Digital media
covers a wide variety of websites, technology devices, and platforms. You may
be familiar with some digital media usage, but the fact is that digital media
has impacted several industries and has created a range of opportunities for
people to earn a living and use their talents in a variety of ways.
What is Digital Media?
Digital media is any media that rely on electronic devices for it to be created, distributed, viewed, and stored.
Whenever you make use of your mobile phone, tablet, computer, internet, and apps, you are utilizing digital media. Common examples of digital media include video games, software, digital videos, websites, web pages, eBooks, social media, articles, advertisements, podcasts, virtual reality, digital audio, or digital art.
The emergence of the digital age in the mid-20th century resulted in computer technology gradually seeping into various industries and then entered into the public sphere. However, analog technology continued to dominate even during the 1990s. In the years that followed, newspapers, magazines, radio, and television continued to be the main means of communication.
Since its creation, digital media has progressively affected the lifestyle of the average person in the developed and developing world. The impact of digital media on the way of life of many people is a result of the innovation that it has brought into journalism, education, publishing, entertainment, public relations, business, and politics.
The popularity of digital media has also led to innovations in intellectual property and copyright laws. Due to its impact, digital media gradually took the world from the industrial era to the information age.
This age is characterized to some extent by a decrease in the frequency of use of pens and paper. This has resulted in the substitution of pens and paper for digital devices.
The Three Types of Digital Media
In today's digital age, businesses are established and grown with robust and smart digital marketing strategies. If you don't plan your digital marketing campaign, you are unable to generate engagements, and that means your business has failed.
When digital media is facilitated through the right channels and converting content, it enables brands to have their presence everywhere. With the media's popularity, it’s possible to reach out to a lot of people and spread converting words about the business.
There are three types of digital media; they are paid media, owned media, and earned media
·
If your brand is in search of a channel that is not difficult to monitor, control content, and monitor progress while ensuring instant returns, consider embracing paid media.
It even converts better when combined with other digital media, because you are able to target high-paying clients. How much it costs, depends on your preferred channel as well as the duration of your advert.
To get the most out of paid media, you need to get on channels where you get value for your money and have professionals set up your advert.
Examples of paid media include,
· Search Engine Ads
· Display Ads
· Podcast Ads
· Social Media Advertising
· Video Ads
· Radio Ads
· Print Ad
· Owned Media
It means you are not paying anybody to do the job for you. However, you need a competent and dedicated media team to take up the responsibility. With free social media accounts and a moderately priced domain and host for your sites, you are set.
Apart from pushing the products to the customer, owned media got to consider maximizing the client’s value and benefits from the brand. It is very easy to know how your media performs with tools like Google Analytics.
Because it is business-owned, there is absolute control of the channels, minimal operation costs, and the opportunity to publish and edit the content completely, which increases client confidence and guarantees lead and engagement.
Examples of owned media include,
· Email Marketing
· Social Media
· Blogs (Content Marketing)
· A Company Website
·
Earned media is whatsoever content or mention, which comes from a different entity to benefit your brand. While the majority of it is voluntary, some demand that you spend a significant amount of money.
For example, likes and comments on your post come free of charge. All you have to do is publish relevant content and share it broadly. Earned media will add to your brand reach, credibility, and reputation. Your brand requires this loyalty and the trust from earned media to obtain leads, sales, and relevance.
Examples of owned media include,
· Social Media
· Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
· Free Media Publicity
· Word-of-mouth Marketing
· Innovations of Digital Media
Innovations of Digital Media
On the surface, one would think that digital media is not much better than other innovations that have happened over the years.
Digital media has a significant advantage that no other innovation has. This advantage is how easily digital media can be shared, stored, copied, and changed.
Since its entry into the market, digital media has generated a lot of innovation in many industries in the economy.
Some of the most heavily impacted industries are Education, journalism, entertainment, publishing, etc.
Even though digital media innovation in many sectors of the economy is truly enormous, it does not seem that this will end any time soon.
·
At the same time, the presence of digital media has caused a great deal of change in many sectors of the economy. Its impact on the film business is very easy to understand.
Digital media has taken the film industry from the era of analog film cameras to the era of digital cameras only.
This innovation certainly has both positive and negative sides. One of its advantages is it is economical.
Due to the presence of digital media, it has become much easier to distribute films- this can be done with only one click of a button.
Well, its downside is that it has driven some people out of work.
Many dangerous stunts that had to be executed in order for the films to appear real are no longer necessary because they can be done digitally.
·
The film industry is not the only economic sector that has been influenced by digital media.
Journalism is a sector where the emergence and impact of digital media are very evident.
Digital media seems to have caused more harm than good for journalism.
This has led to job losses for many people due to the reduced relevance of print media.
While the loss of jobs that have resulted in the loss of relevance in the print media is wrong, worse still, many large newspapers had to close their doors because of the bankruptcy.
On the other hand, the emergence of digital media has created jobs in the journalistic sector. However, these jobs are only accessible to those who are digitally literate.
The Impact of Digital Media
Computers were developed long before they were finally available to virtually everyone.
However, from the time the computers were manufactured and when it has become possible for anyone to possess them, their storage capacity, as well as their computer power considerably increased.
The availability of smartphones and personal computers has made digital media more efficient for a reason.
This reason is simply how easily digital media can be shared, accessible and modified.
While digital media may be described as an uneasy alternative to print media, its influence on society may be compared with the influence of the printing press when it entered the picture.
Similar to print media, digital media requires certain skills before it can be effectively valued.
When the press became a phenomenon, people had to know how to read and write before taking advantage of it.
In addition to the literacy skills print media needs, digital media demands that users can easily navigate the Internet and develop digital content.
In general, the kind of literacy that is needed so that people can use digital media is called digital literacy.
The influence of smart devices on the growth and rapid distribution of digital media cannot be overemphasized.
Today, there are more than 2.32 billion people using smartphones. The number is predicted to succeed in 2.87billion by 2020.
Challenges Associated With Digital Media
There are many challenges involved in using digital media.
Many of these challenges relate to intellectual property as well as copyright laws.
Even though copyright laws are still in effect, they appear powerless when it comes to digital media.
This is probably due to the ease of sharing digital media.
When a person writes a book or creates a film, there are laws that prevent that material from being reproduced in any form.
All those involved in creating content know these laws and adhere to them.
Well, when it comes to digital media, people are not quite sure about the laws that bind some content.
People freely share content through social networks without breaking any laws.
Although there are still many problems related to the use of digital media, the lack of a very well-defined law seems to be easy for the average citizen to understand.
Conclusion
What are your thoughts regarding digital media?
Well, no matter what you think, only time will tell whether digital media will become more influential and remain with us for much longer or it will be replaced with a different form of technology that will make the world more complex while trying to simplify human existence.
