Ringing in the New Year with an Eye-Opening Prediction

Happy New Year! From everyone on the Bovée-Thill team, we wish you a successful new term.

Looking at what lies ahead for business communication, this recent article in Workforce Magazine certainly caught our attention. The consulting firm MBO Partners predicts that over half the U.S. workforce will be independent by 2020. Reaching that threshold would require an increase from 16 million independent workers today to 70 million in just eight years, but even if the eventual growth falls short of that forecast, the rapid increase in unattached professionals is dramatically reshaping the nature of business—and business communication.

The sheer number is not the only important change going on here, either. In past years, corporate refugees made up an important share of the independent workforce. We know from our own experience that these people often benefited from the mentoring, formal training, "safe" learning opportunities, and professional networking that corporate structures can provide. When they went solo, they took these skills and connections with them.

However, with the spread of virtual organizations, the increase in freelance project work, and the weak employment market, we suspect that many workers will take—or be forced to take—the independent route without the broad skill sets that former corporate employees have.

Not only will more workers be operating outside a formal organization structure, in other words, but a significant number are likely to be fending for themselves without the benefit of much organizational communication experience at all.

Depending on how this scenario plays out in the coming years, the implications for business communication education could be profound. As freelance work has gone mainstream, from a relative rarity to an accepted career path to the very model on which some companies operate, the assumption that business communication takes place largely within a defined organizational context is becoming less and  less valid.

Moreover, in this new world of work, business communication skills will become even more important than they are now. On the one hand, less-skilled communicators without the support of an organization to carry them along face a rough future as independents. Even experienced corporate pros can be shocked at the demands that suddenly being one's own salesforce puts on their persuasion and negotiation skills. Many freelancers are in nearly constant job-search mode, always scrambling for the next project and the next client.

On the other hand, skilled communicators can use their talents to land the most interesting and profitable projects and to build sustaining client relationships that ease the pressure of constantly needing to sell, sell, sell.

We've addressed virtual work and networked organizations in our textbooks for some time now, and we'll continue to adapt our coverage and content as the business landscape changes. In the meantime, we invite you to share your thoughts on how this seismic shift could change the practice and study of business communication.

One this is certain: The communication skills you are helping your students develop now are going to mean the difference between struggle, survival, and success in the future.

 

Please Don’t Buy This: Patagonia’s Un-Marketing on Cyber Monday

From Black Friday to Small Business Saturday to Cyber Monday, business communication over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend is all about buy, buy, buy.

In this hypersaturated message environment, this email missive from the outdoor-clothing supplier Patagonia on Cyber Monday definitely stood out, starting with the large headline "Don't Buy This Jacket" and a large photo of one of its signature fleece jackets.

Rather than promoting the jacket as a must-get gift for holiday shoppers, Patagonia used the email to talk about the environmental impact of its products and to encourage readers to take the Common Threads Initiative pledge: reduce, repair, reuse, recycle, and reimagine.

Here's how the company explained its unusual message:

Because Patagonia wants to be in business for a good long time – and leave a world inhabitable for our kids – we want to do the opposite of every other business today. We ask you to buy less and to reflect before you spend a dime on this jacket or anything else.

The message wasn't entirely un-promotional. It did point out that the high durability of the jacket meant that wearers wouldn't need to replace it for a long time. However, this was done within the context of the "reduce" message, and it clearly stands in opposition to the planned obsolescence that drives so many product categories today—how many weeks until the next generation of smartphones replaces the perfectly functional current generation?

Was Patagonia's message a cynical ploy to gain favor with its environmentally conscious target consumer? One might jump to that conclusion, but we've been following the company for a long time and respect its managerial ethos. While the message clearly resonates with the target audience, we believe it definitely fits the criteria of ethical communication, regardless of one's personal stance on sustainable commerce: It includes the information readers need in order to make an informed response, it is true in both word and spirit, and it is not deceptive in any way. 

This is a great example of communication ethics to discuss with your students, as well as an intriguing case study in promotional communication. For example, can a company benefit in the long run by discouraging customers to buy less in the short run?

Please let us know what you and your students think about this unusual message.

The Challenge of Nuanced Messages in Lean, Text-Only Media :(

You know that feeling when the words don't quite capture the spirit of your intended message, but words are all you have?

