Strengths and Weaknesses of some Communication Methods

The strengths are in red the weaknesses in blue

Text message - quick, easy to use and access, can send to groups of people at the same time. Not everyone can access the text message. If you don’t set your phone to send you a delivery report then you won’t know if the message has been sent or not

Email - any one can access there e mail addresses at anytime, at any location so long as they have Internet access. Quick and easy to access, you can send the same email to different groups of people at one time. Have to have access to either the Internet or another device that can receive emails.

Letter - Can be handwritten; personal message. Takes forever to write and send. May not be delivered, receivers may not inform you that they have received it.


Memo - only informs people that need to know the information. Small reminders. Quick, easy. Printed information. People can lose the memo if they accidentally delete the email or lose the paper it is written on.
Press Conference  - inform journalists who will then write an article in newspapers and magazines, informing others who read it. Journalists sometimes re-word the information given to make it sound worse, or better than it is.

Electronic Bulletin - Easy for everyone to access
Office notice board - Not everyone will acknowledge the notice board when they walk past it. Anyone can pin notices about a particular subject

File on a public area - anybody can access it at anytime if have access to the network that the file is shared on. People that don’t need to access the file can access it because it is public.

File in a restricted area - unauthorised personnel can’t access as restrictions have to be set as to who can access the file. People that need the file may be restricted.

Face to face one to one meeting - personal, informal or formal depending on content of the meeting. If there are many people that need to be told the same information, it will take a long time.

Whole company meeting by the MD - talk to everyone at the same time so everyone knows the same information. Boring, not everyone will listen. Information can be given to the wrong departments.

Departmental meeting chaired by the HOD - Can talk to the whole department about a certain topic that affects the department. People can be singled out in the department to be given information that concerns just them, but only the department knows about it, not the whole office. Boring, not everyone will listen.

Cloud networking Document sharing - One person can have permissions to a certain document and can invite certain members of the department to have either editing access or viewing access to the document. You can have access to the document anywhere so long as you have Internet access and a Google mail account (if you are using Google Docs). Need access to the Internet as files are stored on a remote server or on websites on the Internet.

Blogs - Quick and easy to setup. Can access it anywhere and at anytime if you have internet access. You have to keep inviting people to have access to your blog