Business Blogs: Trends, tips, and real-life anecdotes from industry experts.

Previous: Character matters more than skills when hiring good employees

Small business advice for communicating in the 21st Century

Written by: Joan Isabella March 22nd, 2006
          0 votes

I’m all for employing technology to make our jobs easier. But someone needs to create some ground rules. I’ll start and please feel free to add your pet peeves (that’s for you Kim) about how all small business startups and their friends and families should communicate in the 21st Century.

I got this idea because I have friends that receive a text message from their boss every week reminding them to turn in a weekly report. I don’t have a problem with that, except he uses some service that sends the message at 1 in the morning—waking up their spouses and generally making everyone think he’s a jerk. He also sends a mass text message every Friday at 5 saying “have a great weekend”. Since the message arrives every Friday at exactly 5, it doesn’t exactly come across as sincere. I’m sure he thinks he is communicating effectively, but I am pretty sure the message his employees are getting is not the one he’s sending.

So here are my first two rules. I can’t wait to read yours.

1: Do not forward a forward of a forward, ever. CUT AND PASTE, PEOPLE, CUT AND PASTE!!

2: Mass text messages should only be sent if the information is useful (or extremely amusing)and they should not be sent after 8pm unless it is an emergency.

Posted in Getting Organized
Next: Cool Company of the day: The Evening Hatch

Comments

  1. Matt S.     Says:
    March 22nd, 2006 at 3:26 pm

    My communication pet peeve is the James Joyce stream-of-consciousness e-mail.

    It’s usually like a dang coded message or something.

    Something like this:

    working on reports. have this? paper in season by relevance. GRAPHICS. Need this for in house quality decision making truth in box, in mission statement next to corportat logo of blue i.

    I mean, I’m not asking for complete sentences and proper punctuation, but throw me a bone here.

  2. Kim     Says:
    March 22nd, 2006 at 4:07 pm

    Oh Joan, don’t get me started: I can’t send out mass e-mails, as I am a stationery company who is trying to establish a brand based on personalized correspondence. lol.

    All messages, snail or electronic or intergalactic, should be PERSONALIZED and relevant to the recipient in some way.

    And let’s not forget about the phone: I get a lot of junk-mail via phone or fax…mostly about new curtains and stock picks, dunno.

    I receive dating service messages: I’m married. Diet messages: never been on a diet in my life. Messages to sell my property: Property is not listed.

    So that’s my pet peeve, irrelevant messages.