical item versus a strategic item in an organization. And so career paths upwards in the world of in-house SEO have started to flatten but the need to understand the total view across a company’s digital program and the external influences of it is still very much there. In fact I’m going to drive it. I’m going to draw the picture this way for you to be successful in digital marketing today. You cannot cherry pick a single item you don’t get to pick a CEO or paid or social or a focus on voice search or any one thing and say I’m going dive deep on that and that’s going to change my fortunes. You don’t turn on. You don’t turn on secure and suddenly rank better right. In order to be successful today it’s a combination of all of those things in your unique mix.So the mix that works for company A doesn’t work for Company B they have all of the same pieces of Lego but the host they build a slightly different. Each one is strong in its own way. So to be successful in digital you’ve got to have organic you’ve got to have paid you’ve got to have social you’ve got to have E.R you’ve got to have security you’ve got to be mobile friendly you have to be looking toward voice activations. There’s all of these components that now come together. You know you have to be managing your data in a mapping scenario whether you have a bricks and mortar or not doesn’t matter if people are looking for that product near you. Somehow your product needs to be included in that localized conversation around the consumer. So. So there is that view of it. That’s what’s happening too and with your business in the digital market space opposite that you have another circle I think of it as two spheres kind of touching each other like the moon and the earth but in balance and the balance on the other side is this digital knowledge manager who understands all of those components who understands all of those cases and can direct the company’s marketing efforts in such a way that they have greater efficiencies they can play off each other to actually be more successful and not cannibalize each other’s programs and really helps set the tone inside the organization. The biggest shift here is getting a company to understand that they should not be siloing their groups within marketing or indeed across the company you know.
Guest 2: Yeah it. I mean we see this all the time right. Like when I worked at Microsoft he was one group SEO is a different group and they never spoke to each other. And so I just kept putting their stuff out there. SEOs kept trying to do their thing. And yet the two of them would be complementary if they would just work together. But that’s not how the internal structure was. Those groups sat within organizations internally. They didn’t meet with each other they didn’t talk to each other. Worse they didn’t actually speak the same language. So when you did put them in the room together both sides left frustrated because they felt the other side was speaking strange language and they were not understood.
Ben: Yeah I know I’d want the business that this is well where actually he got the age old thing where actually sales and marketing have little in common. There are some differences which seem to pull really pull them apart and actually then anyone when we spent time working in a medium to large marketing team you actually do see all these little nuances and these little sections in marketing where I’m here I’m SEO when we do the PPC I only do the actually they talk at two different terms and they can pull each other apart. Now with all that in mind then is this role one that replaces another management role or is it a new role in itself. Are we looking at digital knowledge management as something that says get rid of your SEO manage it to be a marketing manager and Digital Knowledge mantra is the one hold it together. Or is there is another level on top of the marketing manager and the SEO manager where is where does it fit.
Guest 1: I think this is a specialization as like a new germinating role right. Five years ago 10 years ago 20 years ago we didn’t have a need for this person in the way that we do now. And you know as new technologies and new ways come about to market and promote and sell your business like you need to respond to those new ways. I mean you know 10 years ago with social media you know Director for Social Media V.P. was not a thing. I don’t. Probably not. You know I think just as as technologies and Internet and business develops like we have to have new roles that rise to the challenge that’s prompt before us in terms of you know new technologies and new opportunities.
Guest 2: So in my in my experience I’ve actually seen both and I think revers you know right on the right on the target with this but I’ve also seen the inside the companies that have. I’ve seen them create a new role and say this is a role of influence and direction. And I’ve seen them take somebody who’s already in a will give them a new title and reorganize so that various groups now report into that individual. And it’s really important to understand that it’s one thing to have a direct reporting relationship that is relatively straightforward concept to define and implement and to take action with. And then if I’m a DKM and I own SEO and I own paid search and I own social media I can literally look at my leads from each one of those groups and say get in a room. Figure Grab out ,make it better and they have to do what I said I’m their boss. And it just kind of trickles down from that probably more difficult. As important if not more important are the groups that I don’t have direct oversight on that I have to influence to do things the way I need them done and that is that is an actual skill set. That influence of others is an actual skill set that people can develop that can get training in and then apply in the workplace. And it is extraordinarily valuable. That is ultimately what’s going to determine whether you’re successful because if you if you take the concept of digital knowledge management and you apply it across the company it’s like an umbrella. It touches all of these different areas and has an influence over them. You know if you look at this as an organizational structure you could look at it and say well that’s the CEO’s job except the CEO’s job is actually to set course guidance and direction overall for the company not to get into the tactical level work. So you need somebody who’s capable of translating those messages from the C suite into actionable areas and understanding each area and how they need to be activated. Ideally they’d have enough experience to also be able to define what the timing of the activation would look like. So there is a cascading effect you know you don’t flood the area because you turned on all of the taps at once you turned them on in synchronicity and therefore you actually craft a flow to the water that then creates another scenario for you.
