Many of us remember the days of passing notes in the classroom, to getting letters in the mail. The first introductions to phone calls transformed into hoarding the phone from our parents because there was only 1 line with no call waiting. Communication with people has transformed drastically in the last 20 years. Let’s take a walk down that journey so we can better understand how to communicate with people today due to the technology changes.

Before telephones, people communicated in person, through mailed letters and although it seems like times were simpler, communicationtook much longer to make. You could invite people into your home for visits, but anyone not living within your community would get what we call today “snail mail” and respond in return.  It was a superb technology at the time that served well for many, many years.

Over time, the telephone was developed in many variations. From operator calls to family lines to later phones in most homes for people to call and visit on a more real time basis.

From this technology came the need for further access, introducing car phones and pagers. Not necessarily the most “real time” solutions as in most cases you were required to either pay at a phone booth for your call or access a friend who had a nifty brick phone in their automobiles.  Children still played in the streets until dark, letters were still being mailed, notes passed around classrooms, but communication was an optional, as these were less required things that not everyone felt the need to have.

Eventually the evolution of the car phone became the introduction of the personal handheld devices. People began to migrate more away from pagers and leaned more toward systems with voice mail and other features making communications a bit more accessible.

Then came the Internet and shortly after, email communication.  Businesses flocked to the new technology which became a spring board for businesses to have online presence, easily accessible website and people began to communicate more over email than letters.

Texting erupted quickly which migrated communications a little less from email (for personal users), eliminating a lot of need for personal, handwritten letters between people and a lot more real time – “where you are” – communication started happening.

Shortly after, texting on mobile devices became Email and Internet compatible devices which allowed people to spend more time out of the office (if your job allowed for it) and more dedication to notifications on your phone.

The phone quickly evolved from a “dumb phone’ system with texting capabilities to a “smart phone” system with quick access to email, quick access to internet and quick access to basically any type of application that could either make your life more intertwining or more enjoyable in the process.

During this time frame … specifically, the last 10 years, while the Internet was developing, email was thriving and communicationwas changing before our eyes, people discovered platforms and websites where they could communicate with friends and business people without having to pick up that phone or write a personal letter.  They could now communicate in social media.

Take a second … 10 years, people have been using social media.  Cloud computing which has been used in social media, has been around for YEARS! Look at Amazon, Facebook, Google and any other website you go to, to make purchases.  The internet has transformed our shopping, our games, our communication. It is no wonder that in this world now, with access to communicate, real time, at your finger tips, social media is so prominent.

Take a look at this evolution over time.  Your clients, have before them, the World Wide Web at their finger tips.  24 hours a day,  7 days a week, 365/366 days out of the year.  With this much activity online, you are truly missing the boat with visibility if you don’t have a website, if you don’t have an online presence and you aren’t communicatingactively. 

Your clients are online at any time, any day, searching for information in many, many platforms.  It is your choice on whether you will engage with them in this new age of activity in social media, or if you are choosing a presence where your clients aren’t active. 

We challenge you to take the step your clients already have. Get active, get social, remain in the front of your clients mind.  If you aren’t, your competitors are.