Cost

About.me is completely free, while Flavors.me has a free plan and a $20 per year version. Many of Flavors.me’s features are only available on the paid plan, including some that probably should be free but aren’t, like the font faces you can choose from.

Design Features

I found About.me slightly easier to make a good-looking page; the basic layout was more professional and better designed. Flavors.me, however, has four different page layouts available with its free plan, while About.me only has one. However, you can drag your main information box anywhere on the screen.

About.me offers users a variety of fonts, while Flavors.me makes you upgrade to get the more interesting ones.

Content Options

In About.me you can add links to any site (such as your own website), instead of being limited to popular networking services. Linking to your own site is a must if you want to use one of these splash pages as a business card. But as far as I can tell, the only way to add a link to your site from Flavors.me is to add it to your “About” section, where it can’t be styled to stand out from the rest of your description. However, Flavors.me offers linking to more services than About.me, and paid users can add custom content.

When you add a service in About.me, what’s displayed, whether you like it or not, is the icon of the platform and no other information. I think that this is a major problem. Besides wanting the clever name of your blog or your Twitter handle to be spelled out, I have found that many educated, professional people don’t have the slightest idea what any of those icons represent. So if you want to make a client-facing page, and your clients aren’t necessarily fluent in Web hieroglyphics, this is something to consider.

About.me also doesn’t allow more than one account on any of these services. I have three Twitter accounts and several blogs on the two platforms above. If you enter, for example, multiple Blogger blogs, the first one is assigned the Blogger icon, and any others are spelled out in the list, in the order entered. There’s no way, like in Flavors.me, to reorder your items through drag-and-drop.

In Flavors.me, I had some difficulties adding several WordPress blogs. It accepted one WP-hosted blog and one self-hosted WP blog, but for some reason, I couldn’t add another self-hosted WP blog, which happened to be my main blog. Not being able to add that defeats the whole purpose of having the page. Update: Flavors.me contacted me to let me know that the free plan allows up to five services to be added, which wasn’t clear in the documentation. It’s also possible to add a freestanding website using the RSS option under Content>Add.

External links operate differently in the two services. On Flavors.me, links open within the Flavors.me page. On About.me, if you click the icons, they open in a widget on the About.me page. But if you click links in the list, a new window opens.

Other Features

About.me offers a nice “Email Me” button and contact form. A similar feature is available on the paid version of Flavors.me.

You can use your own domain name with the paid version of Flavors.me, but not with About.me. About.me provides a dashboard with stats on visitors, social media reach, and more. Flavors.me makes you pay for stats.

Both platforms were obviously created to showcase individuals rather than to serve small businesses, and neither is perfect. AOL bought About.me just four days after it launched, while Flavors.me still operates independently. It will be interesting to see how both services evolve, and whether they will move to meet the needs of a professional audience.

Whether you run a one-person shop or a small business, either of these sites could turn out to have some practical use. I recommend trying them both. You may also want to consider such alternatives as Retaggr, GizaPage, and Chi.mp, which we’ve written about previously, or even the rudimentary splash pages now available with .tel domain names. I’d love to hear your take on them in the comments, especially if you’ve found creative ways to use them for business!

Do you use About.me or Flavors.me as an online calling card?

Disclosure: Automattic, the maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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• Enabling the Web Work Revolution
• Report: The Real-Time Enterprise
• Social Media in the Enterprise

For its part, Dell is now selling its Virtual Integrated System architecture. Anchored by Dell’s Advanced Infrastructure Management software (a product of its recent Scalent acquisition), the product lets users provision servers, networking and storage from a single interface. In true Dell fashion, where those resources come from doesn’t really matter — the VIS architecture supports heterogeneous gear and hypervisor environments.

Then there is Egenera, which has been selling its PAN Manager converged infrastructure software since 2001. What makes Egenera open is its broad choice of blade hardware and virtualization platforms. Customers can choose Dell hardware (via the Dell PAN Manager or Dell Datacenter-in-a-Box solutions), Fujitsu PRIMERGY blades or Egenera’s own BladeFrame architecture (with more platform support on the way), and can keep their existing Ethernet technologies.

