Essay On Digital Business Communication

Communication is of utmost importance for any organization to perform its daily business and operations. The topic of this assignment is to analyze the scope of digital communication and how well the company is using it. The main point this report will cover includes digital communication, website analysis, social media communication analysis, content analysis, and business writing style. This report will cover various topics in general and then it will analyze how K-Mart is implementing all these in its business. After finding the shortfalls it will recommend to the company some strategic changes related to digital communication in an organization.

 

Digital communication is an electronic mode of communication where information and thoughts are encoded and transmitted to single or multiple recipients by various electronic signals. A range of digital communication tactics and tools are as follows:- 

 

 

1. To give due importance to customers' feedback and reviews.

 

 

2. To explore new communication mediums.

 

 

3. To organize the website and be more transparent.

 

 

The opportunities arising from digital media are many some of them are:- first it increases the engagement of the business which let people know about the company, second can be that it makes the company accessible which allows the business to expand (Lee & Messerschmitt, 2012). The major drivers for increased use of digital platforms and social media for communication by the business are that it makes the communication easier and faster, and also increases website engagement which ultimately increases the branding of the company.

 

Digital communication is the most common way of communication in today’s world it has evolved in the last five decades and is now impacting business in a significant way from small to large business organizations everyone is completely dependent on the digital way of communication (Speidel, 2021). Some communication principles that businesses should use today to engage with customers are as follows:-

 

 

1. Principle of Timelessness – It states that communication must be done without any delay as it helps in delivering a product or service at the exact time.

 

 

2. Principle of Feedback – This principle let the business develop and helps in creating and delivering good quality products and services.

 

 

K Mart Australia is owned by K Mart Group which is the division of Wesfarmers that deals in retail, chemical, fertilizers, industrial and safety products. It was founded in 1969 and is headquartered in Victoria, Australia. They have around 323 stores all around Australia and New Zealand. K Mart Australia recently switched to AWS for its business communications, AWS is a messaging service that allows even those users to communicate and exchange information who are using different software systems or different programming languages, it also lets users save data in clouds. The audience segment to which K Mart is directed comprises mostly the middle class and blue-collar from the Urban market segment (KMart, 2022). The product line of K-Mart covers people from all age groups in the Urban Market segment as it provides various products which satisfy the wants and needs of people from all age groups.

 

Website is very important for any organization, as nowadays customers interact with it first, and based on this interaction they form an image of the company (Beasley, 2013). The important elements of a good website are as follows:-

 

 

1. Purpose and Clarity – The company must know the purpose of creating a website and must have clarity about its purpose.

 

 

2. Usability – The website that an organization is trying to make must have to-the-point information, must have an easy layout, and should use the easy language of communication.

 

 

3. User Focused – The website must be designed in such a way in it is more focused on the mentality of the user and how he or thinks as it wants to convince and retain the user to avail of its product or services.

 

 

4. Navigation – Easy and fast navigating website makes the potential customer happy which ultimately makes them visit the website again and in this way it let the company get return customers.

 

 

5. Appearance – This is one element that makes customer visit the site again and this also build an image of the company in customers’ mind.

 

 

6. Ease of Update and Content Management – The website of a company must be updated and its content of it must be properly managed. This makes the site more user-friendly and to do this company must have a good content management system.

 

 

7. SEO and Analytics – SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization it pushes the website to those people who do relevant searches on any search engine. Analytics let the company know various key facts about the website visitors so that company can develop accordingly (Gelman, et al., 2013). 

 

 

The analysis of the K Mart website will include the user experience, layout, design, headlines, call to action lead magnets, audience, and google ranking. The user experience of the site is quite good as most of the customers who visit the site can easily find what they were looking for without deep diving into the website. The layout of the website is also quite simplistic and segregated which allows the customer to find what they were looking for but the design of the website is quite outdated which does not let the user spend more time (K Mart, 2022). The headlines of the website are clear and give proper direction to the customers. Its call to action is mostly accurate as it directs and suggests to the customer relevant things. The Google ranking of the website decreased from the past and it currently stands at 60,763, this might be because they are not moving with the pace at which the technology is growing.

 

Social media plays a crucial role in the 21st century for the communication and marketing of any business or organization. There is multiple social media platform used by various organizations to promote their products and services and to create a communication link with potential and genuine customers. There are various social media platforms which are identified below:-

 

 

1. Instagram:- Instagram has developed 12 years ago and since then it is increasing its’s customer base, it has around 1 billion daily active users. Instagram has a wide variety of users including influencers, brands, bloggers, and most individuals. Instagram is most popular among teens and young adults, and they comprise most of the users (McCallum, 2021).

 

 

2. YouTube:- It is a video-sharing platform, they have more than 2 billion monthly users. It is good for those companies and brands who can get benefits from some kind of product review, tutorial, or walkthrough videos, or who want to get their product or services promoted through vloggers. The users of YouTube are ranging in between the age group of 15 years to 35 years and it is equally popular among men and women (Lufkin, 2018). 

 

 

3. Facebook:- It is one of the most popular social media platforms it has around 2.5 billion monthly users. This platform allows the users to share various news, post, and short and long videos. The primary active users of this social media platform are above the age of 30, but it also has some passive users aged less than 30 years.

 

 

4. Twitter:- This social media platform allows the users to share various updates about the social and political environment, and about various other burning issues. It has around 300 million active monthly users and most of them visit the platform multiple times, more than half of the users are above the age of 40 (Lee, 2013).

 

 

The K Mart uses various social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Although they are more active on Instagram and Facebook they have a presence across major platforms. K Mart has the most followers on its Instagram account with over 1.2 million followers and on Facebook, it has over 1.16 million followers and likes on its official page (K Mart, 2022). They are regular in posting content over their social media accounts this makes them let their audience engaged. The posts are related to their products and services which make their customer aware of the products they offer (See Appendix 1). The only point they are lacking is that they have to move with various social media trends to promote their product to a wider audience on social media.

