Lesson 3

Plan
Digital communications tools
- Internal
- CRMs
- Collaboration tools
Digital communication agencies
- SEO

Digital political Communication

- Data analytics
- Political manipulation of social media
- Bernie Sanders campaign

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 Part 1. Digital communications tools
The workplace was once composed of a physical office space with employees working face-to-face, and
through email during set hours between 9am and 5pm. Now it is the norm for employees to be working
across multiple locations, hours and devices, the workforce no longer confined to a single office environment.
As these diversified workplaces emerge, the need for team-based and collaborative, digitally connected
work environments becomes critical to efficiency and growth. Organisations must introduce digital workplace
strategies capable of improving collaboration and communication, and enabling employees to work together
effectively, regardless of location or device.
What Is A Digital Workplace?
The digital workplace can be considered the natural evolution of the workplace. It encompasses all of the
technologies staff use to do their jobs. This can range from the HR applications and core business applications
to email, instant messaging, enterprise social media tools, intranets and portals. Digital workplace helps your
staff do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. It should consist of a holistic set of platforms, tools and
environments for work delivered in a usable, coherent and productive way. This gives focus on the experience
of the employee or the individual as well as the environment in which they work.

The Most Popular and Efficient Business Communications Tools

To manage these industry changes, many leading organisations in business and government have
implemented a digital workplace strategy. By intelligently combining the technologies that many businesses
already use, the digital workplace has broken down the communication barriers and is transformating employee
experience to one promoting efficiency, growth and innovation. The key to success, however, depends on the
implementation of a digital workplace strategy - requiring one that is capable of driving true change within the
organisation.

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Intranet/Social Intranet

An intranet is a private hub that can be accessed by any

authorised users within a business organisation. It is used for

driving internal communication and collaboration, as well as

easy access to resources. Modern intranets are often built

using content management systems as they are easier for

non-technical staff to manage.

In this age of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and telecommuting, an intranet solution will result in a more

flexible workforce and ensure all employees are working towards the same goals. Intranets enable you to easily

share company news and build an information-rich environment, accessible from any location and on any

device. This makes it a great platform for cultivating a positive culture across a diverse workforce.

Homepage news feeds can be personalised for each staff member based on their team, department and/or

location, sensitive or confidential information is only seen by a select group of people. Staff can update each

other quickly and easily on their own news. They can distribute news to specific colleagues in a particular

location or area of specialty, and colleagues can interact with the content and offer feedback in real-time.

Document sharing:

Chat&PrivateMessaging

Collaborative spaces which provide private/group messaging and chat functions are often viewed as one of the

best business communication tools to keep teams working together. It’s an effective form of communication for

busy employees and managers. Instant messaging makes updates on projects and general team discussion much

easier. This works well when employees or team members are spread across different geographical locations

and different time zones. Files can be shared and conversations can be accessed if needed.

Chat rooms and group messaging environments may seem the same, but the interfaces are often very different.

For instance, your company might get more out of an instant messaging platform than a chat room if you don't

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have a lot of team-based projects, and individuals only occasionally need to contact other individuals within the

organisation.

DiscussionForums

Although discussion forums may seem like old tech to some, it is still one of the preferred communication

business tools used today. A discussion forum can bring together management and employees and allows for an

open discussion on any topic (usually set up and monitored/moderated). It can also help in knowledge

dissemination and bring the workforce together. Forums are also effective in archiving organisational

knowledge to be used by anyone as a reference. Employee morale can also be boosted by participating in

regular discussion forums.

Discussion forums will also facilitate knowledge sharing. No time will be wasted answering the same questions

again and again once the company forum has been integrated with enterprise search. This will enable forum

information to be discovered by people who need it, when they need it.

Tracking&CaseSoftware

An online help desk with a case tracking system enables

employees and customers to submit a case or support

ticket. This allows it to be assigned to the right employee

and have it checked and resolved in time.

A case tracking system helps centralise customer support queries and keep track of any open issues.

Track team productivity, prioritise the most relevant and important queries and collect valuable customer

feedback that can help in improving your products, services and customer relationships.

An issue tracking system is generally used in an organisation’s customer support call center to create, update

and resolve reported customer issues or even issues reported by employees within the company.

