Electronic media has now been around for a long time. The US government looked at linking computers together to swap information back in the 1960s and the world wide web, which gives us the way the internet looks today, dates from the early 1990s. The first websites started appearing at the same time so we've had the internet as we know it for more than 20 years. It's now a young adult, no longer a troublesome child.
What is true to say is that the internet is evolving more rapidly than just about any other communication system. Twitter is only five years old, tablet computers a few years old and the growth of smart-phones featuring web reasonably fast internet just a few years old too.
What hasn't changed is that the internet is still based mainly on words and pictures although video is rapidly catching up as bandwidth allows.
Here at Portfolio Publishing we're often asked "what's the right medium for me." The simple answer is that there is no right and wrong. Some clients may need no more than a simple paper newsletter, perhaps also distributed in an electronic form. Some clients will benefit from a high quality, professional magazine, a tangible and powerful material definition of a brand and a communication device whose relevance remains. Customers love to read something they can take anywhere and not worry about losing it as they would a tablet computer.
What remains true about client communications, in print or online, is that the most important thing is the quality and relevance of the message. There's no use offering ice to the Eskimos. Whatever you offer has to be what customers want to read about. Relevance is key.
Consumers are also becoming increasingly savvy about the way the deal with the hundreds if not thousands of messages that bombard their inbox each week. They search out material they know and trust. Here quality is key. If the communication is delivered in a high quality, professional way, consumers and your clients are more likely to trust it and to want to do business with you. Material which is shoddily produced and full of spelling or grammar errors is unlikely to win many friends and may create a few enemies instead.
Likewise, any communication should look good too. If it's a magazine, then good quality paper and printing reinforce your brand and your message. If it's online then good design, clarity and ease of navigation are important. Web users in particular are fickle and hope from item to item as the web alllows them to do. In print, readers spend more time digesting an article but a "call to action" is harder to implement. Ultimately quality wins every time and the investment in quality is one nearly all companies will benefit from.