SESSION 6 Crafting Messages for Electronic Media OBJECTIVES

SESSION 6 Crafting Messages for Electronic Media

OBJECTIVES : 1 Identify the major electronic media used for brief business messages and describe the nine compositional modes needed for electronic media. 2 Describe the use of social networks in business communication. 3 Explain how companies and business professionals can use information and media sharing websites. 4 Describe the evolving role of email in business communication and explain how to adapt the threestep writing process to email messages. 5 Describe the business benefits of instant messaging (IM), and identify guidelines for effective IM in the workplace. 6 Describe the use of blogging and microblogging in business communication, and briefly explain how to adapt the three-step process to blogging. 7 Explain how to adapt the three-step writing process for podcasts.

Electronic Media for Business Communication • The range of options for short business messages continues to grow with innovations in electronic and social media • Technological advances have changed reader behavior, forcing changes in the practice of business communication. • Media Choices for Brief Messages : Social networks, Information and media sharing sites, Emai. L, Instant messaging (IM), Text messaging, Blogging and microblogging, Podcasting

Compositional Modes for Electronic Media • • • Conversations. Comments and critiques. Orientations. Summaries. Reference materials. Narratives. Teasers. Status updates and announcements. Tutorials.

Social Networks • Public, general-purpose networks. Facebook is the largest such network, although Google+ is gaining membership rapidly and is attracting many companies and brands. • Public, specialized networks. Whereas Facebook and Google+ serve a wide variety of personal and professional needs, other networks focus on a particular function or a particular audience. The most widely known of these is Linked. In, with its emphasis on career- and sales-related networking. • Private networks. Some companies have built private social networks for internal use. For example, the defense contractor Lockheed Martin created its Unity network, complete with a variety of social media applications, to meet the expectations of younger employees accustomed to social media and to capture the expert knowledge of older employees nearing retirement

Business Communication Uses of Social Networks • Integrating company workforces. • Fostering collaboration. • Building communities. • Socializing brands and companies. • Understanding target markets. • Recruiting employees and business partners • Connecting with sales prospects. • Supporting customers. • Extending the organization.

Strategies for Business Communication on Social Networks • Choose the best compositional mode for each message, purpose, and network. • Offer valuable content to members of your online communities. • Join existing conversations. • Anchor your online presence in your hub. • Facilitate community building. • Restrict conventional promotional efforts to the right time and right place. • Maintain a consistent personality.

Information and Media Sharing Sites • User-Generated Content Sites : You. Tube, Flickr, Yelp, and other (UGC) sites • Media Curation Sites : is the process of collecting and presenting information on a particular topic in a way that makes it convenient for target readers. • Community Q&A sites : on which visitors answer questions posted by other visitors, are a contemporary twist on the early ethos of computer networking, which was people helping each other.

Business Communicators Innovating with Social Media Ø Companies in virtually every industry have been adopting social media and experimenting with new ways to connect with customers and other stakeholders. Ø From offering helpful tips on using products to helping customers meet each other, these companies show the enormous range of possibilities that new media bring to business communication.

Business Focus ØMOST OF EVERYONE IS FAMILIAR with Facebook these days, and thousands of companies are active on the world’s most popular social network. However, a number of social networks exist just for businesses and business professionals, including Linked. In, the largest of the business networks. Ø BIZNIK IS A SOCIAL NETWORK designed for use by entrepreneurs and small business people to aid them in connecting and collaborating with their peers and contemporaries, ” explains Biznik’s Andrew Lippert. A great example of these groups is The Marketing Crowd. “This Biznik group consists of professionals in the marketing profession who connect with one another and discuss issues relevant to their industry. The group is an online extension of their community, which facilitates their interaction and the development of real relationships supporting and benefiting from the group members’ professional careers and businesses. ”

CONSUMER FOCUS ØA NUMBER OF COMPANIES now host their own social networking sites, where product enthusiasts interact by sharing personal stories, offering advice, and commenting on products and company news—all briefmessage functions that replace more traditional media options. Ø For example, Specialized, a major bicycle manufacturer based in Morgan Hill, California, hosts the Specialized Riders Club (www. specializedriders. com), where customers can interact with each other and the professional riders the company sponsors. Ø Similarly, the Segway Social network connects owners of these unique personal vehicles, including helping teams organize for Segway polo matches and other events.

CONSUMER FOCUS ØMANY COMPANIES now encourage user-generated content as a way to engage their stakeholders and provide additional value through shared expertise. The online shoe and apparel retailer Zappos, for example, invites customers to create and upload videos that communicate their experi- ences with Zappos and its products. ØONE OF THE BEST WAYS to become a valued member of a network is to provide content that is useful to others in the network. The Quizzle personal finance blog offers a steady stream of articles and advice that help people manage their finances.

