Written By: Mahmoud Sami Ramadan
I was 14 years old when I was introduced to Toastmasters. Toastmasters International is a nonprofit organization that works for the sake of promoting public speaking and leadership. There are a few conditions for you to become a member, but not one of them is that you be underage! I remember that the president of the club in my city made an exception for me to be able to join the club. During the first few meetings, I was introduced to terms that I later found out were very beneficial. For example, how to do face-to-face communication with your audience while giving a speech; how to make eye contact and pay attention to everyone in the room; how to use your body language to deliver your message; when to raise your voice and when to do vocal variety; how to organize your speech in the allocated time and do proper time management; when to speak and when to listen; and how to regulate your breathing and watch out for your filler words while speaking.
A few years later, I went to pursue my bachelor’s degree in computer engineering, where I got acquainted with all means of digital communication. Then, during my work in digital media, I began using those skills. At present, I send emails to over 150,000 customers twice a week. I make telephone calls on a daily basis to our customers and the bloggers with whom we collaborate. I send letters along with gifts every two months to our people and ask them to promote us online. This is how I manage to keep the online business running from my side.
I was exposed to both styles of communication: the face-to-face one and the long-distance one. Even in my personal relationship, as a person who frequently travels, I can tell the difference between being with my fiancée in person or on a video call, but at the same time, digital communication keeps me connected with her and helps me reduce my travel expenses. On the other hand, it’s not easy to manage long-distance relationships with people. Most of my school friends are left behind because we don’t do any face-to-face communication anymore and other means of communication are not helping.
On a side note, this actually reminds me of Ed Sheeran’s song, Castle on the Hill, when he sang:
“One friend left to sell clothes.
One works down by the coast.
One has two kids but lives alone.
One’s brother overdosed.
One’s already on his second wife.
One’s just barely getting by.”
In a nutshell, face-to-face communication is important to maintaining good relations with your people, customers, and those you care for on a personal level, while other forms of communication appear as supporting means for the same cause; they could work for businesses while digital marketing and media rise, but on a personal level, I don’t believe they could displace face-to-face communication. Texting can lead to miscommunication. Phone calls don’t show sympathy. As we watched in Jonze’s masterpiece movie, Her, there had to be face-to-face communication at the end. Anyway, receiving a notification on your phone can bring you back to shopping online from an e-commerce platform and retain you as a repeat customer. This pretty much sums it up.