In this article, we’ll explore the disadvantages of a mass communication approach to Business-To-Consumer (B2C) communication and how digital media technologies can help overcome these issues.

One disadvantage for businesses that use mass communication is that they cannot accurately identify demand for their products and services because their delivery method focuses on reaching the largest amount of audiences as efficiently as possible. An example of this is advertising at sporting events that attract large amounts of consumers due to its popularity. Though they reach a large number of people, they lose out on ensuring that they are advertising directly to the individuals who are specifically interested in their products and services.

Another disadvantage for these B2C’s is that they cannot directly reach consumers on almost all digital media platforms. For instance, by advertising via television commercials only, they may miss out on advertising to consumers via online delivery channels like video streaming, blog content, and mobile application advertisements.

Businesses can overcome traditional communication limitations by using advertising analytic tools and services that can “chew through terabytes of data and hundreds of variables in real-time” to measure how people interact with advertisements across multiple media channels and to determine what marketing efforts really work, according to Wes Nichols’ Harvard Business Review article “Advertising Analytics 2.0”. Doing this can help a company determine the exact combination of digital ads including location, placement, and time, that most effectively stimulated the desired engagement with their target audience.

Next, we’ll explore three ideas that impact how businesses communicate through their public website.

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With the 1st day of 2018 approaching, there is no need to wait until the new year to begin planning goals and efforts, let’s do it now…

• Help someone else achieve a goal. 
• Speak only great things about yourself. 
• Take action on your goal today, then tomorrow say, “I did it yesterday”. 
• Use mobile technology and social media as business tools to achieve your goals. 

The people we interact with and actions we take impact future outcomes. Higher a coach, ask a mentor for help, demand excellence from yourself, and never stop taking action.

Wylie Blanchard.

Let’s meet up in 2018.

In the meantime here are a few of my activities from 2017:

• The Scope and Aim of Digital Channels.
• Expounding Business Intelligence in Two Sessions.
• Developing Business-Driven Self-Service BI – New York.
• Self Service BI With a Tool End Users Already Know & Love – @CNUG_.
• Developing Tabular Models with SSAS 2016 – #ChiSQL.

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Learn what clients are saying about his programs....

In this article, we’ll explore three things that businesses should consider when assessing how it communicates through its website.

Consider what a website visitor needs from your website prior to other considerations. 

It is important to know what users expect to encounter when they use a website. For instance, business communications like marketing messages and informational readings need to be to the point while also providing users with only the information needed to relay the business message. Due to this, users expect that the most important information in the website uses bold text or is easily identifiable so that the user can quickly identify information that may require that they take action. It also means that the design does not include a continuous scroll feature that does not hinder the user’s ability to scroll to the bottom of the website. The website needs to have a clear, and easily obtainable, endpoint which ensures that the user understands that the communication has ended. Knowing what the user expects and needs from the website will help to create a user experience that functions and provides information in a way the user wants and needs.^[1]

Consider the importance of web design “functionality” and web design “look and feel”.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you have to decide between a website’s ability to allow a specific action to take place (it’s functional design) or its ability to look attractive to consumers. Both are equally important. For example, a “Call to Action” button on a newsletter opt-in form is an example of web design that needs to be easy to use and functional at the same time.^[2] To encourage users to sign up to receive newsletter email content, a sign-up call to action button text should state “Sign-up” instead of “Submit”. This change in text ensures that the button directly relates to the action that the user is taking. Consider the above example, since a user does not submit to receive newsletter content but does sign up to receive the text “Sign up” feels like the action that the user is taking once the button is pressed. After the button is pressed the users expect a feedback/response from the form that will verify that their request to sign up was successful. For this “functional expectation,” an appropriate feedback/response to the clicking of the button is the appearance of a message that the sign-up request is processing and/or has been completed. This quickly and efficiently notifies the user that the action is now complete.

Consider making the website’s written content easy to read. 

Online written content is judge quickly by a user, thus its look and feel needs to appear easy to read in order to convince users to read it.^[2]  Therefore a web design should include short-form copy over long form copy that allows the user to easily scan content efficiently. Long form copy can be transformed into short form by restructuring the content to use bulleted and numbered lists, separating long paragraphs into multiple smaller paragraphs, using bolds and italics to make important text identifiable, and using descriptive links that give a quick glimpse into the intended link destination. Using these methods to help make content easier to read will help readers determine whether they wish to continue reading and, more importantly, encourage users to continue reading because the content is easier to read.

References. 

1. Clifton, Rhiannon. “1-1.2 Understanding UX Design – the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.” Coursera, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Oct. 2017.
2. Stokes, Rob. EMarketing: the Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World. Quirk EMarketing, 2013.

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In this article, we’ll identify three defining features of today’s digital media and how they impact digital communication.

1. Interactive media is the ability to interact with computerized information and content in ways that are similar to how we interact with humans. For example, the website dictionary.com offers several ways for you to comprehend the meaning of a word or phrase (definition, synonyms, audio pronunciation, examples, and origin), allowing us to learn in more ways than a traditional dictionary book.

2. Social communication is the use of digital tools to facilitate communication with people, businesses, and digital assistants. For instance, Web conferencing tools like FaceTime allow us to have live or private visual and verbal conversations with people over vast distance. In addition, social network platforms like Facebook allow us to connect with people privately and publicly via several delivery channels.

3. Intelligence is the growing amount of digital tools that help us be better informed, make more intelligent decisions, and communicate more efficiently. This has grown with the rise of artificial intelligence in computing devices like, Google’s Google Assistant, which is a digital assistant that helps you to find info and get things done. It engages in two-way conversation with you via verbal or written means. It’s intelligent enough to reference prior questions, answers, and interactions with you to intuitively relate it to your current question in order to create and deliver a conversational response. In addition, users can interact with Google Assistant’s intelligent conversational user interface via desktop computers, smartphones, tablets, and wearable technology.

Next, let’s explore how digital media technologies can help businesses overcome the disadvantages of mass communication.

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What is a Digital Channel?

A digital channel can be defined as a technological interface connected to the world-wide-web for the purpose of facilitating communication.

About this Article Series.

In this series of articles, we’ll explore the role of digital media and communication technologies utilized in business communication efforts and review the multiple channels offered today.

Three Defining Features of Today’s Digital Media Technologies

In this article, we’ll identify three defining features of today’s digital media and how they impact digital communication. 1. Interactive media is the ability to interact with computerized information and content in ways that are similar to how we interact with humans. For example, the website dictionary.com offers several ways for you to comprehend the meaning of a word or phrase (definit…

Digital Media Technologies can Overcome the Challenges within Mass Communication

In this article, we’ll explore the disadvantages of a mass communication approach to Business-To-Consumer (B2C) communication and how digital media technologies can help overcome these issues. One disadvantage for businesses that use mass communication is that they cannot accurately identify demand for their products and services because their delivery method focuses on reaching the largest…

Website Considerations that Impact Business Communication

In this article, we’ll explore three things that businesses should consider when assessing how it communicates through its website. Consider what a website visitor needs from your website prior to other considerations.  It is important to know what users expect to encounter when they use a website. For instance, business communications like marketing messages and informational readings…

Get more great content at WylieBlanchard.com... Need a great speaker for your next event, contact us to book Wylie Blanchard now.
Learn what clients are saying about his programs....