Let's say your project team has just been reprimanded by the boss for missing an interim deadline. You're confident that the team will meet its final deadline, so you're ready to brush off the criticism and get back to work. Your colleagues, however, left the meeting grumbling about being criticized in public, and you fear that morale will slip.

You could craft a restorative, inspirational message to soothe the bruised egos and get the team's energy turned around in a positive direction. However, writing such a message could be risky, because world-weary teammates might just brush it off as happytalk and resent you for trying to be a cheerleader. Moreover, to minimize the chances of a negative reaction, you'll have to spend a lot of time trying to get the words just right.

Alternatively, you could also suggest that your colleagues lighten up and stay focused on the ultimate goal of the project. However, you already know that telling grumpy people to cheer up is a sure-fire way to make most of them even grumpier.

Instead, you opt for a quick bit of gentle and jovial sarcasm, designed to help release the negative emotions in a collegial way. When you get back to your desk, you write the following one-line message via IM or email:

Well, let's pick up the pieces of our shattered lives and move on ;)

The over-the-top phrasing is a subtle way to remind everyone that the criticism wasn't all that traumatic, the use of "our" reminds your colleagues that you're all in this together, and that winking emoticon tells everyone to lighten up without actually saying so. The apparent sarcasm connects with people who are marinating in their negative emotions, but it's really a pep talk disguised as sarcasm. With apologies to Julie Andrews, you're feeding them a spoonful of medicine to help the sugar go down.

But wait: you remember reading somewhere that emoticons are "unprofessional," so you replace it with a simple period:

Well, let's pick up the pieces of our shattered lives and move on.

Oops. That one minor change to make the message more professional turned it into a statement of resigned sadness. If you were delivering the message in person, you could use a real smile to replace the emoticon. Even over the phone you could use a brief chuckle. But with IM or email, all you have are soulless squiggles on the screen.

You search your keyboard for any acceptable symbol that might help:

Well, let's pick up the pieces of our shattered lives and move on!

Great, now you've managed to sound bitter and demanding at the same time.

Under these circumstances, are emoticons really all that bad? And given the trend we're seeing in many industries toward a less "corporate" voice in business communication (spurred in large part by social media), is it only a matter of time before a few basic symbols enter the mainstream for all but the most formal messages?

When you think about it, is 😉 all that different from !  ? They are both symbols designed to give words a particular emotional shape. In fact, the exclamation point would probably welcome the help. As the only emphasis character at a writer's disposal, the exclamation point is asked to do too much and is often overused as a result.

What position do you take with your students regarding emoticons in their writing for the business communication course? Is it time to introduce judicious use of a few subtle and simple emoticons, at least for internal communication? (Just to be clear, we're talking here about using text emoticons only, not graphical smiley faces, those collections of yellow cartoon characters available in many IM and blogging systems.)

Let us know what you think 🙂

 

Photo credit: VersatImage

The Crowd Is Watching: Social Media and the Shrinking Margin for Error

ProtestJudging from the vociferous comments in the social media atmosphere, one might think that Netflix's decision to split itself in two or Bank of America's introduction of a debit card fee were some of the worst horrors ever visited upon the human race. BofA isn't likely to reverse its decision, even if thousands of people really do drop their banks for a credit union on Bank Transfer Day. However, the online uproar certainly prompted Netflix to first apologize for not doing a better job of explaining its decision—and then to reverse the decision entirely. [Update 11-1-11: In response to an overwhelming number of complaints, BofA just announced it is scrapping plans to introduce the debit card fee. The crowd has spoken!]

When we began covering social media in our textbooks some years ago, it was soon apparent that these new tools were much more than tools: They were disruptive technologies that were going to fundamentally alter the relationships between companies and their stakeholders. Sure enough, consumers have more power to influence business than ever before, and they aren't always yielding that power with a gentle touch and a kind word.

In addition to aggregating consumer voices, social media can amplify consumer moods and emotions. Unpopular decisions that might have once caused little more than isolated, ineffectual grumbling can now spark organized protests that tarnish brands, deplete goodwill, and even cause changes in corporate strategy.

