That title should really be “Bad mail com” because that’s about all anyone has time to read these days.

Can I first rant, yet again, about the pitiful state of written English as used by people who were supposedly edgykated in Britin and for whom English is their muther tong. I read on a daily basis, and I’m not exaggerating, streams of text where the writers cannot distinguish between: to & too, your & you’re, there & their, which & what, where & were along with a host of other basic errors that I expect should have been clear by the age of ten, if not before. I can’t forgive but can perhaps overlook mistakes with more complicated words and grammar but to not be able to distinguish between ‘there’ and ‘their’ is just not on.

That’s not the point of this post though. Here I want to talk about how email is killing the art of communication.

As I understand it, email is the modern day equivalent of sending a  letter, something that used to be handwritten or later typed onto a piece of paper and then either handed or posted to the recipient. If it just stuck to being a more efficient way of doing exactly that then I’d be extremely happy because there’s no doubt that it is a vastly superior way to type, deliver and file letters. However, email has gone way beyond its core competencies and, encouraged by the users, has now caused:

1. A breakdown in people’s ability or desire to speak to each other face to face or via the telephone
2. An unnecessarily enormous increase in the amount of ‘letters’ being sent
3. An all-time low in people’s ability to communicate in writing
4. A very serious deterioration in recipients’ ability to read anything more than 25 words long.

The idea behind writing a letter is to “communicate” with one or more other people. The process of communication is generally explained as being the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information, a way of transferring knowledge from one person to others. There’s a question to be asked therefore as to whether everything email now stands for is actually helping or hindering the art of communication?

I can only think of one argument that it is helping and that is that it does allow letters to be distributed faster, instantly in fact, and to more people. In terms of getting a message out there then, it is light years ahead of typing and posting. But what is the downside of that speed?

1/ Talking. Sending an email, assuming you’re at your computer, is easier than calling someone. It also has to be said that trying to get someone to answer the phone these days is pretty hard. The call is either not answered or answered by a robot. I’d say I’m successful one time in ten when calling people at our London office, whether it be desk or mobile phone, whereas sending the same person a mail quite often gets a faster response. That’s sad but true. It is however inescapably true that more and better communication can be achieved in a shorter time by speaking on the phone than by email. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched staff engage in a lengthy email debate and then, when the issue is still not resolved, ask “What do you think I should do now?”. My answer is always the same, “Did you try calling them?”. 90% of the time, the issue is resolved after one short call and yet, for some reason, this is not nowadys an obvious thing to do. How often have you noticed people even within your own office, people who are sitting no more than 50 m away from each other send each other mails instead of going over and having a chat? What’s that all about??!!

2/ Written diarrhoea. Because it’s so easy, people abuse it. I’d estimate that of the hundreds of mails I get every week about 50% of them need not have been sent at all and of that 50% a further 50% need not have been copied to me. People need to learn to read the distribution lists for emails and remove those who don’t really need to be involved in the ongoing debate. It’s just plain lazy to hit “reply to all” and not give a damn how many people then have to start reading the thing, realise it’s corporate spam and delete it. Perhaps if people had less junk in their mailbox they might have more time to read stuff properly. As a boss I also suffer from the ‘arse-covering’ mail disease – I’m copying you, my boss, so that if this all goes pear-shaped you can’t tell me off. Bullshit! If there’s something potentially important about a mail then I expect you to have a conversation with me before you send it. Otherwise, I expect you to get on with the job we pay you for without copying every man and his dog “just in case”.

Roughly every 6 months I send to all my reports a “name and shame” email showing how many mails I’ve received from each of them in the previous period. The results are quite staggering with some people sending almost none while others send 500 or more in the same period. As usual, the correct answer is somewhere in the middle although for my style the lower the better. This is surprisingly effective at cutting down mail, by the way, in case you want to try it yourself.

3/ This and the next point are at the heart of the matter. That communication, for it to work properly needs people to follow a few simple rules:

• Keep it to a minimum. We are all busy and therefore reducing the total amount of messages will allow us to concentrate on those that matter.
• Make sure your message tells the recipient everything they need to know. This cuts down on the never ending question-answer mail threads followed by the ultimate phone call to find out what’s really going on. All of which wastes more time than having drafted the mail properly in the first place.
• When you get a mail, read it!