Whether Dell and Egenera can prevail against the one-stop-shop approaches of their much-larger competitors remains to be seen. Companies like Cisco, HP and Oracle have mountains of marketing muscle and sales teams, as well as great technology. The problem, of course, is software and hardware components designed to work optimally, sometimes exclusively, with one another. Dell and Egenera certainly appear to have the upper hand if it cost is a factor: Forrester comparisons show Dell VIS and Egenera PAN Datacenter-in-a-Box coming in at approximately 75 percent the cost of comparable VMware/Cisco/EMC Vblock, HP BladeMatrix and IBM CloudBurst implementations (roughly $150,000 compared with roughly $200,000).

Despite past concerns, I’m willing to acknowledge that IT departments will indeed buy into the converged infrastructure vision. But I’m not yet ready to concede that complete vertical integration will win the day. As long as there are independent server, networking and virtualization vendors, there will be buyers for whom best-of-breed is the only way to go.

Read the full post here.

Image courtesy of Cisco Systems.

Connecting

I use Twitter for connecting with media and developing new business. You’re able to gather real-time, personal information about the people you’re seeking that they themselves have pushed out. That’s great; it might even be better than relying on a static, infrequently updated LinkedIn page.

So you have all this information, but how do you break the proverbial ice without seeming like a weirdo? Start off by being subtle. Follow the journalist, blogger, startup CEO or biz dev VP you’re trying to engage. After that, wait. Think about what their inbox would look like with a follow notification and a “howdy!” email arriving within the same minute. Give them a day or two to see who you are. (Side tip: It might make sense to do your following on off hours when the people you’re trying to reach are, say, commuting on the train and therefore perhaps haphazardly browsing through their smartphone. A new email during those time periods might have a better chance of getting noticed. Just an idea.)

Now say the person you’re trying to woo follows you back. First, calm down. Don’t rush to DM them. The best, most subtle option might be to just mention them in a public reply later on.

Here’s an example:

A writer at the Wall Street Journal wrote a story on iced coffee, related techniques, products, etc. She’s someone I’m interested in connecting with for a variety of reasons, beyond my interest in iced coffee. So I followed her that morning. Later that afternoon, I tweeted a public reply to her: “My coffee consumption is entirely based on outdoor temp. Above 65F, we’re going iced. Below, hot. Nice story.” The idea was to show her that I actually took the time to read her article. She saw it, and then retweeted me (most likely to further the promotion of her story, which is totally fine). As a result, she followed me back. Sweet, right? Now we’ve got something.

This is all sort of a soft way to open up the door in a way that’s polite, calm and, above all, not annoying. How effective would it have been if I simply I tweeted a public reply that said, “Great article. Mind following back so we can DM?” Not very, that’s for sure. Consider each action, each communication as a date — the overzealous are rarely rewarded. Bottom line, when using Twitter to connect with new people for a specific purpose, subtlety is key. Think about — and respect — why they use Twitter. And respect their time.

Promoting

“We’ll set up a promo campaign on Twitter too,” says the PR account executive in the strategy meeting. (Note: I’m not ripping on PR account executives. I used to be one.)  Well, this idea is good, but there’s a wrong way and right way to go about promotion on Twitter. Some brands/products have been awesome at it. Others… not so much. A lot of it comes down to balancing a polite, convivial sense of etiquette and respect with the actual promotion. (It also helps if what you’re promoting is actually useful to a specific audience). A few tips:

• Start with those who care. When you turn on a promo campaign on Twitter, start by following people you know will be interested in your content. Do a keyword search and find out who cares. For example, I’m helping out an author friend promote his latest book. It’s a fictionalized account of some rather interesting true stories surrounding Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So in starting up a Twitter effort, we found every Sherlockian and Holmesian we could (yes, there’s a difference between the two and yes, there are a lot of them). If we were to just fire off random follows, that would have been showing bad form. You wouldn’t follow someone you weren’t interested in would you? So don’t do the same. The point is, build your following with people you’re relatively certain will be receptive to your product. And then give them some love that will increase the likelihood that they’ll help you out (i.e., #ff them, retweet content that’s relevant, etc.).
• Participate. Especially at the start, when your numbers are low, you must respond and engage with your followers. If someone DMs you, you DM back. Ask their opinions. Find out what they’d be interested in. Not only is this polite, but it shows you’re actually paying attention and not just tweeting to hear yourself tweet. Remember, the conversation is two-way and listening is a big part of it.
• Accept and respond to negativity. If someone is harping on whatever you’re promoting, acknowledge them. See what their gripe is and do everything you can to win them over. Don’t turn on the corporate speak (I’m looking at you, banks). Instead, maintain a conversational tone. Not only will you make good with that individual, but others watching will hopefully see your efforts. It’s worth noting that this sort of individual attention is easier said than done — especially as your follower base grows. Just try to be helpful as often as you can.