The message to companies: You better get it right, you better get it right the first time, and you better explain yourself before, during, and after every change you make. Effective communication has never been as important as it is in this volatile new world of business. And even if you're doing something that makes strategic or financial sense, prepare yourself for a negative response.

Photo credit: tomboy from morguefile.com

Teaching Students to Keep Their Cool After a Public Insult

Consumer-review websites such as Yelp can be a boon or a bane to local businesses. They can help businesses with little or no advertising budget get exposure through positive word-of-mouth, but they can damage businesses when unhappy customers use the Internet to vent their frustrations.

When a bad review is justified, it can alert potential customers to consider other options and help the company improve its operations. However, an unfair negative review helps nobody. It can divert potential customers away from company that might well meet their needs, and it can inflict temporary or even lasting damage on a company that doesn't deserve it.

Unfair negative reviews can come in a variety of flavors, such as when consumers are at least partially at fault (e.g., ignoring product descriptions on an e-commerce site, ordering a product that clearly doesn't meet their needs, and then criticizing it), when a minor glitch in service is blown out of proportion, or when individuals use review websites as their personal creative-writing platforms and are more interested in being funny or snarky rather than honest and helpful.

Fortunately for unfairly maligned business owners, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and other sites give them the chance to respond. However, these scenarios do present one of the more difficult writing challenges a business owner is likely to face. Unlike an apology for poor service, for example, where the owner can express regret in a straightforward manner and perhaps offer some form of compensation, the unfair review requires a great deal of finesse. The owner's response needs to correct the misinformation without engaging the reviewer in a public argument. Moreover, maintaining a calm, professional tone can be a challenge when one's reputation and livelihood have been subjected to unfair insults.

Putting your students in the roles of maligned business owners can be great practice for writing clearly while keeping one's emotions under control. Have each student find a harsh negative review on Yelp or TripAdvisor and imagine that he or she is the owner of the business in question. The student should assume that the information in the review is factually incorrect and write a hypothetical response that corrects the misinformation without "taking the bait" of the emotional attack. Encourage students to really imagine just how upset hardworking business owners would be after seeing their names dragged through the mud. By role playing scenarios like this, students will get practice at keeping their emotions under control when they are unfairly criticized in any professional setting.

Twitter Exercise to Help Students Grasp the Value of Their Business Communication Course

This Twitter exercise can help students students grasp the value of the communication course and practice writing tight, focused messages at the same time.

Have them write four messages of no more than 140 characters each to persuade other college students to take the business communication course. They should think of the first message as the “headline” of an advertisement that makes a bold promise regarding the value that this course offers every aspiring business professional. The next three messages should be support points that provide evidence to back up the promise made in the first message.

As they think about ways to promote the course to other students, your students will have the opportunity to think through what you've shared with them in class so far about the value of the course and to visualize themselves putting their new skills to work.

If you prefer not to use Twitter for this, students can submit their messages using any medium you choose.

Wishing You and Your Students a Great Fall Term!

Hard to believe fall is upon us! We hope you had a relaxing and productive summer. We'd like to start off the new season with a brief reminder of the free online resources we have available to help business communication instructors and students, including the many resources available exclusively for adopters of Bovée & Thill texts.

Business Communication Headline News

Business Communication Headline News delivers late-breaking news stories, interesting blog posts from a variety of communication professionals, and other information you can use to enhance lectures and class discussions. You can also follow BCHN on Twitter (@buscommnews) and Facebook.

Real-Time Updates

Bovée & Thill’s Real-Time Updates service offers a wealth of material we have personally selected for instructors and students, sorted by media type and textbook chapter.

Business Communication Communities on Facebook and LinkedIn

Connect with business communication instructors and professionals from around the world in the Bovée & Thill online communities on Facebook and LinkedIn:

Bovée & Thill YouTube channel

The new Bovée & Thill channel on YouTube offers videos with advice on teaching the new elements of business communication.

Bovée & Thill's Web Search

This powerful metasearch system developed by Bovée and Thill lets you quickly access more than 325 search engines. The tool uses a simple and intuitive interface engineered to help business communication instructors and students find precisely what they want, whether it’s PowerPoint files, PDF files, Microsoft Word documents, Excel files, videos, or podcasts.

