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1:23 PM

Email Etiquette

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Here are 4 common email faux pas that are rude and disrespectful and won’t win you any points from the person you are emailing and trying to impress, such as a prospective new employer. 

We are use to the wild-west atmosphere of online communications, some of which is due to the limitations of the various forms of social media. For example, the 140-character limit of Twitter doesn’t allow for a proper salutation. 

Failing to address the person whom you are emailing. This is rude and obnoxious. It would be as if you just walked up to a person on the street and started talking to him without introducing yourself. If the subject of your email is short and perfunctory you still need to be polite. And while we are at it, don’t forget a proper closing. You would never end a phone call by simply hanging up. So sign off your emails with a proper closing. Even a simple “goodbye” or “thanks” will do.

Asking your addressee to overlook any typos or other mistakes in your text. This tells the person to whom you are writing that he or she is not important enough for you to take a few moments to proof the body of your mail. It also marks you as an unserious, superficial person. 

Being tone-deaf. Email communications, by their nature, are impersonal, which is why we sometimes opt for them as our form of communication. Nevertheless, we sometimes “personalize” them by editorializing with the tone that shows how we really feel. Sometimes, we don’t even realize that we have done that. It could be a scolding tone or a “I don’t give a damn” tone. Just be aware of the effect that your tone has on your message.

Failing to read an email in its entirety. The fact that we are communicating electronically vouches for the fact that we are busy. But there is no excuse for not reading completely an email to which we are responding. Doing so is rude and insulting to the person with whom you are communicating. 

For the substance of this post we thank Ragan’s PR Daily. https://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/20661.aspx??utm_source=salesforce&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Regan+PR+Daily+News++Final++J…


None of us is expected to be a perfect wordsmith. If William Shakespeare were writing for today’s demanding editors, Hamlet might be 5 pages. Just be aware that your emails may say more about you than you intended. Whether this extra messaging is good or bad is up to you.
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12:23 PM

Is it Time to Rid Ourselves Of the Blight of Social Media

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Is it time to abolish social media? So asked Jonathan Crossfield in a recent article in Chief Content Officer magazine circulated by the Content Marketing Institute.

Unfortunately for the abolitionists, Social Media has become part of the fabric of our postmodern existence. We could just as easily abolish nuclear weapons, vulgar music lyrics, or every middle schooler having a personal website.

As Crossfield explains, there is an inherent buzzword feel to the term “social media” which makes disagreement over the meaning of social media likely in the newsroom or marketing department. This should not be unexpected in a technology that has experienced such rapid adoption.

Another issue created by this rapid proliferation of social media is that we focus more on the channel, or the medium, rather than the message.

The traditional media will report that President Trump issued another statement on Twitter, and excoriate his use of language. but rarely do they bother to report the substance of the President’s message.

However, the President’s use of Twitter fits the purpose for which social media was intended. That is to allow users to communicate directly with others. In the President’s case this means directly reaching out to voters without the filter of often-hostile reporters and editors in between them. That is called disintermediation. That is the social aspect of social media. Please see www.ericschwartsman.com for a better understanding of the concept of disintermediation.

So who knows exactly what social media is? To try to answer that question, Crossfield turns to law makers who in their efforts to regulate the technology need to first define it. First up in this exercise in futility is the California legislature, which struggled to differentiate social media from other forms of digital communications.

The Golden State solons defined social media as “photographs, blogs, video blogs, podcasts, instant and text messages, email, online services or accounts, or Internet Web site profiles or locations”  As Crossfield points out personal photographs of the nature the Supreme Court wrestled with in trying to define pornography stored on a mobile phone would qualify as social media under this definition.

Crossfield has examined a variety of social media policies and finds them similarly lacking in the objectivity necessary for enforceable government policy. These include this attempt by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

“Social media also included all other emerging electronic/digital communication applications.”

That narrows it down.

I was recently reminded of the benefits of social media in my own small home town which was the location of a road rage shooting. Law enforcement agencies credited social media for providing several clues that helped break the case quickly and bring the shooter to justice. The police were able to use the social channels to reach out directly to anyone who had pertinent information about the crime. This was 1 of 3 violent crimes lawmen here were able to solve over the last couple of months by monitoring Twitter and Facebook
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