Combining email with a Blackberry or similar grammar & text stripping device is the ultimate in gobbledegook generation. How often do you read something and not understand what on earth is going on? With me it’s at least 25% of the time. About another 50% of the time I may understand the issue but don’t have enough information to be able to answer the question or do whatever is being asked so that leaves roughly a quarter of the mails I get (the legitimate mails, excluding the spam) as being what I’d call communication.

I try hard to be different. I try to make sure that the recipient gets a good understanding of the issue and enough information to be able to come straight back with an answer, or get straight on with what has been asked. Unfortunately, I’m too often faced with either questions that have been answered in the mail already or claims that they don’t have time to read anything more than 4 bullet points. If the issue being communicated cannot be condensed into 4 bullet points, what is one supposed to do? Most of what I need to communicate is complicated, the simple stuff I just deal with myself.

4/ Attention span of a gnat. Why can’t people take a moment to read something these days? I can appreciate that my mail might not be the most important thing they have on their mind but then what they should do is respond saying “Thanks, I’m a bit tied up now but I’ll get back to you [whenever]“. Polite, short, no time wasted and I know you’re going to read the thing later. Fine with me. Instead, what people do these days is this – open mail, scroll a little, if it looks like you could read it in less than 15 seconds then read it, if it looks longer ignore it (unless it’s from your boss) or, even worse, read only the first line and then ask loads of stupid questions that have already been answered further down in the mail or, the worst, read the first line jump to the wrong conclusion and reply to all. Every one of the things people really do either don’t solve the issue or do but only after having taken much longer than reading the mail in the first place – eight short communications instead of one slightly longer one.

I understand that I’m a lone voice howling into a force 15 gale. I know I’m just a grumpy old man who’s not in tune with modern day living. I know this inexorable nose-dive into the murky sea where simple data transfer replaces communication is “where it’s at”, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with it, like it or shut up about it. This is a topic close to my heart and I could easily start up an entirely new blog devoted purely to demonstrating my above points on a daily if not hourly basis but I don’t have the time for that. I do have time to read and write properly though and shall continue to do so no matter how much I feel I’m swimming against the tide!

I feel a little better having got that off my chest!

Perhaps we have been lulled into thinking that our writing is OK because we have spell-check on our word-processing programs. Or perhaps we just think that we make no mistakes. But we do make mistakes, and some are just awful.

Here’s a paragraph from a story posted on the WJLA website, today, about Virginia’s smoking ban:

For the first time, patrons will walk through the doors without smelling smoke for the first time in15 years at Ireland’s Four Courts in Arlington. Friday morning, work started before dawn.

How many mistakes can one short paragraph have? Apparently, WJLA does not believe in copyediting or editing of any sort. I have seen more mistakes on this one website than on any other major news website I visit. You know what it does? It makes me think that they don’t check ANY aspect of the stories they post. How can you trust what they say if they can’t even say it right?

Finally got the new laptop today. The old one, a Gateway I got in December of ‘04, was really showing its age in terms of speed and a weird, green vertical raster line that I KNEW was bad news. I did some research and got a good deal on an HP from OfficeMax.

And here’s the thing about OfficeMax: rather than THANK you for spending $700, they make you feel like CRAP for not spending $750 to get the warranty! “Hey, man…if you drop it on the way out to the car, or get hit by a truck, don’t think you can bring it back!”  Yeah, I’m sure that when I am pinned under a truck, my laptop would be my chief concern!

You suck, OfficeMax! Great price, though!

You’ve heard the buzz about how to market your business using social media, but what you might not know is that it can be a great resource for your company’s internal communications. Today I want to explore two social media tools that can boost your internal communications. Let me first mention that accessibility is key in the success of both of these tools. If you use these them, your time waiting for email or phone call back can be decreased, and you will be able to access the information you need anywhere at anytime. The first tool we will explore is blogs: Blogs can be used to keep your employees up to date on news, resources, projects, awards, employee of the month honors, and meetings to name but a few. It is easy to write up a short summary blog post so that all of your employees have access to the information in a localized medium. They also allow you to add comments on the posts of questions or suggestions that are visible to everyone as well. Blogs can keep an archive of important company updates and replace the steps of searching a number of old email threads to find information. They also allow you to quickly poll or solicit comments when wanted from employees. To get started on a blog check out these popular sites, http://wordpress.com/  and https://www.blogger.com/ .

