1. What it means to be a digital expert

A digital strategist is an expert individual or team that understands all the points of contact between your audience and your organisation where digital plays a part. In this resource, we explain how you can use your expertise, and when you might want to use a digital strategist.

You will learn more about the specialist areas they can provide help in when using digital technology. For example, how to use digital tools to make workplace routines or processes more efficient or effective.

2. Using your expertise

Our expert, Dr Amelia Knowlson, University of Leeds, discusses how your digital strategy reflects your organisation.

Your expertise puts you in the best position to write a digital strategy for your organisation. Depending on the size of your organisation and your organisational goals, digital strategies can be as simple or as complicated as you need them to be. Talking to a digital strategist or expert as well might be helpful after you have analysed what you want to achieve in a digital strategy.

You can read more about digital strategy on the resource ‘Using a situational analysis to create your digital strategy’.

A digital strategy should reflect your organisation. The vision and goals of your organisation should be the starting point when thinking about creating a digital strategy. It is a good idea to involve other people from your organisation as well as audiences to help you gain an understanding of external and internal needs beyond your expertise. For example, a digital strategy should be something that the whole organisation can buy into and should engage staff, trustees, and volunteers across your organisation in order to be actionable and effective.

Key things to remember are:

• Anyone can create a digital strategy, but it is important to remember to engage colleagues and audiences from across your organisation and have buy-in from senior management and trustees to make your strategy actionable.
• Your digital strategy should reflect your organisation; it should be authentic and feel right for you.
• Your digital strategy can be as simple or as complicated as you need it to be. Above all it should be reflective of what your organisation is now and where you want to be.

Sources of support

There also are many resources out there that can help you create your digital strategy including the Arts Council’s Digital Culture Network and Digital Policy and Plan Guidelines (PDF file, 514kb).

A brief list of other recommended resources to use and follow up on:

• Digital Strategy – Association of Independent Museums (AIM)
• Developing a digital culture – Arts Council
• How to shape your digital strategy – JISC

3. Draft your digital strategy

The framework below is based on the Arts Council England’s ‘Digital policy and plan guidelines’. It provides a guide to help you develop the key components of your digital strategy.

Using this framework will help you focus on digital strategy priorities and will enable you to think about where expert knowledge may be most needed.

More help here

Using templates to create your digital strategy

Using templates to create your digital strategy will help you work through a set of diagnostic questions that indicates your organisation’s recommended priority areas along with relevant performance indicators to guide you through digital transformation.

 

Using a situational analysis to create your digital strategy

Start planning your digital strategy by learning how to conduct a situational analysis and exploring the SWOT and PESTLE frameworks. This resource highlights the benefits of taking a structured approach and helps you identify suitable resources to assess your organisation’s digital readiness.

 

Except where noted and excluding company and organisation logos this work is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) Licence

Please attribute as: "Deciding when to work with a digital strategist (2022) by Dr Amelia Knowlson supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, licensed under CC BY 4.0