EMAIL • Email can seem a bit “old school” in comparison to social networks and other technologies, but it is still one of the more important business communication media. • Do your part to stem the flood of email by making sure you don’t send unnecessary messages or cc people who don’t really need to see particular messages. • Business email messages are more formal than the email messages you send to family and friends. • A poorly written subject line could lead to a message being deleted or ignored. • Attitudes about emoticons in business communication are changing; you’ll have to use your best judgment in every case. • Think twice before hitting Send. A simple mistake in your content or distribution cause major headaches

Planning Email Messages Øspend a moment or two on the message planning tasks: analyzing the situation, gathering necessary information for your readers, and organizing your message. Ø You’ll save time in the long run because you will craft a more effective message on the first attempt. Your readers will get the information they need and won’t have to generate follow-up messages asking for clarification or additional information.

Writing Email Messages • When you approach email writing on the job, recognize that business email is a more formal medium than you are probably accustomed to with email for personal communication. • For example, email messages and other electronic documents have the same legal weight as printed documents, and they are often used as evidence in lawsuits and criminal investigations. • The email subject line might seem like a small detail, but it is actually one of the most important parts of an email message because it helps recipients decide which messages to read and when to read them. • To capture your audience’s attention, make your subject lines informative and compelling. Go beyond simply describing or classifying your message; use the opportunity to build interest with keywords, quotations, directions, or questions.

Completing Email Messages ØParticularly for important messages, taking a few moments to revise and proofread might save you hours of headaches and damage control. Also, favor simplicity when it comes to producing your email messages. ØA clean, easily readable font, in black on a white back- ground, is sufficient for nearly all email messages. Take advantage of your email system’s ability to include an email signature, a small file that automatically includes such items as your full name, title, company, and contact information at the end of your messages. ØWhen you’re ready to distribute your message, pause to verify what you’re doing before you click Send. Make sure you’ve included everyone necessary—and no one else

• instant messaging (IM), in which users’ messages appear on each other’s screens instantly, is used extensively for internal and external communication. IM is avail- able in both stand-alone systems and as a function embedded in online meeting systems, collaboration systems, social networks, and other platforms • Text messaging has a number of applications in business as well, including marketing (alerting customers about new sale prices, for example), customer service (such as airline flight status, package tracking, and appointment reminders), security (for example, authenticating mobile banking transactions), crisis management (such as updating all employees working at a disaster scene), and process monitoring (alerting computer technicians to system failures, for example).

Blogs, • online journals that are easier to personalize and update than conventional websites, have become a major force in business communication • Good business blogs and microblogs pay close attention to several important elements: 1. Communicating with personal style and an authentic voice. 2. Delivering new information quickly. 3. Choosing topics of peak interest to audiences. 4. Encouraging audiences to join the conversation.

Adapting the Three-Step Process for Successful IM • Planning instant messages. Except for simple exchanges, take a moment to plan IM “conversations” in much the same way you would plan an important oral conversation. A few seconds of planning can help you deliver information in a coherent, complete way that minimizes the number of individual messages required. • Writing instant messages. As with email, the appropriate writing style for business IM is more formal than the style you may be accustomed to with personal IM or text mes- saging (see Figure 6. 6 on the next page). Your company might discourage the use of IM acronyms (such as FWIW for “for what it’s worth” or HTH for “hope that helps”), par- ticularly for IM with external audiences. • Completing instant messages. The only task in the completing stage is to send your message. Just quickly scan it before sending, to make sure you don’t have any missing or misspelled words and verify that your message is clear and complete.

• microblog is a variation on blogging in which messages are sharply restricted to specific character counts. Twitter (http: //twitter. com) is the best known of these systems, but many others exist. Some companies have private microblogging systems for internal use only; these systems are sometimes referred to as enterprise microblogging or internal micromessaging.

• Podcasting is the process of recording audio or video files and distributing them online via RSS subscriptions, in the same way that blog posts are automatically fed to subscribers. Podcasting combines the media richness of voice or visual communication with the convenience of portability. Audiences can listen or watch podcasts on a blog or website, or they can download them to phones or portable music players to consume on the go. Particularly with audio podcasts, the hands-off, eyes-off aspect makes them great for listening to while driving or exercising.

Exercise : 5 1. Describe the use of blogging and microblogging in business communication. 2. Describe the business benefitsof instant messaging (IM), and identify guidelines for effective IM in the workplace. 3. Identify the major electronic media used for brief business messages, and describe the nine compositional modes needed for electronic media.