The Digital Communication Age is here, and it’s time you harness it. When you send your employees, customers, or other stakeholders a copy of a new policy, a new training manual, a new brochure, or even an email, Don’t’ you want to know:

• Did they read it?
• Did they act on it?
• Did they embrace it?

Yes you can.

Communicating is a two-way and dynamic affair. It’s a dialogue, a conversation, a meaningful connection that prompts action. Communicating allows you to move ahead in a positive direction faster.

Although there still is a need to simply inform but think of it this way: Every age that has ever existed still exists today. There are places on the planet where people are still hunters and gatherers, and in other places there are people living in an early form of the industrial age. The same is true when it comes to our tools. We don’t get rid of the past. Rather, as new things come along, we integrate the old into the new. For example, when we talk about e-learning, many in the teaching community reject it out right. Assuming that e-learning means no teachers, no human interaction, complex technology, etc.

So the old doesn’t go away; we just use it in a new way. For example, use of social media to extend the class discussion, content sharing software to distribute our class note, using video conferencing to reach our audience, …… That’s why we don’t want to get rid of  good practices, but rather we want to embrace the power of the Communication Age.

What are some Communication Age tools we all need to take notice of? Two in particular are visual communications and unified communication.

1- Visual communications are different from video conferencing. Video conferencing requires a large room filled with expensive equipment, and the room is always booked by the executives. Visual communication is something like Skype—something you can use not just on a laptop, but also on a desktop, tablet, or smart phone today.

It’s also important to realize that we don’t all learn best in the same way. For example, some of us are auditory learners, meaning we learn best when we listen to a book than read it. In this case you would most likely be better at dictation and voice mail than writing and email.

2- Unified communications is a tool that can help us communicate in the style we are best at and therefore communicate better. For example, with unified communication I can send you a document in writing, and you can choose whether you want to read it or listen to it based on how you learn and process information best. And chances are that you’ll respond more quickly in the way you prefer to respond, whether in writing or via voice.

Visual communication tools and unified communications represent only a few of the many new tools we have to foster better communications because we’re giving people options of how to communicate with us. By allowing people to choose the medium they want to send their communication in, the medium of choice to receive it in, and the addition of the visual element, you can create better real-time communication as you would have in a phone call, or you can create a time-shifted dialogue that is far more effective than the traditional means that we’ve been using for years.

So if you’re one of the 95% of companies firmly rooted in the Information Age, it’s time to start the shift to being a Communication Age organisation. Don’t wait. Do it now.