How the Internet has changed the way we work

With the advent of the mobile phone, small businesses were liberated. They were no longer required to be tethered to their office / home in order to receive business. Instead they could go about their normal daily activity and take calls everywhere.

This freed up considerable time and expense.

Then came the Internet. It brought with it just as dramatic a change. It allowed consumers to shop around and find the best deal / service - irrespective of location. So somebody in London could find that perfect gift from a small one man business located in the Yorkshire Moors or Lisbon.

Business were now able to compete on a national and international stage. This expanded the market but also brought downs the barriers to entry. I mean if it doesn’t matter where you are located then you can move to the cheapest part of the country / world and operate from there.

This globalisation of the marketplace brought with it additional challenges for small businesses. For a start you had to get your business out there. But where was there?

Search engines were a good place to start but if you didn’t know what you were doing you could spend a fortune on Google Adwords and still not get anywhere.

And when you finally got customers, you had to communicate with them - but how? I mean if you were taking business internationally then you either had to do everything via email or have the phone maned 24/7.

Then in a world where everyone can review / rate anything, you needed a reputation. How do you get that when they never meet you or speak to you?

Over the next couple of months we will be going through a number of these scenarios and helping you understand the difference between SEO and SEM, VoIP and UC, Intranet and Internet. We’ll demystify the Internet and hopefully show you how to get the most out of it.

We hope you enjoy these articles and they prove useful.

If you have any topics that you would like to hear about then let us know - we’re sure we know someone who can demystify just about anything Internet related.

Regards

Karen

December 19, 2007 | Filed Under Web 2.0 

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