The second tool we will explore is wikis: Wikis are great tools because they are collaborative Web sites. They work well for team projects, brainstorming and campaigns. If a team member has an idea or something to add to the wiki content they can easily log-in and edit it on the spot. Wikis can also be used for long-term projects too because you can continue to add information to the original document without having to worry about losing past work. Instead of email attachments with multiple changes you can automatically send out an email to staff and let them know that the wiki has been updated and to make sure they take a look at it. This way, everyone is on the same page for projects and they all have easy access to the information. To get started on a wiki check out http://www.wikidot.com/  and http://www.wetpaint.com/ . I hope that you now understand how wikis and blogs can help your communications by localizing information, encouraging others to share knowledge, and creating a project management system for your company. For more information check out http://www.nickfinck.com/presentations/bbs2005/index.html .

Don’t get caught in the trap of creating a video so that you and your colleagues can pat each other on the back and say ‘don’t we look good, aren’t we great’

Instead you should be thinking about your customers issues and needs that will be solved or improved by using your product or service. How can you help to make their lives easier or better. It sounds dramatic I know, but think about it – what is the end result of a customer coming to you instead of one of your competitors?

For me the answer is easy – now I’ve taken the time to talk to my customers and find out. Our clients say that they appreciate working with New Edge because of the added value that our expertise in video communication brings to a project. Have a look at these Video Testimonials from the home page of the New Edge website to see what our clients have to say:

People buy from people, and a set of video testimonials like this lets your clients do the selling for you. Viewers can tell that the video is genuine and not set up in any way. Contrast the natural style of this film to the ‘Daz’ washing powder adverts we all know and love to hate:

Do you really believe that the lady in the advert did not know Danny Baker was about to knock on the door?

Compare this style with the video testimonials and interview with the MD in the general overview film we recorded for Blue Chip. For most of you the key messages of this film are very specific to IBM server maintenance, but imagine that the film was your clients talking about your business. Here is another example from the optical sector for No.7 Contact Lenses.  Imagine that you own an independent optical practice – what would you feel about using No.7 as a supplier after watching this film?

My only criticism with both these companies is that they have decided to hide the videos on a back page of their website only accessible through the menu. I believe that these messages should be ‘shouted it from the rooftops’ in a prominent position on the homepage – they are a great introduction to the company, it’s ethos and it’s values.

This type of film suits the British approach to business perfectly. You get all the information you need to make an initial judgment about the company, which is qualified by significant personnel from well known brands speaking on the company’s behalf. In contrast here is a video demonstrating a typical approach from the US. Do you believe that the presenter is from the company? Is she an expert in financial services? Do you feel informed enough to make a judgment on working with the company?

If you are in any doubt she is clearly a busy lady – here she is again selling artificial turf…. And again as a retail expert

What do you think, am I right?

I’d appreciate your views

Matt Zellmer has an excellent post titled “Integrating Community Into Corporate Websites“, where he summarizes a comparison study that he ran regarding six high tech sites (Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, and SAP).

Some thoughts:

I agree that one size does not fit all, but whatever the corporate community/social media user experience/information architecture is, it should be somewhat cohesive & at a minimum, there should be some cross-pollination in place by making the all inclusive community bits findable & easy to navigate between each other & the main company site.

With regards to community sites outside of the main site (or company domain), another example of when this is OK is for open source communities. But there again, there should be some cross-pollination (at least links from the main site to the external open source site(s)).

Two additional principles I would suggest are:

1. A single set of guidelines/policy (including community moderation) for all community tools that are officially sanctioned/branded by the company. Again, open source communities that reside outside of the main site are an exception.
2. A single search engine. When people are seeking community contributions centered around a particular topic/product, they should be able to do this via a single search query.

And what about globalization, localization & internationalization? That’s one area that companies seem to have forgotten about in their over-all social media/community strategies.