Guest 1: So. So there is some there is some value of both sides. From what I end up telling most businesses I just tell them look you know you need to identify people that are capable of doing these things that have the necessary background and you may have somebody who you think is ideal but they don’t have a background in an area so they don’t know social media that well fine get them some exposure to it train them in it give them some time working in that space even if it’s just over the shoulder of your own other experts inside your company build up knowledge of how someone else does their job so that when they take on this role they at least have that sympathetic concept of I know what it takes to walk a mile in their shoes and and that’s a critically important part of this. You know some companies that that you know are doing this today. FedEx has somebody in this role. T-Mobile has somebody in this role a company called School of Rock in the U.S. It’s a music training company. They have somebody in this role. It’s growing in prominence and those people range from an internal person whose job is digital organic marketing but whose experience and influence allows him to guide other groups in the company informally. That’s one company to another company which is this person’s role is defined they are next to if you look at them on an art or chart they are next to the C suite but they have a direct report into a single book the V.P. of marketing and their job is no direct reports other than their team of internal influencers and they spend all of their time influencing the other C suites and influencing the franchisees of their product so ultimately how and who you position in this role is going to be defined by the type of organization that you are and what elements and what levers you have access to all.
Guest 2: I think with that it’s kind of easy especially from this local conversation to dismiss this as something only like Fortune 500 companies are doing or report it. It’s not like if you’re a single location pizza shop owner you start to do digital knowledge management if you’re growing mid-market business you still have to do digital knowledge manifest. And so in the smaller levels there might not be like a one person type role as you know
Guest 1: That’s you, the owner.
Guest 2: Yeah , You’re the owner. You have to do it. Every business has this. Every business needs this.
Ben: Ohh, Rev I’m really annoyed now tell just how move that question is and you just shock us all honestly.
Guest 1: couldn’t get it right
Ben: I couldn’t gonna you know this is a brilliant good question to ask now and he just [Inaudible].
Guest 1: But it’s an important point though right. I mean not yet. So Revs point if you look at those from a single proprietorship you know you’re not going to go in in most cases you’re not going to go and hire someone to go do all this for you if you are. That’s called the consultant and it’s difficult because if you go to hire the consultant and you say hey can you do all of these things. The consultant looks at you with a straight face and says Oh absolutely. And better than anyone else on earth.
Ben: And you know what that is the biggest premium you’ve ever seen.
Guest 1: Oh completely because everything you asked me to do is an add on cost. And so here you go. But outside of that most businesses a single proprietorship single location single online presence like it’s your job as the owner you are managing all this. So those two those two spheres the moon and the earth that I talked about earlier those exist whether you are small or large. So the need to be successful in the digital marketing landscape today. All of those pieces that I talked about are no different for a small company or a large company. The difference is the amount of resources and reach that each end of that spectrum has to apply to it. So if you’re the small company you still have to do all of those things. You don’t get a pass on being mobile friendly because you are a small business. Nope you’re held to the same standard as Tesco or Target or any other large brand. Their problem is they often can’t get out of their own way because it’s there’s a lot of policy. There’s a lot of oversight. Things take time to get through their own processes and systems so they’re not agile like a small business could be the small business owner is so focused on running their business that they’re just thinking of I need better SEO. Yeah that’s what I need. I need better SEO so I need to pay an expert to tell me how to do better SEO. You do. But you also have to pay like nine other experts to tell you about everything from conversion optimization to social media management to everything else because you can’t get away from that. I mean I’m in a drill and I’m one specific example. Your reviews for business if you are not managing that you do nothing else you don’t do any SEO but you’re still crawlable. You don’t do any paid search because you don’t want to put the budget toward it. You’re not really active on social media because you don’t have time for it. But if you have excellent customer service and that rows a base of reviews for your business and that base of reviews is 110 reviews and you’ve got a 4.8 out of 5 star rating that alone and curating that the investment in the customer service that you make that personal touch that you give all those clients that a loan can have a material impact in how you show up in search results in the recommendations when options are spoken aloud and voice search. So you have to do these things. And so imagine now if you layered on top of that hey you know what. Well let’s start talking to people on social media. Let’s go beyond just the reviews that are written here. What does all those people on social media they’re talking to us and saying add this to your menu. Should extend your hours of operation. You know I ordered dinner the other night and the plan slapped me in the face it was so fresh they have to like you to dig into those things. And when you start doing that that’s another layer of connectivity which tells the search engine that you actually care and that’s what the search engine ultimately wants to see. They want to see that if they send Ben to restaurant X that Google feels Ben well has such a good experience that it will reflect positively on Google because if they send Ben to restaurant X and it’s middle of the road and bareness the lower end of the average and has a terrible experience. Ben Is going to blame Google all the way along that curve. So the engine is big try to be very careful with that right. Of course it gets easier and easier everyday because more business or businesses are engaged in this. And that’s another really important point here. You may think well I don’t really need to do any of this or I don’t want to do any of this. I don’t have time to do any of this. The fact of the matter is if a single competitor of yours does one thing better than you and it catches the attention of the search engine they will start to pull ahead of you. You’re not failing because you didn’t do something. You’re failing because you didn’t do something well enough or enough of something and your competition just steadily marches away from you with the help of the search engines because the search engine feels that that competitor is a better answer to a customer’s request.
