Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That! How Technology Has Changed the Work of Communicators

While “ain't nobody got time for that,” the communicator’s job has gone from sending one message to many with mass media, i.e., newspaper, magazines, television, and radio – to building relationships with customers via many platforms, i.e., mobile, social media, website, email, along with traditional media, one customer at a time. Why? Because people today expect instant responses, people want to feel like you care, and people want to be heard. They expect personalized communication, think “big fish, small pond” – rather than being just one of many in an ocean of other consumers.

There has always been the need to communicate. Communications may have started with a simple pictogram to share information, using pictures and symbols to communicate concepts or ideas (Pictogram, n.d.). God used Moses and stone tablets to communicate with the Israelites (Exodus 31:18), Native American's (as well as the Chinese, Germans, and even to this day, boy scouts) have used smoke signals. Communications went from these methods to mass communications after the invention of the printing press, five hundred years ago (The Impact of the Printing Press, n.d.). 

Today’s new technology has also exponentially expanded communication. The internet has opened a global method of communication, and in the click of a mouse, information can be sent to someone on the other side of the globe.

 

 

 

 

For communicators, reaching not only a wide audience, but a precisely targeted audience through social media, is a marketer’s dream. However, the traditional methods for marketing and advertising is different than that for social media platforms. This infogram shows the differences in traditional and social media marketing. You can see from the infogram that traditional marketing is one-directional where social media is multi-directional (Karr, 2015).

 

What this means is that with new technology, the communication has become a two-way street. Companies can now communicate directly with their consumers – get feedback, answer questions, and provide the consumer a personalized experience. 

 

Social media is very spontaneous so a marketer must be prepared to make quick decisions, rather than relying on the long-term planning they used with traditional media (Karr, 2015). Social media also requires that someone monitors the posts they receive from customers 24-7 and gone is the 9-5 Monday through Friday mentality.

 

With new media, communicators must change the way they reach out to their customers by:

• Making quick decisions
• Understanding how to use social media platforms – for example, with Facebook, learning to engage the audience and keep the conversation moving, or with Twitter, by being able to condense the message to 140 characters at a time.
• Committing to 24/7 communication with social media audience.
• Gaining familiarity of many forms of technology and social media platforms

You can see why it is important for communicators to understand the differences in traditional and social media communication in order to be successful in the world of new media. While communicators may be overwhelmed with this new, time-intensive relationship with customers, they must make time – and respond to customers in a new, more personal way.

 

 

References

Karr, D. (2015). 10 differences between classic and social media marketing. Retrieved from https://www.marketingtechblog.com/class-vs-social-media-marketing/

Pictogram. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pictogram

The impact of the printing press. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://courses.educ.ubc.ca/etec540/Sept04/arthurp/researchtopic/index.htm