Servicing

Twitter has taken on a customer service functionality — especially for consumer brands.  If a consumer has an issue, question or complaint, bringing it up on Twitter is now an acceptable action. People usually do this for one of two reasons: either simply to vent their frustration to their social community with no desire to be helped by the brand (hint: that’s a prime opportunity) or they do it specifically to attract the attention of the brand, usually by tweeting a public @reply to the brand in question.

Here’s a little story. I had an issue with an online flower vendor and a third party “membership affiliate.” It was a pretty serious issue that involved nefarious online tomfoolery that is now subject to legislation. I vented my fury on Twitter after getting nowhere with the call center. My intent was to get the attention of said company and, I admit, to rage a bit. Anyway, it took the flower brand a while, but they eventually connected with me on Twitter in a very cordial manner, followed me back and we then took the conversation to DM and ultimately email. I consider that a social win for the company, in part, due to the way they conducted themselves. They could have taken defensive stance, but instead, they engaged with a positive tone.

So if you’re a brand that uses Twitter as a customer service desk, the following etiquette path might be helpful when engaging with a not-so-happy patron:

• Acknowledge
• Follow and ask for a follow-back,
• Be polite, be human, offer to help in any way possible
• If things get testy, offer to take the conversation out of the public stream (DM, email, etc.).

Norms and examples  of Twitter etiquette certainly exist beyond the aforementioned use cases.  What say you, WWD readers? What elements of Twitter etiquette do you abide by? Which breaches irritate you?

(Note: The Emily Post Institute actually does use Twitter. Seriously, check it out: @emilypostinst. It even tweets about Jersey Shore etiquette. Heh.)

Dave Clarke is the Communications Strategist at Churnless, a digital strategy and production company that helps businesses satisfy, delight, and keep their customers. Follow Dave on Twitter: @thedaveclarke.

Photo by Flickr user Muffet, licensed under CC 2.0

That’s my email signature. Name, title, company/slogan, mobile. I’d like to think that it’s pretty basic. It’s not overloaded with content, but it’s sufficient in communicating who I am, what I do, where I do it and how you can hear my voice if you so desire.

My personal preferences aside, the sig is an interesting element of email communication and etiquette. Too often, we see email signatures so jammed with information that our eyes just glaze over: Name, title, division, company, email address, office number, cell number, fax number, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn links (complete with icons), trite words of wisdom about not printing this email or a variation on carpe diem … the list goes on.

So let’s figure out what’s helpful, what’s overkill and how the email signature can be refined:

Name. This is a pretty essential piece. There’s not much to say here, but I do have one suggestion: The name in your sig should reflect what you prefer to go by. I say this from personal experience. My actual name is Francis David Clarke.  Naturally, I’m not going to go by Francis. And David is just so, well, I don’t know — it’s just not me. The point is, I go by Dave and, therefore, my signature reads Dave. Whatever you’d like people to address you as, that’s what should be in your sig.

Title. Your title is helpful if it succinctly communicates what you do. I like to think that the shorter it is, the better.  When you start getting into the lengthy “Senior Director, Vice President of Inter-Department Collaboration” territory, reader apathy begins to set in. All I know is that the person is probably important (which may be the point, of course). But I could also perceive that as, “Well, this guy sure thinks he’s important.”

I understand that sometimes you can’t do anything about your title — this is particularly true within large companies. But it might be worth economizing where possible.

Company. Like your name, this is pretty standard. One idea worth mentioning is to be sure that you spell your company as it’s known. Why? Beyond the obvious, for search purposes. There’s a big difference when I search “LendingTree” versus “Lending Tree.” One turns up emails related to the company, the other turns up threads related to Christmas tree donations. (Not an actual conversation topic in my inbox, but you get my point.)