Guide to Corporate/Nonprofit
Relationships

Relationships between nonprofit organizations and businesses are becoming increasingly varied and strategic as they shift from charitable relationships between benevolent donors and grateful recipients to alliances that create diverse benefits for both partners and added value for communities.

These partnerships, alliances, ventures, and collaborations can take numerous forms and each evolves under different circumstances and with different goals.

IEG has defined the range of collaborations between for profit companies and nonprofits under the following broad categories: advocacy, cause-related marketing, certification, co-branding, fundraising, licensing, philanthropy and promotional partnerships.

alsac_ieg_guide_to_sponsorships.pdf (application/pdf Object).

Social Impact: Survey Finds 88% of Nonprofits Experimenting with Social Media

88% percent of nonprofits are widely experimenting with social media, but only half (51%) are active users.  79% are uncertain of how to demonstrate social media’s value for their organizations. The survey also found that social media contributes to nonprofits’ success, with 92% of executives saying their online presence raises awareness of their organization, keeps external audiences engaged (86%) and reduces costs relative to traditional media (77%).

Social Impact Blog.

Question: What’s more cynical than deliberately writing a post about Facebook because it is guaranteed to draw hits?
Answer: Facebook itself.

I hope you’re sitting down when you read this (we pause as a million chairs drag across the scarred linoleum floor of our global consciousness) …but retarded Facebook apps like Farmtown and Mafia Wars are cynical cesspools of personal information-gathering disguised as “community”…and worse. This according to an article in The Consumerist, inscrutably titled “Mafia Wars CEO Brags about Scamming People from Day One.”

Long ago I wrote a cranky, Andy Rooney-esque piece called “Putting the Grr! in Facebook,” in which I grumbled about the various idiosyncrasies of hapless users. This post is consistently my top drawing piece – even surpassing my scholarly (!) review of the film Lars and the Real Girl (my top post among perverts searching for Artificial Partners, wink wink.)

Since that post, I have mellowed out a bit and hooked up with all kinds of friends from the past. But a constant beef has continued to be all of the stupid apps. Jenny has sent you a hug! What famous dead composer are you? And a bunch of others I can’t recall because I “HID” them long ago.

But the games are the worst. I got as far as Scrabulous, meaning, I signed up for Scrabulous, knowing that it was nothing more than a scam for gathering personal information, but hey, I like Scrabble. But the first time I saw on  Facebook’s News Feed: “Michael has spelled the word INCONTINENCE on Scrabulous! Can YOU do better? Sign up NOW!” …I pulled the plug.

Trust me, I “get” Facebook. If you know anything about Web 2.0, this practice should not be a surprise. While everyone whines about the ads, I say “that’s why it’s free.” But you read something like “Mafia Wars CEO Brags about Scamming People from Day One,” …and you are looking at the epitome* of corporate cynicism.

*Epitome: The embodiment or precise representation of an ideal. Pronounced “uh-PIT-oh-mee”…or “eppa-tohm” if you’re from West Virginia (like me.)

A short list of workplace terms and their unspoken definitions to help you get the inside track on demonstrating and leveraging your value add (or something like that).

BCC: See the shit I have to deal with??

Compliance – An entire department dedicated to monitoring the shredder.

Conflict of Interest – A policy that states “Hey Mr. CEO Guy, You know your brother, the Electrician, the guy you just hired to run the Marketing Department — that is a bit of a no-no.”

Conflict Management – Recommended training for people who have to deal with others and their chronically dumb fucking ideas.

Corporate “Culture” – Futbol + FREE BAGEL FRIDAY!

Delegate (v.)– “I don’t know who is going to do this shit, but it sure as hell isn’t me.”

Inappropriate Fraternization with A Subordinate — Woops. Somebody call PR.

A Real “Go Getter” – Someone who is desperate to move out of his parent’s basement.

Sexual Harassment – A policy re: keeping your thoughts about screwing the intern to yourself unless of course, you are 1) at the Christmas party and/or 2) just really need to say it.

Weekly Status Report – A very official looking document which states, “Remember what we said didn’t get done last week? Ditto.”

Written Up – Early warning sign that your ass is about to be watching day time TV. Permanently.

Photoshop presents a dude with some other dude's arm holding a picture he forgot to bring!

