Saturday, September 12, 2015

Netiquette IQ - How To Charm WIth Email!




Kind regards? Or is it 'Best'? 

How to charm with email etiquette

We pinpoint the five most common email mistakes – and suggest how to avoid them

Rob Ashton
www.theguardian.com
Friday 11 September 201502.00 EDT
Last modified on Friday 11 September 201508.35 EDT

My email to the tech startup about the app I was using to manage my time hadn’t been a complaint – far from it. I’d actually written to tell them how pleased I was with their software. “I’m really impressed,” I’d said. “If you ever need a testimonial for your marketing, just say the word.”
Yet the response was as cold as it was perfunctory. They simply said they would bear that in mind. That was that.
It was a small thing but they turned a raving fan into someone who, if not exactly disgruntled, would think twice about recommending them to friends and colleagues. Subconsciously, my love for their product began to lose its lustre and when the time came round to renew my subscription, I didn’t.
Clumsy handling of positive feedback is perhaps the least obvious way to mess up an email to a customer – even though it risks losing you the people you most want to keep, those who will spread the word for you.
Email can often be an inefficient medium. And this is made worse by the fact that we write messages as if the recipient was privy to our thought processes – or at least the facial expressions they’d see if we were speaking to them in person.
But there is a lot you can do to keep the convenience of email while minimizing the risks. Here is my list of the five most common email mistakes businesses make – and how you can avoid them:
1 Fail to match the customer’s tone
As my example shows, failing to respond in kind jars. If someone is informal and friendly in their email, reply in the same tone. After all, if a customer greets you in person with a friendly smile, you reciprocate. Likewise, if they adopt a more formal approach, match it.
2 Leave out the salutation
Call me sensitive, but I always feel a little knocked back if I address someone with a “Hi [name]” or “Dear …”, only to get a reply starting simply with “Rob”. Email is a hybrid of the memo and the phone call. As such, we’re still not quite sure what conventions to adopt, but politeness should be a given. Similarly, it’s safest to address customers the way they address you.
How you sign off is equally important , so don’t be in too much of a hurry to add your name and press send. Again, match the customer’s tone and level of formality. “Kind regards” or “Best regards” are both good. But if they’ve written “cheers”, so can you. If you’re writing the first email and you’ve never spoken to the customer before, start off fairly formally – you can always adopt a chattier tone later if they do.
I must admit, I’m puzzled by the rise of signing off with just “Best”. Best what? It makes me wonder what the recipient does with the time they save by leaving their sign-off half finished.
3 Write like a robot
Remember, email is just another way to communicate with a fellow human being. You still need to strive for some kind of connection. Writing an email is a lot more than getting something off your to-do list. It’s a human connection to someone spending their money with you.
4 Write them a novel
Emails that run to three screens seldom get the response the writer wants. At best, they confuse matters; at worst, they’re ignored. Keep to one screen if you can.
In fact, email is not always the best way to communicate complex issues. Next time you find yourself agonising over a message for half an hour, try picking up the phone.
5 Reply in haste (especially if you’re angry)
We’ve all had them: snot-o-grams that a customer appears to have bashed out with their fists. Yet one advantage email has over other forms of communication is that it allows you time to think before responding.
The disadvantages are that it’s permanent and easy to share, so responding in kind to an angry email will seldom end well. It could be all over social media in minutes. Yet it can still be tempting – especially as smartphones allow us to receive such messages at what could be a bad time. Resist the temptation and flag the message, close your email or laptop and do something else. Better a slow reply than a quick one that you instantly regret sending.
Given the list of ways to get it wrong, you could be forgiven for thinking that sending customer emails is a minefield. It can be. Many people get it wrong, but by following this advice, you can at least make sure that you’re not one.
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For a great email parody, view the following link:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTgYHHKs0Zw&__scoop_post=bcaa0440-2548-11e5-c1bd-90b11c3d2b20&__scoop_topic=2455618



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Special Bulletin - My just released book, "You're Hired. Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes! (And Get That Job...) is now on sales at Amazon.com

================================================
**Important note** - contact our company for very powerful solutions for IP management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions:

www.tabularosa.net

In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” will be published soon follow by a trilogy of books on Netiquette for young people. You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  Additionally, I provide content for an online newsletter via paper.li. I have also established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. Further, I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and have been a contributor to numerous blogs and publications. 

