9.2 Message Structure
Good customer service, employee relations, and relationship building are essential in sustaining any business. The way you represent yourself in writing carries significant weight. As such, how you communicate will have everything to do with whether or not you achieve your goal. Whether you are communicating good news or trying to persuade someone to agree with your ideas, making strategic decisions about key information placement in your document will make your task a lot easier. Given that most messages are now transmitted in an electronic form, it is also important to consider the digital context within which your messages are sent and received. This chapter will guide you in making good decisions when composing your business messages. First, we will discuss netiquette.
Netiquette
Text messaging, emailing, and posting on social media in a professional context requires that you be familiar with “netiquette,” or proper etiquette for using the internet. We have all heard the news stories about people who have been fired and companies that have been boycotted for making offensive or inappropriate social media posts. People have even gone to prison for illegal use of private messaging. The digital world may seem like a free-for-all, “wild wild west” with no clear rules or regulations; however, this is clearly a dangerous perspective for a professional to take, as the consequences for breaking tacit rules, expectations, and guidelines for professional communications can be very costly.
Writing in an online environment requires tact, skill, and an awareness that what you write may be there for a very long time and maybe seen by people you never considered as your intended audience. From text messages to memos to letters, from business proposals to press releases, your written business communication represents you and your company: Your goal is to make your messages clear, concise, constructive, and professional.
We create personal pages, post messages, and interact via online technologies as a normal part of our careers, but how we conduct ourselves can leave a lasting image, literally. The photograph you posted on your Instagram page or Twitter feed may have been seen by your potential employer, or that insensitive remark in a Facebook post may come back to haunt you later.
Following several guidelines for online postings, as detailed below, can help you avoid embarrassment later:
- Know your context
- Carefully analyze the communication situation: audience, purpose, and environment.
- Adapt the language and tone of the message accordingly.
- Avoid assumptions about your readers; remember that culture influences communication style and practices.
- Familiarize yourself with the Acceptable Use of IT Resources policy at your organization.
- Remember the human aspect
- Introduce yourself.
- Remember there is a person behind the words; ask for clarification before making a judgment.
- Check your tone before you publish; avoid jokes