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InternalBlogs

An internal blog is also a good option. This is not something your customers and competitors will be able to

access.

The internal blog is a place where employees can share ideas and experiences fast and in an informal fashion.

Internal blog advantages can include:

 Broadcasting and highlighting an employee’s knowledge about a certain topic or area of the

organisation

 Creating a searchable and permanent archive of knowledge base articles, knowledge and expertise. All

the articles uploaded and published on an internal blog will stay there unless deleted manually

 It promotes open discussion and collaboration among the workforce. There are instances where some

employees will be more likely to speak up in a virtual environment than face-to-face

 It connects employees across departments

 It keeps the staff up-to-date on important information and company updates

What is CRM?
CRM is an abbreviation for Customer Relationship Management. It’s a system used to build and
manage customer relationships.
A CRM system helps businesses manage all the interactions it has with customers and potential
customers. With a CRM platform, customer preferences are recorded, and customer activity can be tracked.
So every time they are spoken to, regardless of who they talk to, customers get a fully personalized and
consistent experience.
CRM software helps organizations streamline their processes and workflows so that every part of the
business is on the same page. Sales and marketing teams, especially, rely on CRM to create collaboration and
improve their productivity.

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 The overall aim is to provide more engaging customer experiences, increase customer loyalty and
retention, and drive business growth and profitability.

Check out this brief video to learn more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOJxF99S7XU&feature=emb_logo

What Are Digital Collaboration Tools?

An online collaboration tool provides a unified platform for team discussion, file sharing, online storage for
documentation, task assignments, and real-time project collaboration. At their heart, collaboration tools are all about
aligning people. Collaboration software comes in many forms. Slack, a common collaboration tool with a focus on group
messaging. And you’re undoubtedly familiar with widely-used Google collaboration tools (Drive, Docs, Sheets,
Hangouts). Collaboration tools can be a video conferencing tool like Skype or even your Gmail account. Modern
collaboration tools unify all of these work interactions within a single platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omm4cQQ62AQ&t=279s

Digital collaboration aims to improve information flow, communication, collaboration, document and content
management across the organization, leading to increased productivity and employee efficiency.
Apart from office software, the cloud is an essential part of digital collaboration as it ensures that companies can
function beyond geographical boundaries and standard work timings.
But exactly how are these digital workplace collaboration tools helps in improving workflow across a company?
1. Better Team Productivity
Digital collaboration increases productivity as people are able to skip the long commute to the office, time searching
for information in the office, as well as administrative tasks that can be handled easily by technology.
Real-time communication apps like Slack and Skype can get you in touch with your team members in seconds, rather
than waiting for them to reply to your email.
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 2. Access to Information
Searching for documents - every employee has access to the information they need when they need it. It acts as a
central location for all documents, media, and files, etc which employees can access irrespective of their location.
Employees no longer need to save files to their hard drives or USBs- just log in to your digital workplace tool and you’re
good to go!
3. Improves Team Interaction

Tools like Slack, Zoom, Bit.ai, and more have made it really easy for teams, especially the ones which are
geographically dispersed, to communicate with each other at any point in time, via text, audio or even video.
You can carry out full-blown meetings, collaborate on digital whiteboards, share screens, give design feedback,
collaborate and write on a document with multiple people, and so much more.
4. Storing and Sharing Knowledge
Digital workplace tools like knowledge management software allows organizations to document the know-how and
experience of senior executives which can be used to train future hires.
In this way, the knowledge of the organization does not leave when the employee does. With a knowledge
management system in place, your current or future employees can easily access this information and which eventually
lays the foundation of a much more efficient workforce.

The challenge is not finding a workplace collaboration tool for your organization. The challenge is to find the right
one. The more apps and tools you end up using in your day-to-day, the more your work gets segregated amongst these
tools, and the difficult it gets to actually make sense of the information.
A great workplace collaboration tool is the one that combines the power of all tools into one, i.e. becoming your go-
to tool for everything you need to collaborate with your co-workers.
An ideal collaboration tool should be able to provide a flexible workspace where employees from different
departments can collaborate, brainstorm, give feedback, and create resources that are easy to find and follow.

