Human communications have been around for nearly four million years. Psychologists define it this way: “Communications occurs when one organism (the source) encodes information into a signal that passes to another organism (the receiver), who decodes the signal and is capable of responding appropriately”.–Ellis, A., & Beattie, G. (1986). The psychology of language and communication.
When it comes to Business Communications, “responding appropriately” usually means, hoping the “the receiver,” in this case your target audience, will take some kind of wanted action suggested by the “signal” sent by you. Examples of a desired or wanted actions in business communications could be anything from changing the culture of an organizational to communications resulting in the purchase of goods or services from your company.
Sounds pretty straight forward right? Well here’s the catch. Today, largely due to the Internet, your company is just another needle in a haystack, up against thousands and thousands of companies, all trying to accomplish the same thing that you are. Unless you do something about it.
Who will become the next “New Media”, clearly the Internet is now the King of the mountain. As little as ten years ago, marketing and communications professionals believed you had just seven seconds to attract someone’s attention whether your message was communicated in print, radio, or in broadcast media. Today with all the noise that’s out there (by noise I mean all various forms of communications we now have available), the new theory is that the time is takes to attract someones attention has been reduced to just two seconds.
Remember the phrase “information overload” that was being thrown around a few years ago? That was due to a fear some people had of the explosion of information that was about to impact our lives via the Internet, a/k/a the “Information Super Highway”.
As it turns out, it appears that information overload doesn’t really exist. That’s because people have adapted and have found that we can filter or extract from all that noise only that which grabs our attention – sort of like window shopping in a busy mall.
So, now more than ever, companies wishing to stay out in front must continuously access and improve the way they reach out to their target audience. Compare themselves against their closest competition and find ways to keep up with the latest business trends and technologies. That’s where we can help.
