Over the past 16 years, if there’s any one thing that’s remained the same, it’s “change”.

Digital channels like search, social and email have been evolving & developing pretty much since their inception.

Just take a look back at Google at its start or Facebook in 2004 and early mobile email — they’re almost unrecognizable today.

Catalysts For Change, Disruption

If you’ve been following along on this blog, you know I’m a big fan of improvement – and what you’re seeing online is a constant flow of improvements (for the most part) that have been the catalyst for many of the changes you see online these days.

While improvement can be a source of change online, other things like growing regulations, artificial intelligence adoption and new, disruptive platforms can also be a source of disturbance to your digital efforts.

As these digital channels continue to improve and evolve, however, it can mean your efforts on those channels can get easily be disrupted by those changes.

If you overly rely on any one channel or platform for visibility, influence and leads, you’ll find that disruption on that channel or platform can dramatically affect your digital marketing system.

One of the easiest ways of shielding your small business from that disruption is by keeping a balanced front across your digital marketing activity.

This doesn’t mean you have to be “everything, everywhere, all at once”, but it does mean that if you’re only relying on one channel or platform, it might not be a bad idea to explore other spaces to help balance out your activities.

Remember Alignment

Going back to my “Alignment Delta” post, remember one of the important questions to ask when aligning your small business is “where are my customers/clients most online?”.

For many small businesses, there will be more than one channel or platform to discover your clients online (perhaps you already are aware of them).

Those are places where you’re likely going to want to start developing your “digital balance” — follow your customers/clients first.

A Buffer For The Chaos

If you’re finding yourself already tight on time (as most small businesses are), then it’s likely a good idea to find your “buffer for the chaos”.

This means having someone help you with managing those digital channels – in a consistent way – to help you navigate the disruption caused by those changes.

Without that digital buffer, every time you find yourself facing disruption on a channel or platform you’re going to be faced with trying to unravel the changes yourself — something you likely aren’t going to have the time for.

The smartest small businesses I work with know this, and put into place someone to help them decipher the changes – to help lower the risk of those channels affecting their digital marketing streams.

Small businesses face risks on all fronts – but with the right plan and folks to help with on the digital side, it can go a long way to helping lower risk of digital disruption this year (and beyond).