Best Collaboration Tools

1. Slack
Slack is definitely one of the most spectacular collaboration software available at the moment. Millions
of people who work remotely prefer using this particular tool to stay in touch with their colleagues. And,
equally important, to run business operations smoothly. It offers many wonderful features for remote
workers. You can create different channels as per the company requirements. For example, a business may
need channels such as logistics, chat support, marketing, catalog, and admin. In order to stay organized, Slack
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keeps conversations separate for each section. You can turn on notifications for relevant channels and switch
off for the irrelevant ones.
Furthermore, Slack can easily be integrated with other services and apps you already use for
better productivity. Every team member can quote a message and respond to it. You can also react to any
message using built-in emojis. A dedicated search bar is available to search for a specific conversation that you
missed out on. It uses a clean and distraction-free interface to make the chat easy. You can always share files
with colleagues and stay on top of company updates. And you can also talk privately using the private
message option.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYqxQGmQkVw

2. Skype
Skype needs no introduction as this is one of the most widely used
communication apps. People from all around the globe use Skype to stay in
touch with their virtual teams. Loaded with some of the most productive
features, it definitely allows you to make the most of a remote team.
Predominantly, Skype is used to make voice and video calls. This offers a
wonderful calling experience that you may not enjoy with other similar programs.
This particular communication tool brings a plethora of collaboration
opportunities, indeed. People can communicate through audio, video and text.
Being free and easily accessible, it has become very popular among remote
employees. Above all, one of the most creative features of Skype is its screen-
sharing option. It lets team members share screens to know each other’s
situation. In this way, they can better assist and solve potential problems
instantly. It is equally popular among personal and professional users. It’s hard to
find a remote worker who doesn’t use Skype for team collaboration purposes.

3. Asana
Completing projects in a timely manner is no more a headache now. Asana has
unified features to make collaboration easier than before. This team
collaboration software is no less than a blessing for remote workers. Above all, it
keeps all team members focused on achieving their company goals.
You can easily structure work in a customized way. And, equally important, you
can set deadlines and priorities. The application makes it easier to share details

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among team members. Moreover, easier to assign them different tasks in an
organized manner. It lets you track all projects through each stage. In this way,
all team members know the exact condition of the work in progress.
The ease of use makes Asana significantly popular among remote teams.
Company management can monitor the workload of all workers and reassign
tasks when needed. It offers compatibility with more than a few integration tools.
Including MS Office 365, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Gmail. It comes with a free
basic plan, and pricing starts from $10.99/month. They have different pricing
plans based on company needs. You can select any of these in accordance with
your business requirements. Remember, paid plans offer academy training and
priority support.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMAFWVLGFyw

4. Jira
Next among these collaboration tools is Jira. Developed by the Australian
software development company Atlassian, Jira is an exceptional project
management tool for all business sizes, indeed. It is an ideal program
for software development and IT companies. It helps in planning software,
creating it and tracking its development processes. Furthermore, you can create
a workflow based on your personalized requirements. The easy customization
makes this particular tool famous among developers and IT workers. One of the
most outstanding things about Jira is its integration capabilities with more than
three thousand applications. And plus integration with third party services.
As can be seen, a thousand of software companies are using this tool to
release productive software programs for different purposes. Small teams can
use Jira for free. Big corporations can opt for a suitable plan to collaborate with
their team members remotely. Jira is made for all teams, regardless of their
experience. Startups, non-profit organizations, small teams, and even large
companies can start using Jira for ultimate productivity. Keeping your project
under lock and key is essential. This collaboration software understands the
importance of secrecy. Above all, that’s the reason it keeps your entire
communication perfectly secure.

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 5. Trello
Trello has its own exclusive significance when it comes to talking about team
communication and visual productivity. It’s a flexible, influential, and simple
software to manage your projects. You can use boards, lists, and cards to
organize different projects. And you can track them properly through completion.
It offers the possibility to prioritize tasks, set due dates, and add exciting color
labels. Remote workers can enjoy the ability to track tasks from the beginning to
the end.
Different users can build their profiles and set profile pictures to get identified
among other teammates. Trello is really a fun way to achieve business goals
while working from home. Many educational institutions and students also use
this particular tool for tracking and completing their assignments. If you are
struggling with academic writing, an important source can assist you in the
right way. Just like other software programs, the basic plan comes free.
However, a limited number of users can use the free plan. You will be able to
use restricted features. On the contrary side, remote users can take pleasure in
using the unlimited boards, file attachments, and app integrations by opting for
the paid plan. It begins at $9.99/month. But most importantly, you can select a
plan that’s feasible for your business needs.

