Business communication has dramatically changed since the ready availability of work and personal computers and especially since the invention of the Internet. We can communicate and indeed do business with customers globally at very little cost. Prior to computers communication would have been paper based and rely on the postal service to deliver quotations of work or invoices, taking a longer time to complete business transactions. We can now send quotations to customers almost instantaneously via email and complete a transaction within minutes.
Some say that the wide use of email is not an effective communication medium as there is a tendency to be informal in an email and innocent wording can cause offence, as the tone can be lost in translation. There are many pros and cons, for example you have a trail of any emails sent and received that date stamps your correspondences. You can ask for confirmation that your message has been received, no need to wait for any “addressee gone away” notes from the postal service.
Email has kick started a huge evolution in the business world but is quickly being superseded by social media communication.
Examples of sites are Face book, Linked In, Bebo, My Space to name but a few. You have the ability to join with your friends and colleagues worldwide; you can readily see when they are online and communicate directly by Instant Messaging or IM.
You can put your business online as part of an online community and generate sales not just in your local area and without the need to spend hours in cars showing brochures to prospective clients.
Social Media communication has made the business world a very small place, recruitment agencies will ask to link to you to help with your recruitment requirements, suppliers that you may not have been aware of can introduce themselves to you, you can sell your products by creating a web page and linking it to your social communication profile. Anyone who knows you or who searches on key words will be able to look at your company and see what you have to offer.
It’s amazing to think that all of this has occurred in the last forty to fifty years, imagine what the future holds.