Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Communication Tools ~ What Do You Use?

Communicate, it's what we do. We communicate to build relationships with our clients, colleagues, publics. We, as public relations professionals, build relationships as part of our living.

We all use different tools to do it; but, I was surprised by a recent Twitter poll asking if people still use the telephone to communicate (as opposed to just email, Twitter, and other social media). I don't know if I'm out of the norm, but I spend a substantial portion of each day on the phone. I call my colleagues, I call reporters, I call assignments editors, I probably make 15 calls a day.

Obviously, my answer to the question of using a telephone for relationship building was a resounding, "Yes!" But, am I out of the ordinary? Do you use a telephone still?

If you don't use the telephone, how do you make contact with your publics? As hard as I try, I am not able to see everyone I need to touch base with in person; and as friendly as I think I am, email just doesn't convey a friendly chat as well as a voice. So, what do you do to make contact? While I won't be giving up the telephone any time soon, I'd like to hear what others do to stay in touch, to build relationships.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I can say that using a blackberry you can send emails, use MSN, send personal messages or make calls, so yes communication now is through a personal device, in this case a phone.