6. ProofHub

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 A complete package for remote teams, ProofHub lets you do a little extra due
to its comprehensive project management features. It keeps all the team
members connected in real-time. And it allows them to communicate with each
other through proper channels. The best thing about ProofHub is its ability to
share docs and files instantly. Remote workers who need a fast teamwork tool at
a low price can opt for this one without a second thought. It brings all features to

plan, organize, collaborate, and deliver the company’s projects on time. If you
want your team to work smartly without any delays, then ProofHub can be a good
option to select.

ProofHub

Hundreds of home-based employees use this project management tool to achieve business objectives.
All users can easily personalize their ProofHub account and get the ultimate control over their tasks. Not to
mention that you don’t have to switch between tabs, everything can be managed at one place. The Kanban
board lets you visualize different task stages to get a better idea of workflows.

7. Zoom
Zoom is an ideal software for staying in touch with all remote team members. It allows seamless
connectivity through voice and video calling. Instant messaging is also available for quick chats and heads up.
In most of the cases, companies use Zoom to schedule video conferencing. All remote workers can join the
rest of the team through seamless video calling and share their ideas regarding a project. This is simply

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adorable for online training, meeting, and technical support. Many digital agencies use Zoom for webinars and
marketing events.
Aside from video calling, it allows quick file sharing and messaging to facilitate the process of
collaboration. Zoom has gained positive feedback from customers due to consistent performance. Another
reason to opt for this particular tool is its straightforward pricing and affordability. In fact, the world’s leading
companies use Zoom to see and talk to their distant employees. If you need a reliable video conferencing app
that works consistently for all remote workers, then Zoom can be an effective solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9guqRELB4dg&feature=emb_logo

8. Google Drive
No one can deny the importance of the Google Drive app when it comes to talking about the remote
team collaboration. It serves as a great place to manage all digital files and share them with the rest of the
team members. It’s not less than a blessing for remote workers because they can easily access files whenever
required. You can create files and share them with the relevant person. People working remotely from
different parts of the world find it a wonderful application for better output. You can get feedback regarding
different files. And you can also communicate with each other using Google Drive’s built-in chat feature.

Final Thoughts
To summarize, good collaboration is the lifeblood of a company that wants to keep its remote workers
together. A business cannot achieve set goals without individual output from all team members. Companies
have started to allow their workers to work remotely as its very facilitative for both parties.
Today, the world is taking advantage of remote working. The modern collaboration tools and software
programs make it simple for geographically dispersed folks to collaborate, communicate, and complete tasks
in an efficient way.

Conclusion
Effective communication between staff working across different locations and hours can be
challenging, but it can be done.
You just need to start exploring the different technology available and decide on which is right for your
organisation. Start by choosing a tool that can become the base for your communication needs. For example,
many organisations implement an intranet platform for their internal communication needs as it enables
organisations to set up team workspaces, easily find staff information including areas of expertise, deliver
personalised news and information to different staff members, set up security permissions to ensure the right
information is read by staff with the right access levels and more. Then, they integrate other communication
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tools into their base platform such as Skype for Business, Facebook, YouTube and so on. This enables
organisations to offer a centralised communication and information ecosystem for their staff!