Website Registration

You'll notice that instructors and students are now asked to register for Real-Time Updates and Business Communication Headline News. We implemented this change to preserve the integrity of these resources as unique benefits for adopters of Bovée & Thill textbooks. Registering gives you full access to the entire Business Communication Network, including the Learn More media items highlighted in the texts, downloadable student assignments, and more. During registration, instructors are asked to enter a special one-time password that you can retrieve from the publisher's website (instructions for doing so are provided on the registration screen). After registration, you and your students can log in simply by entering the email address and personal password you provided at registration. Note that registration is not required for this blog or for Bovée & Thill's Web Search.

If you experience any challenges in registering, contact us at bovee@boveeandthillbusinesscommunicationblog.com.

Again, we wish you and your students a successful fall term. If we can answer any questions or entertain any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment.

Court Bovée and John Thill

p.s. You may encounter temporary availability issues with some of the Real-Time Updates media items. We're "recovering" from a system upgrade and are working hard to restore all of these.

The Commenting Conundrum: Are Blog Comments a Useful Measurement of Social Media Engagement?

Judging from the number of articles offering advice, the question of how to encourage more comments on posts is a matter of wide concern among bloggers. In fact, this dilemma seems to be at the heart of the social media model.

Blog comments can be tremendously valuable in multiple ways, of course, from gathering market intelligence to correcting or expanding information offered in a post. The question we’d like to focus on here is whether comment volume is a useful measurement of social media engagement:

  • Is comment volume a meaningful measure of engagement specifically and of communication success more generally, relative to the other metrics available (including friend, membership, or subscriber totals; page
    views; file downloads; and product orders)?
  • Other than those situations in which collecting information via comments is the primary purpose of a blog post, can bloggers meet their ultimate goals without generating high volumes of comments?
  • What would change if comment volume on a given blog was two or three or ten times higher?
  • Is a lack of comments necessarily a negative sign, or is it more just a reflection of how things are?
  • If a blog has only limited commenting traffic, does it truly qualify as a social medium? Or is it really closer to the traditional publishing model, in which readers get the information they want without participating in a conversation?

While pondering these questions, we stepped back to consider our own behavior as blog readers, both in our personal interests and with the thousands of business-oriented blog posts we read every year.

Why Don’t Readers Leave More Comments?

This isn’t a rigorous analysis, but we reflected on our own blog reading habits and extrapolated six possible reasons why blog readers may be reluctant to leave comments.

  • Limited by time constraints. Every professional has too much to do, and leaving comments is just one more item on the to-do list.
  • Not feeling part of the community. Some blogs seem to have a tightknit sense of community, with a core of frequent commenters who are on friendly and even personal terms. To other readers, this close sense of community can seem like a closed sense of community, and joining the conversation can feel like butting into a lively conversation at a party.
  • Reluctant to ask for advice or information. Some blog readers are comfortable using the comment function to ask for information or advice, but we suspect many others are not and would rather dig around to find answers on their own.
  • Having nothing substantial to add. Most of the time, we’d be willing to speculate, most readers conclude that they don’t have anything useful to add. More broadly, blog posts that are clear, complete, and noncontroversial probably won’t attract a lot of in-depth comments simply because there isn’t much for anybody to add.
  • Unmotivated by a sense of reward. Even when readers might have something to add, many probably consider the potential reward (such as peer recognition or promotion for one’s own blog) and conclude it’s not worth the trouble.
  • Sensing that the conversational peak is over. When posts do generate a healthy comment stream, this often seems to peak after a couple of days. After that, many readers who might be motivated to comment probably sense that the show has moved on and there is no point in contributing.

Given how many reasons there are not to leave comments, ramping up comment volume is clearly a challenge. If nothing else, bloggers need to adopt a realistic stance when it comes to getting comments.

Can Readers Be Engaged Without Leaving Comments?

Evidence suggests that bloggers can accomplish communication goals without it showing up in comment volume. For instance, we’ve purchased books, courses, and other products from bloggers without leaving comments on their posts. In these instances we’re deeply engaged as readers and consumers, and they’re accomplishing at least some of their business goals, without us being visible community members in the “social” sense.

A lack of comments might be troubling, in other words, but it doesn’t necessarily signal a lack of engagement.