Well, we set out to honor America’s veterans, and to sell medical devices. I’m confident we did the honoring part. The selling? It’s too soon to say.

Despite a last minute freakout caused by someone watching an old rough cut and asking for changes that were made two weeks ago, the Veteran’s Day videos are up.

So HERE is the LINK. What you will see is a nice rah-rah about the Veteran’s Health Adminstration and its care mission, and how this healthcare manufacturer’s mission coincides. To drive home the point, the rah-rah is followed by interviews with employees of the manufacturer who also happen to be Veterans.

There are four videos at the bottom of the page. Sort of the donut effect, where the openers and closers are the same, with the interviews filling the donut hole. (mmmm….DONUTS!)

Anyway, check ‘em out (and I suggest you do it sooner than later – The client can be touchy about this sort of thing.) And Happy Veteran’s Day! That’s next Wednesday, commie!

Written by Thilde Vesterby

On some corporate websites you will find a little widget with a blue bird holding a sign saying ”Follow Me”. More and more companies create accounts on Twitter – and according to the following information; that’s a very good idea.

A new survey created by the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State shows that 20 percent of all tweets contain requests for product information or responses to these requests. 20 percent! With more than 20 million users and around six million active users a day, that’s a lot of tweets.

According to Professor, Jim Jensen, who conducted the survey “People are using tweets to express their reaction, both positive and negative, as they engage with these products and services. Tweets are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services.”

The survey found that many Twitter users use their tweets to connect with products. This not only gives companies a chance to eliminate damages when customers aren’t satisfied, it also gives companies a rich source of information concerning issues and questions that customers have regarding their products.

So companies; you have to realise that people are talking about your brand or product on Twitter and that by creating a Twitter account and listening to tweets you can interact with users and consumers, learn from them and provide them with the information they’re looking for. You will have to learn to listen and interact on the premises of the users, which will take some work and time. But when you do, you will be able to add a lot of value to your business.

RaganTV.com has an interesting interview posted with Paula Berg, media manager at Southwest Airlines. She explains how Southwest buys domain names that may be used by hostile consumers to denounce the company or it’s execs — these kinds of sites are also known as “gripe sites”. Per Paula, “[For] $10 or $15, what’s the harm? It can prevent some PR crisis down the line.”

My take is this can become a slippery & expensive slope. The best way to quiet an angry mob is to listen, then promptly & efficiently react — I’ve found that more often than not, they’re right. Having a company engage in the discussion on the gripe site might actually be perceived as more credible since the conversation is happening on community turf. At best, buying gripe site domains might make the conversation slightly less findable.

Thoughts?

What is better is to speak and write plainly, a lesson that is being forced on the U.S. Government according to the Federal Diary columnby Joe Davidson  in the Washington Post. To make that happen (I could have written: In order to facilitate the transition), there will be a symposium on plain language this afternoon at the National Press Club, held by the Center for Plain Language.

There is no doubt that the government (and many in the legal community) loves to make things complicated. The more obtuse, the better. The more wordy the better. Passive voice? They love it. Big words when smaller words would do, check.

But, more disturbing in my opinion (since I already expect government/legal communications to be convoluted), is that marketing folk are jumping on the complicated bandwagon.  This blog post, from the Branding Strategy Insider, claims that “Complex Language Weakens Brands.” As the post says:

A serious impediment to communications is this constant upgrading of the language. No aspect of life is left untouched by the upgrade police. Not only does a term have to be politically correct, it has to be as long and as complicated as possible.

A great example from the post is that UPS went from being in the parcel delivery business to being a logistics company. How many people on the street instinctively understand what logistics is???? Not many, my friends. The only people who understand logistics are in logistics.

In any case, if you want to be clear, speak and write plainly. Using big words when small ones would do does NOT make you look more intelligent (if anything, it makes you look less so). From the Center for Plain Language website:

A communication is in plain language if the people who are the audience for that communication can quickly and easily

• find what they need
• understand what they find
• act appropriately on that understanding

I think the bullet points above are the point of ANY communications.

And you thought plain vanilla was the boring choice.

I sat in the editor’s chair, off and on, for about 10 years. It would have taken me just about that long to come up with this: a music video comprised entirely of audio cues from Pulp Fiction. Enjoy!