When I was growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s Crons Dairy in Noordhoek would deliver milk to our doorstep at our house against the mountain at Kalk Bay. My mother would leave yellow and blue plastic tokens together with empty milk bottles.
The milk delivery man would drop off two pints of milk in glass bottles with silver metal caps.I grew up with two brothers and in the morning one of us would be first to bring in the milk. My father always got upset when one of us would open the milk bottle and spoon out the cream on top of the milk.
Milk deliveries are long gone but home deliveries are coming back because of the COVID 19 lock down. These days our local green grocer sets aside his afternoons to make deliveries to customers who want their fruit and vegetables delivered to their homes. It’s a growing side of his business.
Many more businesses are benefiting from the COVID 19 lock down by providing their services and products online. Websites are being revamped. Online product descriptions are being improve. Courses are being delivered via platforms such as Zoom.
Educational institutions delivering home-based courses may have seemed outdated a few years back but if we look at the University of South Africa (UNISA), for example, their delivery model now seems a perfect fit for the times.
With all this going on, how has your business communications changed? Are you taking advantage of the new opportunities that communicating in an increasingly digitised world is presenting?
More and more business people are communicating via electronic and online platforms. Communication is easier with online technology but it can lead to miscommunication and business writing that doesn’t get read or acted upon because of the avalanche of electronic communication.
Here are five things that are important to consider in writing electronically:
- Clear and straight-forward writing that will helps engage with your reader.
- Revising your draft email so that it is easy to follow and makes your point straight away.
- Writing more effective openings for emails.
- Planning your business writing to address low attention spans in fast-paced digital communications.
- Making your business writing easy on readers through effectively structuring your message.
More effective business writing helps you on the job when asking for resources, influencing in the workplace, concluding agreements more quickly and reaching out to customers with messages that increase response rates.
