SailingToSuccess

By: Linda Stacy

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This is a GREAT article by Linda on communicating effectively online. Wonderful tips! Enjoy!
Annette
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If you market your business online you likely spend a lot of time communicating with customers and prospects via e-mail. You may also spend time networking on message boards and other online groups. Here are a few tips to help save time and to help make sure the message you want to send is the message that is received.

1. Use meaningful subject lines.

You want to convey the content of the message. Make sure your subject line is as specific as it can be in a few words. “I have a question” doesn’t offer any clue to the content, but “question about shipping” does. You may think that the subject line isn’t that important since your question will be in the message, but a recipient who may receive a hundred emails a day will prioritize by subject line and the more specific subjects will likely be read first.

You also want to choose email subject lines that are less likely to be blocked by a spam filter. Avoid spam filter trigger words like “free,” “info you requested,” and “save”.

When posting on message boards and news groups you want your subject line to attract the people who can answer your question or who are interested in the topic. Many message board participants have limited time and they only open the topics of interest. If your subject line simply reads, “help me” the experts may skip over it. But “need help with search engine optimization” will likely get the attention of someone with more experience on the topic.

Don’t change the subject line in your reply unless you are completely changing the topic of the message.

2. Your message should be concise, but complete. Get to your point early in your message and make sure you provide all the necessary information.

Some people still pay an hourly rate for Internet access and others are limited in the amount of information they can download. Unnecessarily long messages may be ignored or deleted by those individuals and unnecessarily long email messages add to an already overburdened email system.

By providing complete information in your first message you can often get your request taken care of right away. For example, if you email a website to ask for a change to your ad or your reciprocal link, don’t just ask, “how can I change my ad,” but include the changes you want to make. Often, changes are made by email so if you include the information in your first email the change will be made right away.

3. When replying to e-mail, be sure to include enough of the original message to convey the context of the reply.

The person you’re corresponding with may receive hundreds of messages a week and your message will be answered sooner and more accurately if the rest of the correspondence is included.

An exception should be made when you’ve written back and forth quite a few times and the email message starts to get very large. In that case, delete some of the earlier messages that are no longer necessary. Additionally, if you are emailing a newsgroup that offers daily “digest” be sure to remove most of the original message. It becomes very difficult to read the digest when every response includes the entire original message.

On threaded message boards it’s not necessary to quote the original post in your reply as most visitors are following along the entire thread and know the context. Use a quoted reply only to highlight and refer to a particular section of the original.

4. When sending e-mail to multiple recipients, be sure to use the blind CC address line. Do not reveal all the e-mail addresses to all the recipients.

In most cases you shouldn’t be sending messages to multiple recipients unless it’s a mailing list (in which case you should be using a mailing list program that individually addresses the messages to your list). But if you sometimes find the need to send one message to multiple recipients, be extremely careful to use the blind CC. Leaving everyone’s email address visible to all the recipients will anger many and lead the rest to mistrust that you’ll safeguard any of their personal information.

5. Make sure your business email can get through to you.

In your effort to reduce the amount of spam you receive, make sure your aren’t eliminating business email. Avoid e-mail accounts that filter spam for and find your own effective spam filter that lets you decide what is and isn’t spam. You need to make sure your business email gets through. In many cases your ISP email or one of the popular free email services will likely be heavily filtered at the server. If you don’t have a website that includes several email addresses consider purchasing another domain name and hosting service for your business email and make sure the hosting company allows you to turn off all filtering at the server level.

Those are just a few tips to help you communicate more efficiently online. If you’re new to the Internet you’ll want to do a little research on “netiquette.” You’ll find tips about online shorthand and emoticons (icons that indicate expressions like smiling and frowning), information on “flaming” (angry or insulting personal attacks), and simple conventions like typing in all caps is considered shouting.

Communicating online is very different from communicating in person. With just a little effort your online communication can become efficient and effective.

Free Reprint Article from http://www.ladypens.com - Articles by Women

Linda Stacy owns and manages a unique service connecting network marketing business owners with potential team members through instant online chats. Visit iRepNetwork.com for tips and tools to help you generate leads and build your team. www.irepnetwork.com

This article is available for reprint with author's resource box intact and all links active. Copyright is reserved by author.

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