Transcript Chap. 7

Email and Social
Media
for Business
Communication
Chapter Seven
McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Copyright © 2014 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Learning Objectives
LO7.1 Apply principles for writing effective emails.
LO7.2 Explain how to handle emotion effectively in
online communications.
LO7.3 Describe strategies for managing digital message
overload.
LO7.4 Explain characteristics of the emerging Social Age.
LO7.5 Apply principles of effective social media use in
professional settings.
LO7.6 Build a credible online reputation.
LO7.7 Describe the ethical use of social media for work.
7-2
Most Effective Communication
Channels for Coordinating Work
Table 7.1
7-3
Creating Effective Emails
Email communication is the primary form of
written business communication.
Most analysts expect it to be the primary tool
for at least the next five to ten years in most
companies
7-4
Principles of Effective Emails
Use for the right purposes.
Ensure ease of reading.
Show respect for time.
Protect privacy and
confidentiality.
7-5
Principles of Effective Emails
Respond promptly.
Maintain professionalism and
appropriate formality.
Manage emotion effectively.
Avoid distractions.
7-6
Use Email for the Right Purposes
Email communication has few constraints
(low cost, little coordination) and high control
(the writer can think them out carefully, and
they provide a permanent record)
It is rarely appropriate for sensitive or
emotional communication tasks. It is also
inefficient for facilitating discussions
7-7
Ensure Ease of Reading
Provide a Short, Descriptive Subject Line
Keep Your Message Brief Yet Complete
Clearly Identify Expected Actions
Provide a Descriptive Signature Block
Use Attachments Wisely
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Less-Effective Email
7-9
More-Effective Email
Figure 7.2
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Show Respect for Others’ Time
 Select Message Recipients Carefully
 Provide Timelines and Options
 Be Careful about Using the Priority Flag
 Let Others Know When You Will Take Longer
than Anticipated to Respond or Take Action
 Avoid Contributing to Confusing and Repetitive
Email Chains
7-11
Appropriate Response Time
to Emails
Figure 7.3
7-12
Maintain Professionalism and
Appropriate Formality
Avoid Indications That You View Email as
Casual Communication
Apply the Same Standards of Spelling,
Punctuation, and Formatting You Would for
Other Written Documents
Use Greetings and Names
7-13
Manage Emotion and
Maintain Civility
Neutrality effect
 recipients are more likely to perceive messages
with an intended positive emotion as neutral
Negativity effect
 recipients are more likely to perceive messages
that are intended as neutral as negative
7-14
Manage Emotion and
Maintain Civility
Flames
 emails or other digital communications with
“hostile intentions characterized by words of
profanity, obscenity, and insults that inflict harm
to a person or an organization.”
Cyber silence
 nonresponse to emails and other
communications.
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Manage Emotion and
Maintain Civility
 Cyber incivility
 violation of respect
and consideration in
an online
environment based
on workplace norms
 Active, passive
7-16
Manage Emotion and
Maintain Civility
Reinterpretation
 involves adjusting your initial perceptions by
making more objective, more fact-based, and less
personal judgments and evaluations
Relaxation
 involves releasing and overcoming anger and
frustration so that you can make a more rational
and less emotional response.
7-17
Less-Effective Response to an
Angry Email
Figure 7.6
7-18
Manage Emotion and
Maintain Civility
 Defusing
 involves avoiding
escalation and
removing tension to
focus on work
objectives.
7-19
More-Effective Response to Defuse
an Angry Email
Figure 7.7
7-20
Guidelines to Staying Responsive
to Others
1.Check digital messages just two to four times each
day at designated times
2.Turn off message alerts
3.Use rich channels such as face-to-face and phone
conversations to accomplish a task completely
4.Avoid unnecessarily lengthening an email chain
5.Use automatic messages to help people know when
you’re unavailable
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The Evolving Workplace
Figure 7.8
7-22
Communicating in the Workplace
in the Social Age
 Social Age
 an era in which
people engage in
networked
communication,
collaborate across
boundaries, and
solve problems
communally.
7-23
Characteristics of the Social Age
Web 1.0
 most Web pages were read-only and static
Web 2.0
 read-write Web, where users interact extensively
with Web pages—authoring content, expressing
opinions, and customizing and editing Web
content among other things
7-24
Comparisons Between
User 1.0 and User 2.0
Table 7.2
7-25
Characteristics of the Social Age
Increasingly, companies are adopting social
networking platforms that contain Web 2.0
communication tools
These platforms contain many of the features
available on social networking websites: user
profiles, microblogs, blogs, wikis, and file
uploading.
7-26
Benefits and Challenges of Social
Media in the Workplace
Table 7.3
7-27
Internal Communication Tools for
the Social Age
Organize Your Dashboard to Control Your
Communication and Information Flow
Create a Complete and Professional Profile
Use Blogs for Team Communication
Use Wikis for Team Communication
Other Social Media Tools
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Sample Dashboard with
Enterprise Social Software
Figure 7.9
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Use Blogs for Team Communication
Microblogs (such as Twitter)
 shorter blogs that contain just a few sentences,
are part of most enterprise social networking
platforms
 tools for broadcasting announcements and
urgent information
Team blogs, project blogs
7-30
Sample Team Blog
Figure 7.10
7-31
Use Wikis for Team
Communication
Wikis
 collections of pages that anyone with approved
access can edit, thus lending themselves to
collaborative writing.
 allow employees to collaborate and participate in
decision making more easily, creatively, and
effectively
 create a culture of transparency, simplicity, and
openness
7-32
Sample Wiki in Edit Mode
Figure 7.11
7-33
Guidelines for Using Social Media
in the Workplace
 Be an Active Contributor and Participate Often
 Listen and Learn
 Focus on Content
 Make Your Content Accessible
 Make Your Messages Authentic and Friendly
 Be Responsive and Help Others
 Respect Boundaries
7-34
Manage Your Online Reputation
 Personal brand
 A unique set of
professional skills and
attributes that others
associate with you
7-35
Developing a Credible
Online Reputation
Table 7.5
7-36
Less-Effective Personal Social
Networking Profile
7-37
More-Effective Personal
Social Networking Profile
7-38
Use Social Media Ethically
 Much more than your online reputation is at
stake with social media use; the reputation and
performance of your company is at stake as well
 The line between what you believe is private use
of social media and your role as an employee
can be murky, since your private actions can
damage your employer and hurt your career.
7-39
Coca-Cola’s Social Media
Guidelines
1.
Adhere to the Code of Business Conduct and other
applicable policies.
2.
3.
4.
You are responsible for your actions.
5.
Be conscious when mixing your business and
personal lives.
Be a “scout” for compliments and criticism.
Let the subject matter experts respond to negative
posts.
7-40