I don’t know if you have noticed, but lots of fathers seem to be going around telling their sons and daughters that ‘they can be anything they choose to be’. While this advice is sound and commendable it makes life difficult for the genuine professionals who perhaps were not fortunate enough to have parents who believed in the song – be what you wanna be.

It was bad enough when computerization meant that text typed out in Word Star could be easily edited by a client who very soon began to believe that he was a good copywriter because everyone at home told him that he was so punny, so clever…so articulate. Of course it became worse when pirated versions of Photoshop and Corel Draw became available and the same clients who could now dabble with color changes, font changes etc., also played around with layouts and designs, cool and comfortable with the knowledge that they were ‘gifted’ Art Directors.

Just when we had begun to get over the shock of clients beginning to think that a four color job was nothing but a Xerox copy, we found thousands of youngsters learning the first four letters of a beautiful language called Photography…D S L R.

And before our very eyes, Hollywood titles like the Wedding Planner became horror stories in our dictionary as Event Managers morphed into Film Makers. As long as these newbies restricted themselves to calling themselves anything from Celebrity Photographers to Wedding Film Producers, it was fine. I mean, if a couple gets its kicks by posing in front of a camera while a mock honeymoon session is conducted, that’s their problem, right?

But when all and sundry begin to call themselves Digital Media Experts I stand up and object. Now you’ve truly crossed the line. And that’s not on…in fact it is dangerous for the client!

Let us first agree that a person who posts randomly in Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Linked In etc. is not actually carrying out a campaign.

Let us, and here I’d like to include many of the poor uninformed clients as well…let us understand that putting up a website may be a first step into cyberspace but it is nowhere near the real battle in the Digital Domain.

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) will bombard you with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) wisdom and will promise you high rankings on various search parameters and engines, but wait…you are still not part of a Digital Campaign. In fact you are quite far off.

The basic thing one needs to understand is that there is a basic difference between conventional media and digital media. Conventional Media is a stand alone vehicle and relies on you to generate Word of Mouth activity i.e. you see an ad, like it and then when the opportunity arises you talk about it to a friend or family member. If you didn’t (and unfortunately in most cases, you don’t) spread the word, the communication has ended with you just being informed.

In the case of Digital Media it’s a whole new world.

You see an ad or a piece of information. You like it. You feel you need to spread the word. The medium offers you the facility to, with the least bit of effort, pass on the message to your friends, who in turn pass on the same message to their other friends…and so on. This is the phenomenon that’s now fashionably called ‘Going Viral’…which is often confused with a success mantra called ‘Going Ballistic’.

If the medium of your choice merely manages to inform your target audience then it is not a preferred medium anymore. The medium and the message combined have to inspire immediate action…first so that your target audience understands the message, likes it and then shares it…almost everything happens in a matter of seconds.

Only if you choose your medium with this objective…only if you can craft messages that have the potential to go viral…then and only then, will you qualify to be called part of a Digital Campaign. The others are doomed to be simply Digital Tombstones in a graveyard of ‘wannabe’ marketeers.

So when you post something in Facebook…or tweet something…or even update on Linked In…look at your message…Does it have a high Passability Factor? Does it make you feel like sharing the item? If not, you may as well have sent your targets a telegram!!!

I see and hear a lot of marketeers tom-tomming about the hits they got on their site, the views they got on their You Tube posts and so on…but I have a different yardstick. How many people actually shared your message with their friends. That is the number that’s a barometer of your campaign’s success.

And the faster everyone understands this, the better!!!