Bottom Line: Where Do Comments Fit in the Big Picture?

No single answer will fit every situation, but it seems appropriate to ask if the quest for comments can be overemphasized. At the very least, bloggers should figure out where comment volume falls in their hierarchy of goals. For example, are comments mostly “feel good” feedback, a real information source, an opportunity for readers to share their knowledge, or something else entirely?

And now to demonstrate our finely tuned sense of irony, we’d like to ask for your comments on this article. As a blog reader, do you find comments from other readers generally valuable? Are you a regular commenter yourself? Why or why not? If you blog, do you view comment volume as an important metric of engagement?

Employment Communication: Four Essential Steps to Building a Personal Brand

If you teach employment communication and job search strategies as part of the business communication course, personal branding can be a great way to help students understand what they have to offer future employers and how to focus their communication efforts.

Even though personal branding is a hot topic these days, more than a few professionals have probably expressed the sentiment of “I don’t want to be a brand; I just want to be a good employee.” However, like it or not, personal branding affects everyone, in every profession.

The Automobile Analogy

Automobiles offer a great analogy to help students understand the importance and meaning of brand. Volvos, BMWs, and Cadillacs can all get you from Point A to Point B in safety, comfort, and style—but each brand emphasizes some attributes more than others to create a specific image in the minds of potential buyers. Common mental associations for these brands, for instance, are the safety emphasis of Volvo cars, the performance emphasis of BMW, and the luxury emphasis of Cadillac.

Employers think about potential employees in much the same way. Three candidates for a particular job might have all the basic skills required—they can all get an employer from Point A to Point B—but the first might come across as a highly focused technical whiz, the second as a potential business leader, and the third as competent but unmotivated and uninspiring. The impressions an employer forms can help or hurt the job seeker, and they can range from spot-on to wildly inaccurate, so it’s vital for candidates to take control of their brand images.

If You Don’t Brand Yourself, I’ll Do It for You

Even though some people are reluctant to brand themselves or even disdainful of the whole idea, personal branding always takes place. The only question is who is in control. BMW could leave its brand image entirely up to others, letting drivers, mechanics, and journalists decide what “BMW” means. All these parties decide for themselves what “BMW” ultimately means to them, of course, but the company works constantly to shape that mental picture, through everything from its product advertising to the architectural nuances in its dealerships.

Similarly, if job seekers don’t establish a clear brand image for themselves, interviewers and hiring managers will do it for them. A good place for students to start grasping this concept is to realize they have already established a personal brand with their professors, classmates, teammates, and others, based on how they’ve behaved and performed in the past. Now is the time to become more conscious of that brand and to consciously shape it for long-term professional success.

Helping Students Identify and Promote Their Personal Brands

To help students craft their personal brands during the job search, guide them through these four steps:

First, figure out the “story of you.” Simply put, where have you been in life, and where are you going? Every good story has dramatic tension that pulls readers in and makes them wonder what will happen next. Where is your story going next?

Second, clarify your professional “theme.” You want to be seen as something more than just an accountant, a supervisor, a salesperson. What will your brand theme be? Brilliant strategist? Hard-nosed, get-it-done tactician? Technical guru? Problem solver? Creative genius? Inspirational leader?

Third, reach out and connect. Major corporations spread the word about their brands with multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns. You can promote your brand for free or close to it. You can spread your brand message by networking—connecting with like-minded people, sharing information, demonstrating skills and knowledge, and helping others succeed.

Fourth, deliver on your brand’s promise—every time, all the time. When you promote a brand, you make a promise, a promise that whoever buys that brand (as in, hires that employee) will get the benefits you are promoting. All of your planning and communication is of little value if you fail to deliver on the promises that your branding efforts make. Conversely, when you deliver quality results time after time, your talents and your professionalism will speak for you.

Personal Branding Resources

Here are some great resources on personal branding to share with students:
www.personalbrandingblog.com

http://altaeeblog.com
http://blog.brand-yourself.com
www.krishnade.com/blog
http://cuberules.com
www.jibberjobber.com/blog
http://theengagingbrand.typepad.com
http://blog.brand-yourself.com

Do you teach personal branding as part of employment communication? If so, what advice to you have to share with other instructors?

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