1.     Live it. Be the audience you’re trying to reach. Dive in, explore, engage in the digital space. Use the tools. Be on Twitter. Follow a variety of people across disciplines, interests, perspectives. Observe what’s interesting, what gets retweeted, what generates replies. Use bit.ly to track the links people click through to. Download apps. Play with new tools like Gowalla and Foursquare. Observe your own interactions, how you use it, what the barriers are.

2.     Rethink your business model. What do you sell? You aren’t in the advertising business, nor the digital, creative, media relations business; you are in the INFLUENCE business. At Waggener Edstrom, we used to think of ourselves as storytellers and media relations pros. But the media landscape is changing, compressing – it’s more challenging than ever to get our stories told through branded media influencers. So how do we solve this problem? We encourage clients to think of themselves as publishers. Brands are media. What do we sell? We sell a destination, we sell content, we sell consulting to develop a process and workflow.

3.     Don’t navel-gaze. Look around, learn from complimentary disciplines. Think like publishers, journalists, creatives, producers, PR pros, consultants. These disciplines are colliding. Think holistically. Don’t be the hammer that sees every problem as a nail. Think about the problem that needs to be solved (selling the product), and then think about all the different ways you can achieve this. Some are digital, some are traditional and most are a combination of both. Because audiences don’t live in media silos.

4.     Don’t panic, the fundamentals still apply. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, and don’t go on a mad dash after the latest shiny object trend. Stick to your fundamentals. Who is your audience? How are they influenced? Where do they spend time? Answer these questions and then go back to #1.

5.     Embrace the learning process. Don’t try to be an expert, be a constant learner. When we think of ourselves as experts we become entrenched in our space because we have a lot to lose. Let it go. Don’t try to get to the top of the learning curve, embrace the constant incline.