While I felt my initial Digital Presence Plan (DIDP) had a lot of merits, my understanding of my own online goals and how to best reach them has changed since its creation, and in the document I’ve updated the processes I wish to follow moving forward.

Networking with LinkedIn

In my initial plan, I stated that I wanted to focus on using LinkedIn to connect with a broad community of Aboriginal stakeholders throughout Canada. Upon delving deeper into the LinkedIn platform, the representation of native communities on the platform wasn’t representative of the communities I wanted to reach.

I did however take the time to join several LinkedIn-hosted business communities and use the platform to connect with several former colleagues acting as Aboriginal Liaisons throughout Eastern Canada.

Networking Alternatives

While I found LinkedIn to be ineffective due to a lack of Aboriginal representation on the platform, I did find it helpful for researching communities throughout Atlantic Canada with native communities and a web presence.

Many of the individual communities host self-published newsletters and have community forums, public message boards, and email mailing lists that are available to join and participate in. In this regard, I’ve shifted my early DIDP process from an active role as a resident of the digital space to the visitor end of the spectrum to help focus my efforts on learning the needs of the communities through passive participation rather than contribution.

Instagram and Facebook have also proved to be significantly more fruitful than LinkedIn with regard to connecting to Aboriginal learning communities. This is in keeping with the findings of marketing leaders in Australia who found over 60% of Aborigals used Facebook daily, as opposed to 42% of Australians in general (Staal, M 2014). Here in Canada, similar studies have found that “Social media usage is also higher among Indigenous peoples – 84%, compared 75% among the general population. There is higher use of Facebook (90% vs 86%), Instagram (53% vs 49%), TikTok (38% vs 25%) and SnapChat (37% vs 21%). In contrast, Indigenous Peoples’ usage of WhatsApp (24% vs 35%) and LinkedIn (20% vs 30%) is less than the average Canadian.” (Summerfield, P. (2021)).

While LinkedIn didn’t prove to be a fruitful tool for connecting to the communities, it was a valuable lesson in pivoting during the early stages of a Digital Presence to focus on achieving goals.

Separating Short and Long-Term Goals

My initial stated goal for creating content for the Aboriginal community was too reliant on YouTube as a platform as well as long-form content in general. There is a much higher appetite within the native community for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and SnapChat than the general population (Summerfield, P. (2021)) with YouTube not being a significant contributor to their online viewing habits.

I’ve adapted by DIDP to focus on creating content for each of the four key social platforms used by the Aboriginal community. In addition to simply changing platforms, the style of video I plan to create has changed from long-form content to short-form content with the aim of producing micro-learning content with a focus on narrative “the presence of embodied modes and filmic modes helps to increase the motivation and engagement of such a demanding audience” (Girón-García, C., & Fortanet-Gómez, I. (2023)).

In the end, while my initial goals remain the same, breaking the goals out into short and long-term goals has been beneficial to my understanding of tasks I need to pursue on a day-to-day basis to meet the goals of my DIDP.

Next Steps

With an understanding of the platform changes I need to apply to my DIDP moving forward, I will be focussing on visiting and being a silent participant in more Aboriginal community content, especially in the area of learning, to strengthen my understanding of the technical and social needs of their community.

I will also continue to build and participate in community-based training initiatives outside digital channels to grow my network of similarly-minded training connections, and members of the native communities I work with.

The next step will be to develop language-independent training tools to help develop narrative training content on popular social platforms, designed to meet the entry-level needs of Aboriginal community members across Canada.

References

Staal, M. (2014, August 28). Indigenous Australians Predisposed To Facebook. B&T.com. Retrieved June 1, 2023, from https://www.bandt.com.au/indigenous-australians-predisposed-facebook/

Summerfield, P. (2021, December 21). How do Indigenous people in Canada consume media? Media in Canada. Retrieved June 1, 2023, from https://mediaincanada.com/2022/12/21/how-do-indigenous-people-in-canada-consume-media/

Girón-García, C., & Fortanet-Gómez, I. (2023). Science dissemination videos as multimodal supporting resources for ESP teaching in higher education. English for Specific Purposes, 70(April 2023), 164-176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2022.12.005