subject: Importance of Having a Strong Online Visibility for the Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) in the Modern World [print this page] Importance of Having a Strong Online Visibility for the Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) in the Modern World
Famous New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in his book "The World is Flat", enlightened us about three phases of globalization. In the first phase of globalization according to Tom Friedman, the nations went global during the 14th and 15th centuries. Nations like Britain, Spain and France invested heavily in conquering oriental and African territories, to spread their religion, culture, and economic philosophy. Asian and African countries were heavily influenced by this rapid colonization by wealthy European countries.
Then, during the 19th and 20th century, the world experienced the second phase of globalization, when the companies started to go global. Large corporations, and brands based in Europe and America, started to expand their geographical market territories by venturing into business operations globally. A new term came into the English language called "multinational companies", as a result of this aggressive globalization of companies.
The third phase of globalization started during the late 20th century, and expanded rapidly during the early 21st century. This is the globalization of individuals. With the help of rapidly growing internet technologies, and lowered cost of technology; any individual now can connect with the rest of the world, within a matter of few clicks of your computer mouse. You can now easily create a professional looking personal website, and invite millions of people to view it. You can have your own TV channel, and broadcast news worldwide, 24X7, or you can create your own soap opera series, and sell it to a global viewer ship over Youtube.com or Justin.tv
These developments in internet technology and high worldwide connectivity, makes it much easier for the small businesses to compete with global giants. Some technical resources which were earlier limited to large multinational corporations (Eg: CRM systems, Video Conferencing, Online Document sharing), are now freely available for any small scale businesses. In this third phase of globalization, having a website is not an option for small and medium scale businesses. If you don't have a website for your small business, you are voluntarily forgoing a large portion of business opportunities coming in your way.
Therefore, all the small and medium size businesses in this third phase of globalization must pay more attention on improving their online visibility. It will not remain an option for any longer. It will become a prerequisite to be in existence in few more years, if not in few more months.