 

Content analysis is a tool that is used for searching for a particular type of theme, words, or concepts in a particular qualitative data (Dahl, 2021). 

 

Types of content used by the K Mart across the various platforms include photos of their different products, and videos showing the unboxing or walkthrough of the product as the purpose of this is to show the quality of products to the customers before they buy. The social media accounts of the K Mart have two different styles or quality of content which are described as follows:-

 

 

1. Professionally Generated Content:- This type of content is created and posted by the brand itself to make people aware of the product and its quality. This involves photos and videos of the offered products. Example - post uploaded by K Mart themselves (KMart, 2022).

 

 

2. User Generated Content:- This type of content is posted on the various social media and discussion forums of the organizations by the users of the product. This lets the potential customers get the real image of the product which they can refer to before actual use. Example – reviews posted by users of the products (Turnbull, 2022).

 

 

K Mart communicates the messages which they want to share with the customers by following two different strategies which are first informative and second persuasive. The informative strategy involves sharing the information based on data that involve facts and figures of the organization whereas the persuasive strategy involves the emotional appeal to the customer to consume the product.

 

The business writing style is important for any organization as it allows the business to have effective business communication internally as well as externally. This shows the intelligence of the writer and can decently influence the customers (Garner, 2013). The company has some options to use different tones and structures which allows them to attract the customers’ attention, interest, desire, and action, this increases the sales of the company. Four different business style and their purpose are as follows:-

 

 

1. Instructional Writing – This writing provides the reader with instructional information which is required to complete a task.

 

 

2. Informational Writing – All business writings need not necessarily involve actions most of the writing is done for records that provide a reference for future needs of the business.

 

 

3. Persuasive Writing –This is a type of business writing which is more connected with sales and is focused more on a particular product and building a customer relationship.

 

4. Transactional Writing – This type of business writing is done to communicate on an everyday basis. This is used to communicate and convey any good or bad news related to human resource management. This is done through E-Mails.

 

The K Mart follow all type of business writing styles as per the situation demands. For example, K-Mart uses the instructional business writing style on their website so that the visitor gets the exact information of the product which he is looking for consumption, the effect of this style is that it helps the customer get what they want (Kmart, 2022). They also use informational business writing for records and future references so that they can use analytics to boost the products. They also use the persuasive writing style to convince the reader to buy any particular product, it also helps in conveying the potential customers of the K Mart wide products. They must improve their writing skills as it is one of the key ways to communicate with potential customers and attract them to their brand.

 

Thus, it can be concluded from the above report that K Mart has a good presence in Australia and they are using their website in the best manner to communicate. They have a good and well-organized website as their website has all features. They have designed the website in such a way that makes it user-friendly, it also easily navigates the customers to what they are looking for, and its appearance lets the people reorder for their website. They are also great on some social media platforms as they have more than a million followers which let them communicate their thoughts to the majority of their customers. One major recommendation to K Mart is that they need to focus more on other social media as their followers are comparatively less on them, they can also try to constantly update their website and digital communication methods to move with the pace of technological development. Another recommendation is that they must work on their research and development, and also on social media marketing to use different trends in the promotion of their products.

 

Beasley, M., 2013. Practical Web Analytics for User Experience. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. https://www.elsevier.com/books/practical-web-analytics-for-user-experience/beasley/978-0-12-404619-1

 

 

Dahl, S., 2021. Social Media Marketing. California: Sage. https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/Social_Media_Marketing/SBklEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

 

 

Garner, B. A., 2013. HBR Guide to Better Business Writing. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press. https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/HBR_Guide_to_Better_Business_Writing/F5XBAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

 

 

Gelman, A. et al., 2014. Bayesian Data Analysis, Third Edition. Oxfordshire: Taylor & Francis. https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/Bayesian_Data_Analysis/eSHSBQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

 

 

K Mart, 2022. Home Page. [Online] Available at: https://www.kmart.com.au/[Accessed 17 July 2022].

 

 

K Mart, 2022. kmartaus. [Online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/kmartaus/?hl=en[Accessed 17 July 2022].

 

 

KMart, 2022. About Kmart. [Online] Available at: https://www.kmart.com.au/about-kmart/[Accessed 17 July 2022].

 

 

Kmart, 2022. Better Together. [Online] Available at: https://www.kmart.com.au/bettertogether/[Accessed 17 July 2022].

 

 

Lee, D., 2013. How Twitter changed the world, hashtag-by-hashtag. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24802766[Accessed 17 July 2022].

 

 

Lee, E. A. & Messerschmitt, D. G., 2012. Digital Communication. New York: Springer. https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=GjTwCAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR13&dq=Lee,+E.+A.+and+Messerschmitt,+D.+G.,+2012.+Digital+Communication.+New+York:+Springer.&ots=DK3x5iCLWO&sig=JI_cjCkv-lVh-z35m71BqCRWHRo#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

 

Lufkin, B., 2018. Husband and wife team Rachel and Jun are "J-vloggers": YouTubers who film their lives, decoding for the masses a nation that's seeing big spikes in tourism and global interest.. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180919-the-vlogging-duo-on-youtube-who-teach-the-world-about-japan[Accessed 17 July 2022].

 

 

McCallum, S., 2021. Instagram: A blessing or a curse?. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59180946[Accessed 17 July 2022].

 

 

Speidel, J., 2021. Introduction to Digital Communications. New York: Springer. https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/Introduction_to_Digital_Communications/BjInEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

 

 

Turnbull, T., 2022. Australia probes retail giants Bunnings and Kmart over customer 'faceprints'. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-62145154 [Accessed 17 July 2022].