Guest 2: I know how to go back to your point is if they’ll doing that really would always be Google’s fault not my fault. Start pointing out to when I don’t make mistakes
Guest 1: No, no no now I’ll just do it just to spread the blame around just a little bit here. It could be your medical provider has a slow connection in your location
Guest 2: No, I’m liking this again now that it is moving out. Let’s bring all the actors onstage.
Ben: I’m on the side to make immediate mini me around a little bit when the things I so picked up right from the very start of this conversation. Why I said is that B.S. Ted. And maybe I’m being a little bit harsh and one of the things that human look people think this is easy one of the things that you mentioned was that people think that the Aspe but you don’t really know most people don’t realize it until it’s too late. I mean we have these terms again buzzwords over the years where it was things like social media used to be a buzzword. Digital Marketing used to be a buzzword and ad an advert a programmatic marketing w as opposed when it came to be that one still isn’t there. Some of these things just become almost part of normal psyche. So all we see are we seeing then the more and more marketing generalists should and could be transitioning over or should be trying to transition over to digital not mark to Digital Knowledge Management. Is it something that Gen we should be looking at me [Inaudible] moving towards or is it can to stay has its own specific entity as its own thing or is it going to become that pivot to change and become the norm. What are your predictions around that.
Guest 1: So I think all marketers need to be generalists like they need to have an understanding of what options are available and what kind of what kind of options they have what they could do where they could take things. But then I think that each marketer out there needs apps up and that they do better in whatever way that they do it than anybody else. Right. One specific either category or idea or tactic that you just own right. My life motto is Be Awesome at two things and outsource everything else right so you can be awesome at marketing and then be awesome. Digital Knowledge Management right. You can be that person you understand the world of marketing and you understand the specific use case of DKM.
Guest 2: Yeah. So you know I think again reverse bang on target he’s right in the middle of the button on this one. You know it’s going to be increasingly important that you do have a broad understanding. So now I’m good at. This, what I’m going to talk about right now is specific to somebody building a career or looking to move their career forward. If you want to move your career forward there are going to be two paths. And we’re starting to see them emerge now. You can be an SCA and you can probably have work for the next 40 years of your life as an SCA. It will not be growth oriented. You will bounce around. You will maybe attain the level of manager possibly director of the company. You’re not going to ascend higher up the stack than that for a lot of people that’s going to be perfectly fine they’re happy with that. The timing works. It’s all good if you have aspirations however for continual learning for continual growth and for upward mobility in your career you need to pay attention to things like DKA. Now here’s the beauty of DKA before we’ve defined it it was already underway and so now we’re talking about something that has some momentum behind it because this work still needed to be done. It’s only been in the last year or two that we’ve seen all of the factors for digital marketing starting to come together to influence each other where you’ve needed to have that overarching focus. So as Rev points out you have to have competency across all of those areas. You don’t get that by taking one and saying this is the only thing I will learn and this is my career. It is extraordinarily important that you branch out and understand these other areas. Consider it continuing education and investment in yourself like people go back to university to get a degree. You should be taking online courses in marketing disciplines that are not what you do everyday because you will learn how to influence those things. What’s important in those areas and you will learn to speak a different language inside your own organization and that is what marks you to be moved up in a company. And as companies start to focus on this concept of digital knowledge management DKIM they will start creating roles that are more closely aligned to that generalized background that’s needed for that area and an SEO stepping forward and saying Oh but I do that every day I influence people all the time. No you don’t have a demonstrable experience in paid search your an SEO. Don’t try to quote Don’t try to conflate the two of them in a they both happen on a search results page. I understand that. I gave up learning paper flake about 10 years ago because 10 years ago it was starting to get crazy complex and I had people doing it. They’re the experts in it. I don’t even pretend to be an expert and paid at this point but I do understand the mechanics of how it works. I do understand the positioning of it and from a search engines point of view I very much understand how it drives revenue and why the pixels are positioned the way they are on a search engine. Why their position the way they are in a mobile result. So those things are core competencies that I possessed as an individual because of that background continual learning. So if you’re looking across these things if you’re saying you know I’m a social media specialist that’s what I want to do and I’m going to make a huge career out of this. And social media is going to be huge. Every single thing that’s quote going to be huge normalizes at some point and then no more does it provide the momentum for an upward trajectory for people.
