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Smart Email and Social Networking over Christmas

Here is a summary of the key points from Friday 10 December with Geoff Carter on The Bay 102.8 FM

1.  E-cards

A great way to give to charity and be green.  Some good sites for e-cards are:

• Jacquie Lawson  – it costs and well worth it.

Free – but make sure you are not inundated with advertisements etc.

• 123 Greetings
• Blue Mountain

Remember to send not just to friends, family and all business contacts but also all those you meet networking.

2.  Donate to charity instead of buying presents

For example, with WaterAid, £12 buys two water taps and £50 buys a water pump.  See http://shop.wateraid.org/.

For other charities see www.presentaid.org/

3.  Dealing with you email over the holiday

Top three tips to reduce the email stress.

• Try not too log on to often.  Last year 45% of people we polled logged in on Christmas day.  See Email Addiction – who logged in.
• Avoid being a sitting target for the cyber criminal. Keep your Out of Office message safe and simple.  Don’t give away any sensitive/confidential information. Don’t say you are on holiday. Just say you are ‘not accessing your email regularly’.
• Set aside time before and after the break to clear the backlog of emails.

For more tips like these see my latest book ‘Brilliant Email’

4. Keep safe and private on social networking sites Don’t boast about what Santa gave you as that encourages cyber crime. Try to make sure you avoid appearing in those silly party photos on Facebook etc. Make sure you are not tagged in other people’s photos. Check your Facebook Privacy Settings carefully and select who you want to give access to for your photos. With children make sure they are properly protected from prying eyes and not on social networks for too long. There is life outside the world of computer games and social networking.

For tips like these sign up for the free Mesmo Consultancy monthly e-briefing.

Tags: email best practice

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Email etiquette tips for writing subject lines

The volume of email traffic is steadily growing despite those who think email is in decline.  Many people now receive between 60 to 100 emails per day.  How can you ensure that the recipient sees and deals with your email? Good email etiquette is the key.

Here is what constitutes poor email etiquette and will ensure your email sinks to the bottom of the other person’s inbox!

1. Adding a priority marker.  For most people that red exclamation mark is often a big turn off: it smacks of pulling rank.
2. No subject line
3. Using the same subject line even though the content has changed
4. A subject lines that doesn’t match the content.

Excellent email etiquette in the form of a clear concise and meaningful subject line is the best way.  Here are a couple of examples from my book ‘Brilliant Email‘ .

Writing compelling subject lines has always been critical.   Points to note about these two examples are:

• The action required by the recipient.
• By when the action is needed.
• Exactly what the email is about.

Think of the subject line as the newspaper headlines.  What your say in subject line will either draw in the recipient or cause them to skip on to the next email.

Email best practice for subject lines includes trying to say it in the subject line.  For example, ‘Meeting moved to Room 101 – EOM’.  EOM means End of Message.  That saves everyone time. The recipient doesn’t need to open the email and you do not need to spend time deploying good email etiquette to write the body of the email.  Tesco recently had just such an email best practice campaign to help their employees save time.

This weeks tips and hints will focus on writing brilliant eye catching email subject lines.

Need some more help?  You can always either come on one of our Brilliant Email Master Classes or buy the book.

Meanwhile I’d love to hear from you what annoys you about how people write their subject lines and what tips can you offer to help them.

Tags: email best practice, email etiquette, email subject line

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Changing email behaviour – seven step change process

Managing change follows the same seven step process show below no matter what you try to change – from the simple, moving desks to the more complesx, changing email behavior.

Tags: email best practice, email management, email overload, email stress

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Too much email and short attention spans lead to email overload

Little wonder we  suffer from chronic email overload when you consider how much email is flying around and how short is out attention spam.  This blog was prompted by those of two esteemed colleagues (Michael Osterman and Marsha Egan) and our recent survey on expectations of  fast response.
Just how much email traffic is flowing around?  Here is some recent data from a mixture of resources including our own data and that of Radicati’s new email survey.

• Average number received = 110 email per day. (Recently one client reported receiving 200 per day.)
• Percentage unwanted = 18% includes real spam and what I call noise, (unnecessary internal and external emails eg newsletters and ‘thank you emails).
• Average number sent each day = 36 emails per day.
• The average business person spend at least two hours a day dealing with email.
• We add about 15 minutes to the time taken to complete a task every time we are distracted by a new email.
• 36% of Americans use their laptop in bed before they go to sleep, and this group reports that it is less likely to get a good night’s sleep.
• Individuals who experience even mild sleep disorders are four times more likely to have relationship problems, three times more likely to lack concentration during their work day, three times more likely to struggle to accomplish tasks at work or during their day, and over twice as likely to suffer from energy deficiency.
• Watching too much TV is shortening our attention spam and leading our children to believe that problems can be solved in under one hour.
• Our own recent survey on email response times shows that a quarter of us expect a response to an email within one hour.

Little wonder many feel chained to their inbox. They must check and answer each email as it arrives rather than wait and take a more measured less stressful approach.

We can easily change our own email behaviour.  Changing that of others is harder.  Last week’s tips focused on changing the organisations email culture.  More again this week in the light of these figures.

Do you feel overload and stressed by the volume of email and unrealistic expectations about how quickly you will respond?  How to you counter balance this ever faster pace of life and short attention spans?

Tags: email best practice, email management, email overload

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Email etiquette and overload – careless emails are expensive

Email overload and poor email etiquette often lead us to send emails in haste wich can have dire consequences.  Careless emails often costs businesess (and the sender) thousands of pounds in lost business and jobs as Jonathan Moules poined out in last week’s Weekend FT.  He cited the case of an employee who accidentally copied in a client on an email which permanently damaged the relationship.

As always such cases are never clear cut and much depends on whether or not you can prove that the employee has read, understood and is contractually bound by your Computer Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP) and your disaplinary processes.

Forwarding emails which wreak havoc are one of the most common mistakes we see when talking to clients.  Email overload is often to blame as we reply in haste without thinking through and reviewing the content  properly.

This week’s tips focus on some ways to try to reduce the risk of this costly mistake happening either in your business or to you as the employee.  There are two clear over riding principles to follow.

1. As employer check your AUP to make sure it’s up-to-date and that you have adequate legal evidence that employee’s have contracted into it.  To assess the vulnerability of your AUP use our our checklist which cn be downloaded free at the Mesmo Consultancy Knowledge Exchange.
2. As employee, think before hitting send.  Review your email carefully.  If it’s a chain check for previous entries which should be deleted before sending/forwarding the email.

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