Digital communication agencies

Digital agency is a company that provides strategic direction, creative design, and technical
development for screen-based products and services. A digital communication agency helps government and
business engage with specific target audiences.
How does a digital agency work?
Digital marketing agencies evaluate your website traffic, determine the best online platforms to invest
in, and continually maintain the balance between your marketing activities and the results they provide.
Working with a digital marketing agency means more leads converting to customers.
A digital PR agency has the ability to give clients exposure across a range of online and offline locations
– essentially anywhere today’s audiences consume key messaging. From online media placements to social
media engagement, a digital PR agency delivers outcomes that extend beyond the limitations of a traditional
PR firm.
 Objectives - to enhance their clients’ reputations and increase visibility among targeted
audiences - how they do it and the specific outcomes they achieve.
 Channels. a digital PR agency has a lot of channels in its toolbox. Although many digital
agencies also handle traditional media placements, they have the ability to leverage websites, blogs and other
online placements to deliver real-time messages across an increasingly sophisticated array of global, web-
based channels.
 Audience Interaction. a digital PR agency specializes in creating two-way conversations and
authentic dialogue with audiences, generating exciting opportunities for brand interaction and customer
engagement.
The best digital PR agencies combine PR and digital marketing to create a coordinated and
comprehensive brand strategy.
What a Digital PR Agency Can Offer
Given the state of technology, most public relations firms are eager to brand themselves as digital. But
there are several core capabilities a true digital PR agency should bring to your business.
 Content. Great content drives great public relations. A digital PR agency integrates content
generation with PR and other functions, improving your brand’s thought leadership positioning and enabling
your content to achieve greater impact across many digital channels. In many cases, high-value content like
data studies, white papers and interactive
 Social. The social media phenomenon has transformed the marketplace and presented
opportunities for businesses to deepen their relationships with core audiences. Your digital PR agency should

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be a key player in your brand’s social media efforts, promoting consistent brand messages through the social
media channels that are important to your audiences.
 PPC. Pay-per-click marketing and remarketing tactics are critical for driving traffic to lead gen
content and other important digital assets. When it’s applied intelligently, PPC marketing extends the value of
PR and ensures that your brand and products are visible to the right audiences at the right times.
 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) capabilities are a prerequisite for success in today’s PR
marketplace. By securing high visibility online placements and optimizing digital content, a qualified digital PR
agency can make your messages much more attractive to Google and other search engines.
What are the best SEO techniques?
10 Effective SEO Techniques to Drive Organic Traffic
1) Improve User Experience Across Your Entire Site.
2) Optimize for Voice Search.
3) Design for Mobile First.
4) Focus on Topic Clusters Instead of Keywords.
5) Write Longer Content (Most of the Time)
6) Take Advantage of YouTube SEO.
7) Create a Diverse Backlink Portfolio.
8) Never, Ever Overlook Technical SEO.
Why Should You Care About SEO?
Lots and lots of people search for things. That traffic can be extremely powerful for a business not only
because there is a lot of traffic, but because there is a lot of very specific, high-intent traffic.
If you sell blue widgets, would you rather buy a billboard so anyone with a car in your area sees your
ad, or show up every time anyone in the world types “buy blue widgets” into a search engine? Probably the
latter, because those people have commercial intent, meaning they are standing up and saying that they
want to buy something you offer.

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 People are searching for any manner of things directly related to your business. Beyond that, your
prospects are also searching for all kinds of things that are only loosely related to your business. These
represent even more opportunities to connect with those folks and help answer their questions, solve their
problems, and become a trusted resource for them.
Are you more likely to get your widgets from a trusted resource who offered great information each of
the last four times you turned to Google for help with a problem, or someone you’ve never heard of?
What Actually Works for Driving Traffic from Search Engines?
First it’s important to note that Google is responsible for most of the search engine traffic in the world
(though there is always some flux in the actual numbers). This may vary from niche to niche, but it’s likely that
Google is the dominant player in the search results that your business or website would want to show up in,
and the best practices outlined in this guide will help position your site and its content to rank in other search
engines, as well.

Regardless of what search engine you use, search results are constantly changing. Google particularly
has updated lots of things surrounding how they rank websites by way of lots of different animal
names recently, and a lot of the easiest and cheapest ways to get your pages to rank in search results have
become extremely risky in recent years.
So what works? How does Google determine which pages to return in response to what people search
for? How do you get all of this valuable traffic to your site?
Google’s algorithm is extremely complex, and I’ll share some links for anyone looking to dive deeper
into how Google ranks sites at the end of this section, but at an extremely high level:
 Google is looking for pages that contain high-quality, relevant information about the
searcher’s query.
 They determine relevance by “crawling” (or reading) your website’s content and evaluating
(algorithmically) whether that content is relevant to what the searcher is looking for, mostly based on the
keywords it contains.
 They determine “quality” by a number of means, but prominent among those is still the
number and quality of other websites that link to your page and your site as a whole. To put it extremely
simply: If the only sites that link to your blue widget site are blogs that no one else on the Web has linked to,

