What Does Being Digitally Literate Mean for an Online Business?

Shathyan Raja
5 min readJul 12, 2021

Are you an online entrepreneur? Then, you cannot expect success without being a digitally literate individual. Perhaps, you have just started your online business journey and so, you are not much familiar with the concept of digital literacy.

Do not worry! Just go through the post, and you would get to know about the link between digital literacy and the success of your online business. Not only is digital literacy significant for an online business but it is also essential for one’s day-to-day life.

Digital Literacy & Online Business

Although the term “digital literacy” is self-explanatory, it has many facets. In short, digital literacy shows the proficiency of an individual in making use of current technologies in searching for, analyzing, creating, or transferring information.

That means if you are a digitally literate person, you must know how to process digital information because an online business is mostly about exchanging digital information.

When it comes to managing an online business, it is a must to know how to use different electronic devices, such as computers, smartphones, and tablets.

Moreover, as an online entrepreneur, you need to be well-versed in using various social media platforms. Otherwise, it won’t be possible for you to communicate, exchange ideas, collaborate, and so on with your partners and clients.

In short, digital literacy helps one to express thoughts and reach more and more people without any geographical barrier. And they are some of the key requirements for growing an online business in a tough competitive industry.

Digital Literacy of Remote Employees in an Online Business

More and more businesses are appearing online to grow their customer base. Therefore, ensuring digital literacy in your company is imperative.

Nonetheless, it is not a cakewalk to analyze the digital knowledge of every employee if it is about a large company. The level of digital literacy of employees varies with the type and department of an organization.

Whereas some people can adopt the practices of digital literacy with ease, some need thorough training and education for the same.

So, how would you determine the level of digital literacy in your organization? The following points would help you with the same. As a result, you can analyze the knowledge of your employees on the latest technologies and find out how much training and education they need.

The Level of Comfort with Digital Tools & Technologies:

The first step of determining the level of digital literacy of your remote employees is to check their comfort level in using the latest digital tools and technologies.

Can your employees adapt themselves to the changing technological trends with ease? Your team should at least know how to use basic tools to ensure digital literacy of a minimum level. Moreover, they should also have enough flexibility to use platforms other than basic ones without long-term training.

Understanding about the Importance of Digital Literacy:

Your remote team of professionals should be well familiar with the benefits of digital tools in terms of professional and personal advancements. They should be able to opt for appropriate tools and technologies to streamline their work and make the workflow more efficient.

What about Using Cloud-based Software?

If you are a large online business owner, then you might have adopted cloud-based programs to streamline team collaboration and achieve more functionality. Hence, your team must know how to use cloud-based software.

Moreover, your employees need to be well versed with different electronic devices (such as mobile phones, tablets, and so on) other than just computers.

Familiarity with Social Media Platforms:

Note that social media literacy is as important as familiarity with electronic devices for your team. When it comes to growing an online business, there is no better option than leveraging the power of social media.

In other words, social media platforms are an integral part of an online business to create authenticity, build brand identity, and reach target customers.

Therefore, it is a must to figure out the level of comfort of your team in using social media channels. In short, your team should know the importance and benefits of social media in marking a unique presence in the industry.

Social media literacy is a part and parcel of digital literacy. Hence, you and your team must know how to leverage the power of social media to escalate business growth.

Skyrocket Your Business Growth with Digital Literacy

Since the competition in almost every industry is too high, there is hardly any way other than being digitally literate to grow an online business.

In other words, digital literacy offers flexibility and efficiency in an online business. As a result, potential opportunities for business growth can go up exponentially. It is time to know how digital literacy can help you to take your online business to a new level:

Improves Productivity:

Digital literacy enables entrepreneurs to leverage the power of various software programs. For instance, time-tracking software is one of the key tools to track the website visitors for an online business.

Moreover, being a digitally literate entrepreneur you can analyze the results received from such software. Thus, you can work towards the improvement of the productivity and efficiency of your online business.

Boosts Marketing Endeavors:

Digital literacy helps an online entrepreneur to spread the wings into various aspects. In other words, creative ideas and unique strategies can be evolved with a proper understanding of the digital world.

For instance, marketing plays a vital role in the growth of an online business. And digital literacy makes the entire marketing process more advanced, sophisticated, and creative. You can opt for video marketing or choose online adverts to spread the reach of your business.

Moreover, you are also free to choose various software tools to modify or share your marketing strategies with your remote team. However, digital literacy is imperative for you and your team in this regard.

Anything else?

You can make use of email marketing to collect the email addresses of your target audiences and reach out to them directly. Thus, you can convince people why they should opt for your offerings to alleviate their pain points.

Digital literacy also helps to promote the products and services of a business in different social media channels. Also, you can create a separate blog section on your website to keep your audiences up-to-date with the valuable content about your products or services.

Digital literacy helps online entrepreneurs to make the business workflow more efficient and advanced. Thus, brilliant communication strategies can be developed to interact and engage with target customers.

Moreover, digital dictation streamlines the usage of tools like project management to help one keep a tab on day-to-day business tasks.

Improves Customer Service:

A business cannot reach a top-level position without proper customer care service. Digital literacy enables online entrepreneurs to leverage the power of appointment scheduling software to make appointments at any time.

Moreover, social media channels can also be used to interact with customers regarding complaints or feedback. Digital literacy also helps online entrepreneurs to find out unique ideas to engage with customers, such as help desk, online questionnaires, live chat support, or ticket system.

Wrapping Up

Being digitally literate is compulsory to start and grow an online business. Not only does digital literacy help to escalate brand awareness and business credibility but it also assists in learning, collaboration, and investment management.

Definitely, you can hire professionals to manage your business but digital literacy would give you the freedom to have control over the whole process.

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Shathyan Raja

#GrowthMarketer | #Blogger | #Entrepreneur | #Sales | #BusinessDeveloper |