Guest 2: So let’s talk about another buzzword that could happen. Make this go the wrong way. When you start to see people calling themselves a Digital Knowledge management guru
Guest 1: Oh yeah.
Guest 2: That is that is the point at which the B.S. meter comes back into play.
Ben: Rev, you stole another one of my damn questions that’s my last question. I may as well not even be here at the minute.
Guest 1: Ben thanks very much. You know you’ve got the show from here and it’s it I’ll have a cup of tea and relax.
Ben: Why is it a bad British stereotype. Now he’s British he’s going to have a cup of tea. I see that Nurhasyim Canadian right so that’s my D theology. They make sense and we we’ve got be wacky. We’re actually connecting on another level. I get it now isn’t it. Absolutely.
Guest 2: Now but in the reality of that is I do think that you know merging space and emerging technologies and emerging the needs opens up a space for agencies and consultants to do this right because in a growing brand you might not have the budget to bring somebody on to do this when you know you need it. That’s why we hire an agency that’s where we hired a consultant just if it says guru in their Twitter buy help maybe look around.
Ben: I should take it out of the one I was just about to enter. You know I know that is the highest amount and they say no expert gurus slash ninja slash with Slash. Yeah.
Guest 1: This is actually an interesting point though guys I mean all kidding aside right. Like you know we’ve been talking mostly that this is coming from an internal perspective so an in-house role a guy you know and we did point out a bit jokingly that you know you can contact a consultant today and ask what they can do all this. They say yes they do it better than everybody and they charge you an arm and leg for it and then the actual deliverable of it may be highly variable. But that model that model is very well known in government circles. So there is an organization in the U.S. called Darva and Darpas goal is to advance science. So there is a military aspect to it as part of their focus but their their main focus is on science and a lot of what Darpas does is the organization itself is not a large government organization. It’s relatively small as government organizations go but they contract out to subcontract who are the muscle. And that’s what Rev’s getting out here right. We I think are going to see over the next few years consultants and agencies truly become that muscle for their business partners not just you know I’ll give you guidance on SEO or a manager paper account. But truly embedded partners who have a team of employees dedicated to that business as they are force multipliers. So the business says these are our goals that the partner agency comes in and says Here is the strategy. The company signs off on it. The employees are dedicated. They are essentially seconded to that company for the duration of the contract to work on only this. And in that capacity you would see true Digital Knowledge Management weight put into a space where it may be lacking inside a company and it’s going to take a shift because if you’re a consultant and you’re managing 15 clients now you’re essentially going to become an employee embedded within that company.
Ben: Yeah
Guest 1: That’s a different focus then five hours a week for each one of your clients like that is a major shift for a consultancy. If you’re an agency depending on your size you may be able to take some of your employees and do that in say every morning. You’re only working with these people on these projects a Company A every afternoon. It’s Company B and the next day it’s Company C and the morning company D in the afternoon and then you go back to A B C and D and that’s your week. And so you know if you take that type of model you can see where agencies and consultants could play a dramatic role in DKM on behalf of clients over the next few years. It will it will require they change how they do work. Because right now most consultants and most agencies have a lighter weight touch than what I’m describing as needed.
Ben: Yeah and it was one of the things actually it’s almost the role reverse that we’ve seen actually in the last couple of years when we went for to big full stock agencies a huge deal dealer who claimed that they get all this on this channel stuff and then we saw a big rise in the number of sort of smaller boutique agencies. Or we just do social media management or we just do this. We just do PPC and then we almost all sort of start to predict actually maybe there’s going to be a shift almost back away from some advice specially for maybe a clients who actually it. It’s good. You need to stop thinking about those individual sales because marketing isn’t a sales thing you can’t do one thing and not have an impact on something else. I mean for example you create you create content. Content gets right through SEO it gets shared through some show and then you know that that shared social helps to drive what’s actually relevant for your audience to create more content and then you have to sort of adapt your Website for you create different types of content. You did reach out with it through PR. You only rule get fit together. And we almost seeing that move shift away again from the boutique agencies. We do one thing and one thing only and it’s almost going actually ,look Digital Knowledge Management and DKM actually shows that potentially this is the right way going about it, it’s actually being able to consider all elements because all elements have their own role to play and if you if you know one of them you know where the amount of outcome you can get is going to be dramatically reduced for every single one of those that you take out.