Lastly, I am the founder and president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a company that provides “best of breed” products for network, security and system management and services. Tabula Rosa has a new blog and Twitter site which offers great IT product information for virtually anyone.
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Netiquette IQ Technical Term Of The Day - Madware



Madware
Madware is a type of aggressive advertising that affects smartphones and tablets. The name, which combines the words mobile and adware, was coined by the security vendor Symantec to describe a type of intrusive advertising that currently affects smartphones and tablets.
Typically, madware gets installed on a device when an end user agrees to allow ads in exchange for a free mobile app. Some madware can function like spyware by monitoring end user behavior and making undesirable changes to the device such as flooding the device with text message ads, replacing the phone's dial tone with an audio ad and deliberately hiding from ad detectors. Madware banners often takes up valuable screen real estate, causing the end user to accidentally click on the ad while navigating the website that is displaying the advertisement.
Madware can best be avoided by taking time to read each new app's end user agreement before checking "I accept" and being extra cautious when installing apps that request access to the local system. End users should also close mobile apps when not in use, disable pop-up and extensions in mobile device browser settings and install mobile anti-malware software.
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For a great email parody, view the following link:
=======================================================
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTgYHHKs0Zw&__scoop_post=bcaa0440-2548-11e5-c1bd-90b11c3d2b20&__scoop_topic=2455618



==============================================

Special Bulletin - My just released book, "You're Hired. Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes! (And Get That Job...) is now on sales at Amazon.com

================================================
**Important note** - contact our company for very powerful solutions for IP management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions:

www.tabularosa.net

In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” will be published soon follow by a trilogy of books on Netiquette for young people. You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  Additionally, I provide content for an online newsletter via paper.li. I have also established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. Further, I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and have been a contributor to numerous blogs and publications. 

Lastly, I am the founder and president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a company that provides “best of breed” products for network, security and system management and services. Tabula Rosa has a new blog and Twitter site which offers great IT product information for virtually anyone.
==============================================

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Netiquette IQ - The Scientific Reason Why Bullets Are Bad for Presentations - A Must Read!


When I came across this article, I was almost stunned. I have been using bullet points most of my adult life for any type of document, including email. Although, thie article below does not convince me completely, I will forever think about using bullets.You the reader can decide for yourselves.
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The Scientific Reason Why Bullets Are Bad for Presentations
By Leslie Belknap on August 31, 2015  blog.slideshare.net
You’ve probably heard this advice before: Don’t use bullet points in your presentations. But do you know why presentation design experts are so adamantly opposed to the bullet point format?
Here’s the simple, but perhaps surprising, explanation to why bullet points are bad for presentations: Bullet points make information more difficult to remember, especially when the bullet point lists are accompanied with auditory information. This is not a conjecture; it is backed by credible research.
The Value of Visualizations
In 2014, the International Journal of Business Communication published the results from The Use of Visualization in the Communication of Business Strategies, a study designed to gather empirical evidence regarding whether the use of visualization is superior to text in the communication of business strategies. The results of that experiment confirmed that lists of text are ineffective for presentations. Slides with visuals are undeniably more effective than slides with text.
Specifically, the study concluded:
Subjects who were exposed to a graphic representation of the strategy paid significantly more attention to, agreed more with, and better recalled the strategy than did subjects who saw a (textually identical) bulleted list version.
In other words, when your slides are comprised of lists of text, your audience will struggle to pay attention to your slides, they will find it difficult to agree with your message, and they will retain a less-than-ideal amount of the information.
The Limits of Working Memory
Digging deeper into the reason bullet points are bad, Dr. Chris Atherton, an award-winning lecturer in psychology and a user experience consultant for organizations such as Skype and the BBC, discovered that the limits of working memory are to blame for the failure of bullet points.
In this 2011 speech, Dr. Atherton details the results of her research:
At the beginning of her lesson, Dr. Atherton explains that when you accompany a lecture with bullet point slides, your audience will switch between reading and listening. This type of task switching is cognitively exhausting.
When presenters minimize the cognitive exertion required to absorb the information by avoiding long lists of text on their slides, audience members are able to use their remaining cognitive capabilities to actually process the information being presented. By actively processing the information instead of attempting to simultaneously read the slides as well as listen to the presenter, audience members are more likely to retain the meaning of the presentation.
=======================================================
For a great email parody, view the following link:
=======================================================
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTgYHHKs0Zw&__scoop_post=bcaa0440-2548-11e5-c1bd-90b11c3d2b20&__scoop_topic=2455618



==============================================

Special Bulletin - My just released book, "You're Hired. Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes! (And Get That Job...) is now on sales at Amazon.com

================================================
**Important note** - contact our company for very powerful solutions for IP management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions:

www.tabularosa.net

In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” will be published soon follow by a trilogy of books on Netiquette for young people. You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  Additionally, I provide content for an online newsletter via paper.li. I have also established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. Further, I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and have been a contributor to numerous blogs and publications. 

Lastly, I am the founder and president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a company that provides “best of breed” products for network, security and system management and services. Tabula Rosa has a new blog and Twitter site which offers great IT product information for virtually anyone.
==============================================