Writing Skill is More Important than Talking Skill in Today’s Business

Digitization in bits and bytes was the fundamental activity for the Information Technology revolution in the 80s and 90s of the last century. In the new millennium, connecting the world to the Internet became the main role for the Information Technology development.

For the former, we witnessed contents readily loaded in its carriers, be it papers, films, cassettes or tapes, be it in text, voice, image or animation format, the contents had vastly be converted into digital data, laid a strong foundation for the information boom and tremendous cost cutting measures for knowledge transfer. While in the Internet era, the latter, by connecting computers and IT devices, the web technology virtually removed all borders and physical distances between customers and companies.    

Digitization & Globalization

For the former, we observed INTEGRATION in different job functions due to digitization. However, for the latter, GLOBALIZATION is the keyword when distance is being compressed to virtually zero.

In the past, you had to setup plenty of physical overseas branches to qualify you as an international company. But in the present days, your business operation can reach every corner of the world even if you are a minute below-10-employee company. Micro-international company is the new vocabulary to describe a small yet Internet savvy company that can achieve global business goal, even without setting up any physical business operation abroad.

Speak & Listen

From digitization to globalization process, there is a change of emphasis in communication skill too from speaking to writing.  This new trend can simply be verified by how we use our mobile phones today.  Mobile phones used to serve human’s mouth and ears in the past, but now had switched to eyes and fingers, a clear sign of speak and listen transiting to write and read. And smart phones are no longer merely just any phones, they are also handheld portable computers, it means the ubiquitous and network connect at all times, plus the mainstream social media apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and WeChat etc., the time we spend in reading and writing is much longer than we do in tele-conversing.

Talking and writing are two basic communication skills, but in the midst of the transformation from productivity economy to the service industry economy in the 80s and 90s, the socio and economy activities were basically confined to more local vicinities. When face-to-face or telecommunication is required to get the job done, talking is definitely the king. The criteria of employment especially in sales and marketing personnel emphasizes on eloquent speaker.

Writing, writing, writing

When the Internet era arrived, it dismantled all borders between countries and it shrunk the physical distances, sparked a new perspective in communications, writing proficiency had suddenly becoming more important than talking. Since distant had been virtually removed, overseas business expansion did not require physical store anymore, however, a virtual store is still pivotal to display your products and services with or without an option to online purchases, or at least a website that provides training and technical support, elaboration on warranty claims, policies, services and etc. All these, you need excellent writing skills to produce contents. Besides, you also need your sales and technical personnel to be able to answer customers’ queries in emails or Skype; and again, writing skill is inevitable. And to take advantage of the social media like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and other engines to engage your customers, once again, you can’t ignore writing skill.

In short, to build an Internet ecosystem in your company, a strategy that is probably not an option anymore for nowadays businesses, you require more staff that can write well. Good writing skills definitely produce better quality and more useful contents. This is what we believe in FingerTec.  And, I also believe that writing is so fundamental in today’s organization that one shouldn’t outsource it to any third party.