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and my blue widget site gets links from trusted places that are linked to frequently, like CNN.com, my site will
be more trusted (and assumed to be higher quality) than yours.
Increasingly, additional elements are being weighed by Google’s algorithm to determine where your
site will rank, such as:
 How people engage with your site (Do they find the information they need and stay on your
site, or bounce back to the search page and click on another link? Or do they just ignore your listing in search
results altogether and never click-through?)
 Your site’s loading speed and “mobile friendliness”
 How much unique content you have (versus very “thin” low-value content or duplicate content)
There are hundreds of ranking factors Google’s algorithm considers in response to searches, and they
are constantly updating and refining their process.
Organic Search: What Is Organic Search?
Organic search, also known as natural search, refers to unpaid search results. In contrast to paid
search results (pay-per-click advertising), which are populated via an auction system, organic search results
are based on relevance to the user's search query, links and domain authority and other organic ranking
factors.
Background
The Google, Yahoo!, and Bing search engines insert advertising on their search results pages. By law,
advertising must be distinguished from organic results. This is done with various differences in background,
text, link colors, and/or placement on the page. Organic search engine optimization is the process of
improving web sites' rank in organic search results.

Digital political communication

Political communication fulfils a crucial role in modern democracies, because it guarantees an
exchange between governmental actors and citizens, especially in times of election campaigns. To better
understand political communication and electoral campaigns in the era of the Web 2.0, this panel considers
political communication patterns of the supply (government) and demand side (citizens) of the political
system. The panel investigates strategic campaigning behaviour during elections over time and aims to
examine whether there is an “economic” approach to election campaigns. It raises the question if campaigns
are driven by economic context factors and if this is related to negative campaigning. More recently, the
Internet plays a crucial role for political participation in the 21st century. During election campaigns, the
Internet provides additional forms of communication that have the potential for a more direct communication
between politicians and the electorate. By analysing the social media use of politicians during electoral
campaigns, factors that explain variance in social media use are investigated. The Internet is not only relevant
for election campaigns and the supply side of the political spectrum, but also the demand side, namely the
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citizens. Starting at early age, young people use the Internet for political communication and political
participation. The question addressed is to what extent this is the case and whether user-specific patterns of
individual political communication can be identified. By drawing on campaign material, social media as well as
survey data, this panel aims to generate a debate about recent patterns and change in political
communication and participation.
Political communication(s) is a subfield of communication and political science that is concerned with
how information spreads and influences politics and policy makers, the news media and citizens.[1] Since the
advent of the World Wide Web, the amount of data to analyze has exploded, and researchers are shifting to
computational methods to study the dynamics of political communication. In recent years, machine
learning, natural language processing, and network analysis have become key tools in the subfield. It deals
with the production, dissemination, procession and effects of information, both through mass
media and interpersonally, within a political context. This includes the study of the media, the analysis
of speeches by politicians and those that are trying to influence the political process, and formal and informal
conversations among members of the public, among other aspects. The media acts as bridge between
government and public. Political communication can be defined as the connection concerning politics and
citizens and the interaction modes that connect these groups to each other. Whether the relationship is
formed by the modes of persuasion, Pathos, Ethos or Logos.

Role of social media

Social media has dramatically changed the way in which modern political campaigns are run. With
more digital native citizens coming into the voting population, social media have become important platforms
on which politicians establish themselves and engage with the voters. In the digital age, evidence across the
world has showcased the increasing importance of social media in electoral politics.
Social media experience relies heavily on the user themselves due to the platforms' algorithms which
tailor consumer experience for each user. This results in each person seeing more like-minded news due to
the increase in digital social behavior. Additionally, social media has changed politics because it has given
politicians a direct medium to give their constituents information and the people to speak directly to the
politicians. This informal nature can lead to informational mistakes because it is not being subjected to the
same "fact-checking processes as institutional journalism."
Social media creates greater opportunity for political persuasion due to the high number of citizens
that regularly engage and build followings on social media. The more that a person engages on social media,
the more influential they believe themselves to be, resulting in more people considering themselves to be
politically persuasive.

https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2448&context=utk_chanhonoproj

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