For many twenty something’s, the availability of the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) has been a major part of growing up and a natural way of communicating with friends, family and obtaining news and information. A generation aptly dubbed ‘digital native’s’ wouldn’t think twice about logging onto Google, sending a text/tweet or posting something on Facebook to find out information or speak to friends and family.
The communications revolution opened the door for all digital natives to communicate to a potentially much wider audience about a myriad of subjects as well as providing an inexhaustible source of information to their fingertips.
However, individuals born before the 1990’s or ‘digital immigrants’ can remember a life before the Internet, where communicating wasn’t so instant, contacting somebody potentially involved walking to a phone box to make a call and finding out information meant reading a newspaper, watching the news or listening to the radio. The working environment was indeed the same, and phone calls, meetings and the written word were the main conduits of communication with colleagues and working associates.
Believe it or not, but the Internet or ‘information superhighway’ has been part of our lives and the working environment for over two decades. Gone are the days where a small dial-up box would sit in the corner, whirring and buzzing all day long and a company website would just be a flashy addition to your new businesses marketing plan. Internet and technology is now a major communication line for many companies and vital to many businesses all over the world.
The digital natives of yesteryear who were brought up on Facebook, MySpace and Bebo have now all grown up, graduating from Universities and settling into the working world. With them they bring a whole new way of communicating, socialising conducting business and developing business relationships.
Social media sites are now fast becoming the new boardrooms and meeting places of the business world, even the everyday regime of work life is becoming more technologically advanced with the integration of improved computers within offices. These changes and momentum inevitably mean that digital immigrants constantly struggle to keep up with the pace and fail to recognise its importance within a business environment and more often than not, resulting in technology being ignored.
The speed and the cloud of mystery that shrouds technology tends to confuse digital immigrants on where it sits within the business world, resulting in an obvious divide between older supervisors and managers and digital natives. As a result, conflict among them can be commonplace.
The point that is commonly over looked by digital immigrants is that digital natives have grown up with this level of fast paced technology and it’s how they connect with their friends, work colleagues, conduct research and find new business leads.
However, some businesses and digital immigrants are beginning to see the benefits of embracing technology and are adapting their businesses plans to cater for digital natives, some of these changes include:
Active use of the company website – video and interactive tools
Making sure that the company website offers more than just a contact number and a photo, websites are now the main port of call with digital natives as this is where the majority of researching is done. Poor websites will not be reconsidered and quickly forgotten.
Companies are now readily using online tools and videos as a main marketing strategy to help businesses promote their company and stand out from the crowd. These strategies are proving to be a lot more engaging with digital natives for getting a website noticed and considered.
Going paperless
Going paperless can save a business money, boost productivity, save space, make documentation and information sharing easier and keeping personal information more secure. More and more businesses are becoming paperless and embracing technologies like cloud technology which gives you the ability to work remotely anywhere in the world.
Contacting clients or potential new business via social media sites
Social media sites can be a grey area, however, if correctly monitored and utilised can be a rich hunting ground to find new potential business leads as well as offering another way to interact with a younger work force.
Become an industry thought leaders via social media sites
Posting ‘I have just put the kettle on’ is not the ideal way to become an industry thought leader, posting information about current industry issues will interact with your audience and offer them more than an average social media post.
There is no way of denying that technology is here to stay and it will only continue to become more dynamic and will continue to evolve over the coming years and if not already, digital immigrants will need to embrace these new ways of working and integrating new technology into their business as the Juniors of today will be tweeting tomorrow about how they have just become the new company Director.