Guest 1: So you know your words actually make me think of something Ben and I think this is a really interesting kind of overview right because when you’re saying that what I’m envisioning is the DKM inside a company not just managing their own internal assets but managing essentially a cottage industry of external assets as well. So you are the boutique agency that focused on content of your my content person. You are the boutique agency that’s focused on social right. You manage my social and the DKM is essentially the conductor of an orchestra. Getting them to all work together and sound good together to produce a better product together. And right now so I think you know that that means there is this isn’t a scenario where as this becomes more prevalent those boutique style agencies are in jeopardy. I think you know to Rev’s point earlier you know he was joking around about this but I think there’s some real value in this right. Like be good at one or two things and be really good at them. And I think when you do that you know the DKM essentially then becomes a collector and curator of excellent services whether they are internal to a company or external of a company.
Ben: yeah ,No I think you know what . Oh there’s a perfect way to sort of wrap up this conversation because I think we can keep going on for ages and ages because yeah I think it’s it’s a topic that went with were barely scratching the surface. I think I have to get you guys on again when we as we go down the line looking at years down a lot you’re down the line and that’s actually where this mould was developed and the changes within this and whether these almost predictions that we sort of come up with have come true. So I’d like to say thank you so much for coming on today. I would ask my normal closing question but Rev’s already ruined it. You know what. I could go on and go for anyway. Actually he’s a part of the buzzword marketing buzzwords. All we see are you seeing right now that you are the opposite loving or [Inaudible] hating. We’ve established that the guru ninja wisdom preacher sort of thing is one that’s a bit on the negative side. What else what else are you looking at. What else do you see?
Guest 2:From my and I am pretty burnt out on the concept of blockchain these days. And having said that I am involved in the world of blockchain. But it has exploded to a point where it just doesn’t make any sense.
Ben: What about you Rev?
Guest 1 : I’ll tell you. We’re a marketing buzzword word that drives me absolutely bananas. I cannot stand the word BOGO B, O, G, O. Do you guys have that over their Ben?
Ben: No, it’s not one I’m unaware of. The one ones got to be on it’s my extensive list
Guest 2: Well it is huge here.
Guest 1: Here’s the thing I know you just did a podcast on humanisation and H to H. Nobody uses the word BOGO. Humans don’t use the word BOGO it means buy one get one free.
Ben: Ohh we call it BOGO. So yes.[Inaudible] for decades and we still have this for everyone who used to lose British’s listening we used to have an idea what was the company. It was like say style windows and doors. This old guy needs to just shout at the screen. He said you wanted to get one free. You buy one you get one free. started just said BOGO on the screen. It was. Yes. I knew exactly what you’re talking about.
Guest 1: I’m just going to I’m just going answer this quickly. I would like to point out that if anybody ever wants to learn how to use the English language to its full effect please talk to somebody in England. They are master of it. Once again that is proven to me to be true.
Ben: And I like I do have to point out that you have just insulted me only a little bit. I’m very much not English.
Guest 1: Well that’s OK. There’s time for you to convert.
Ben: I start calling you Canadians soon and then bring you back up to them again. Thank you so much for coming on. It been really insightful because for me this is exactly what the podcasts do is to try and decipher what the terms are B.S. or whether they’re actually something that is actually genuinely going to add value and is potentially either a move in the right direction with its move in the wrong direction and actually provides some understandings. When people come and actually say digital knowledge. They actually have some sort of answer because you meet for too long were effluence Digital Knowledge management expert and guru and it’s actually looked from Ugandan’s boy when I saw a child with Rev about it it was like This is a term that could have a really big impact on the world of marketing and business. Is that true? In the 1980s helped. Look this is exactly what it is and this is the potential impact it may have. Thank you so much for coming on today guys. Absolute pleasure.
Guest 1: Thank you Ben so much for having us. Some of them over in London be great to get together.
Guest 2: Ben’s a Welshman so you have to find him on the other island Coney Island that’s connected to the islands. I’m happy with that Ben.
Ben: Thanks so much.
Guest 2: Pleasure. Really appreciate it.
? Is DKM the future of marketing? Is the role of digital knowledge manager going to replace the role of the marketing manager? On this week’s #MarketingBuzzword Podcast, Ben M Roberts speaks to Rev Ciancio & Duane Forrester about ‘Digital Knowledge Management (DKM)’.){kind=link}