In 2018, I completed a PhD in digital marketing and digital business at the University of Salford. This page outlines my journey and how you could also do a DBA, Prof or PhD in digital marketing, digital transformation or digital business online or face to face. Read on to find out how.
I have been interested in online, Internet based communities since the mid 1990’s in my BSc in Electronic Imaging and Media Communications at Bradford University, UK. When I graduated in 1997, I went to work at Salford University, developing a new business online community called The Virtual Chamber and helping Manchester to get online.
At that time, the web was quite new and social media and smartphones as we know them today, did not exist. SEO used meta keywords to try and improve performance in Yahoo (as there was no Google yet). Online communications were confined to things like Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Multi-User Dungeons (MUD’s) and forums. As time went on, we started to use forums and programming our own online community games such as a Fantasy Band League. I had a career as a web developer and programmer, but I never lost my love of virtual communities and network games, reading and writing. I created an online forum for my friends, pre-Facebook and as more people got broadband, we then moved on to new and exciting social media platforms.
How can I do a PhD in digital marketing or digital transformation?
The web has become more social and with the global rise of smartphones, this provides an excellent opportunity to explore the power of technologies such as AI, blockchain or social media for digital marketing or transformation. My PhD in digital marketing focussed on social media and football. I was a digital business academic at University of Salford in digital marketing and digital transformation for many years. I’ve also run executive, professional development courses at MediaCityUK such as Search and social media marketing.
I would be more than happy to talk to you about my PhD in digital marketing and what is involved in doing a PhD. Our team at University of Chester offer a wide range of research degrees at level 7 or PhD’s and Professional Doctorates. There is also our DBA (Professional Doctorate) or we also offer professional doctorates such as The Doctor of Professional Studies. The best place to start is to make an enquiry and by writing a great proposal and it can help also to identify an appropriate supervisor. You may also be eligible for funding including our research studentships which are partially or fully-funded, full or part-time competitive studentships, covering tuition fees and sometimes a stipend. You can also check websites like Find a PhD or Jobs.ac.uk for funded opportunities.
Choosing a digital marketing or digital transformation PhD topic
Your PhD topic should be of interest to you and hopefully fill a gap in knowledge (both from the marketing industry of practitioners and academic theory). You should pick a topic that will hold your interest and something that you want to be known for so that it will benefit your career. Firstly, try reading some recent digital marketing books such as this one , digital transformation books such as this one and journal papers and articles such as these and try some keywords in your library or Google scholar to find relevant and recent journal articles. Based on your experience, formulate a question which you believe will create a unique contribution to knowledge and fill a recent gap. You might pay special attention to the final section of recent digital marketing or digital transformation journal papers which call for further research in a theme that you’re interested in. From there, you should write a proposal and then send that to the relevant organisations or academics in your area which are accepting new research postgraduate degrees like MRes, MPhil (level 7) PhD or DBA (level 8) candidates
Please drop me a line for more information.
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