I did a digital bootcamp session yesterday for my good friends at Grey Healthcare with a colleague from The Exetor Group. As always, Grey had an enthusiastic bunch, and as usual, I learned as much from them as they *hopefully* did from me. We started the day with a review of the digital communications landscape, focusing on how consumers trust other consumers more than companies, and the implications of that for marketing and communications executives.

We then went into deep dives on how to engage in the blogosphere, the importance of search engine marketing, and opportunity for brands to be conversational within social media. I know for a fact that there are a lot of new Twitterers coming out of the session. We then spent time assessing their clients’ online health, and then practiced creating dialogue around the need for digital as part of an overarching integrated communications strategy.

Given that Digital Bootcamp is a one day course, the day tends to end with a discussion about what’s next in an individual’s learning path. That is the beauty of digital. You truly can learn by doing. The people who feel that they need a ton of training or lots of marketing materials are missing the point. One’s own digital footprint speaks for itself in terms of understanding the space, and the best training is truly getting online and getting it done. It sounds entry level to those of who do this day in and day out, but if you want to learn more about digital, here are the top five things you need to do today to create your own learning path:

• Set up RSS feeds - hard to believe RSS isn’t on auto-pilot for any communications executive, but so be it. Set up feeds for your company, your competitors, your clients, and their competitors. Take the opportunity to create your own personalized newspaper and check it frequently.

• Participate in Social Media - you can’t understand the emotional appeal or the rational value delivered by social networking sites if you don’t participate. Whether it is publishing photos to Flickr or creating a Facebook profile and using it to keep up with friends, the experience of experiencing social media in action will help guide you to learnings for your company or clients.

• Blah, blah, blog - Log on to a blog search engine and have a look at where your company or client is mentioned - good, bad and ugly. But before you get critical of the bloggers, try it yourself. Go to blogspot, or any other free blogging service, and start a blog. Whether you make it public or private, and whether you write about a work-related topic or personal interests, actually blogging will give you unique insights into the challenges of creating interesting content day after day. Truly understanding what it is to be a blogger is critical to trying to reach bloggers on behalf of your company.

• Let your fingers do the talking - Mobile is truly the best way for a brand to have a persistent presence. Think about it - you always have your mobile phone with you, more so than any other device. To understand the power of mobile you need to truly experience the convenience in which you can communicate with friends, as well as the ease of accessing information via the mobile web. And if you don’t have a web-enabled phone, throw your antique away and go get one.

• Put it all together - Take a look at your company, or your client across digital media. What is said about them in blogs? How do they rank in search engines? Are they doing sponsored search? Do they participate in social media? Does their website create dialogue or talk at consumers? Do they have a mobile platform, and if so, how are they using it? Doing some simple searching and then having a look at the competitive set will allow a story to emerge that explains the digital positioning. Once you truly know the existing positioning, you can figure out what to do about it.

It is easy to forget that so much of what we do as digital strategists is merge traditional marketing strategy with new digital concepts in a way that moves beyond encouraging transactions to building relationships. If you want to get more digitally savvy, the best thing you can do is get more digital. I was so impressed with my colleagues at Grey for their enthusiasm and the fervor in which they approached this new opportunity. I plan to try to maintain some of their excitement, and hope you can too.