Pervasive Communication

by The Boomer Gal | Nov 20, 2012 | Communications

Pervasive communication is the fancy pants way of labeling CHAOS in communications. Maybe that’s not entirely fair. You see the Internet has given us access to the world’s largest water cooler. Anyone who has been around the water cooler a couple of times knows, that the conversation is often scattered and quick — non-linear — bits and pieces of the bigger communications picture.

While older generations perfected direct communication through sharing written language and spoken language, culture has changed to the point where those same generations may not even recognize communication as we use it today.

Let’s take my favorite social media – Twitter – as an example of the pervasive communication phenomenon.

Twitter is a social media platform that was based on SMS texting technology. That technology was limited to 140 characters of text that could be sent in one message. Only having 140 characters severely limits your ability to write in complete sentences and get your point across.

Let’s try an example: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ” This famous opening to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is 30 words and 175 characters (yes spaces do count).

Now if Lincoln were to tweet this same sentence on Twitter, it might go something like this: “87yrs ago the USA was born – liberty and equality for ALL! TY forefathers. You ROCK!” which is only 84 characters leaving Lincoln’s followers 56 characters to comment during a retweet.

Lincoln was engaged in traditional written and verbal communication that was heard live on November 19, 1863 by approximately 15,000 people and reported by newspapers around the United States the days following,  increasing the audience substantially. By today’s standards, based on Barack Obama’s Twitter following, Lincoln would have had upwards of 4 Million followers in 1863. His tweet could have potentially been seen, in real time, by 267 times the original 15,000 people.

That’s just one way pervasive communication has changed our language and the reach of that language.

Pervasive Communication is not a death knell.

Just because our communications practices have become more chaotic and non-linear does not mean they’re not effective. It also doesn’t mean you can afford to ignore the methods. They are imperfect and certainly not as beautiful as the Gettysburg Address, but they occur in greater quantity in more places than we ever imagined. And that is an opportunity.

Your strategy can be simple. Start by listening to what and where your ideal customers and clients are having conversation. There is a search function built in to all social media platforms. Google Alerts can help you set up other ways of keeping tabs on your business name or your personal name.

My recent guest on ACT LOCAL Marketing, Fred McClimans, encouraged businesses to simply monitor social media for their name and respond when mentioned. That’s really simple while keeping your business on top of things in the eyes of an increasingly savvy pervasive communication inspired public. Fred also mentioned how online is THE place where word of mouth escalates dramatically. “Word of mouth is dominant,” he states.

Word of mouth definitely carries a lot of weight with consumers. Pervasive communication has made word of mouth easy to spread. Bad word of mouth will move like a virus through the online world, but good word of mouth moves fast too. Much faster than traditional face-to-face local communication mediums.

Rather than peg pervasive communication as the ubiquitous (I just love that word) sludge gumming up the wheels of communications, see it as an opportunity to engage with your clients, customers, vendors and employees on their terms. Don’t be the last one to take this new style of communication seriously, because that’s asking to be left behind. Or as our good friend Abe Lincoln said, “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”

Thanks to @fredmcclimans for his thoughts on pervasive communication, 11-19-2012 on ACT LOCAL Marketing.