Website. You should probably include this, especially if you’re a writer, blogger, photographer, Etsy retailer, designer or in any other job where you need to showcase your product or drive traffic somewhere. For neatness, it’s best to hyperlink your company’s name, particularly if you want to drive people to a specific department or area of your site.

Slogan. Personally, I dig this if, and only if, it’s concise. (Of course, I may be biased — see “Work Worth Doing.”) I’d say it comes down to word count. I’d suggest no more than five words. You certainly wouldn’t want to include your company’s mission or vision statement — that just gets verbose.

Phone Numbers. Personally — and I think this might hold true to the web worker community at large — I feel including only your mobile number is sufficient. Who among us is ever more than 20 feet away from his or her mobile? It’s the number by which you’re most accessible. And it’s also the number by which you can be the most inaccessible for those “there’s no way I’m talking to her right now” moments.

Email Address. This is overkill. Think about it. You’re emailing someone and, generally, you’re seeking some sort of reply. The fact that the recipient received your email guarantees that they have your email address. Nix the email address from your sig — it’s redundant.

Fax Number. I suppose people still use these, but the infrequency at which we fax (primarily due to cheap scanners) means that the fax number can be dropped from the email signature. If someone really needs to fax you something, they’ll ask for the number.

Mailing Address. This really depends on your line of work. If your job involves physical product that requires shipping, delivery, returns, etc., then by all means, include your address. Same goes if you’re in billing. If not, and you only occasionally need to share your address, you can leave it out.

Social Network Links. This one’s interesting. We’ve all seen email sigs that include Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn icons. And we’ve also seen those that have just the links (twitter.com/thedaveclarke, linkedin.com/in/daveclarke4, etc.).  If you’re going to include these elements, here are a couple suggestions:

• Only include two social methods of contact. Listing every social network in which you participate reads, “See! Look how social I am! I do everything!” This, by default, shows that you’re on those networks for the wrong reasons and all of them are probably void of content. So if you’re heavy on the social media side of things, go with Facebook and Twitter. More business-oriented? LinkedIn and Twitter.
• Go with links instead of icons. More often than not, the icons won’t display properly in someone’s inbox. They’ll have to “Always display images from rhonda@cupcakesonline.net,” and mobile viewing has its image issues. While it may look sharp in your email, there’s no guarantee others will see the same thing.

Quotes, Suggestions. First, it’s important to point out that these are different from slogans. A slogan reflects a company brand. What we’re talking about here are those inspirational quotes and smarmy admonishments at the bottom of an email. They’re usually pertaining to things like passion, teamwork or recycling. These one-liners — while they can be witty, deep and/or moving — don’t really have a place in professional email communication. Leave them out.

Rich Text Signatures. Gmail recently started supporting rich text signatures. The idea is to allow more customization (think links, color, images, etc.). While this is a great way to template a dynamic signature, don’t go overboard. As we’ve discussed above, your sig file isn’t a resume: Smart, useful, easy content is all you need.

So in the spirit of brevity, let’s wrap it up. Drop your two cents in the comments if you have thoughts on the above or to point out anything I’ve missed.

Photo by Flickr user Muffet, licensed under CC 2.0

There are all sorts of ways we conclude emails. And for us web workers, where our communication is digital more often than not, the way we sign our emails may (or may not) reveal certain clues about what we’re trying to accomplish. Let’s poke around at a few of the most common sign-offs/closings.

Cheers

“Cheers” signals a sense of worldliness. (Tell me you don’t read it in a British accent and yearn for a pint of Bass.) This sign-off says “I’m casual, yet professional.” We could share beers at the bar, or we could do an angel VC deal. Or both. “Cheers” is designed to command a certain amount of respect while still maintaining a level of approachability. As such, we see it all the time. Yet one has to wonder if this sign-off is becoming (or has already become) too trendy. (Note: My “Cheers” analysis applies to U.S.-based emailers only. UK emailers, you have the final say on it, as for some reason, I just feel like it’s yours.)

Thanks

To me, “Thanks” says, “Just do what I’ve asked in the body of this email, and let’s leave it at that.” Even though that might not be the writer’s intention, it can come across as patronizing. (Note: To combat this, some people have taken a casual approach to “Thanks” with the abbreviated “Thx!” The verdict is still out on this tactic — particularly the use of the exclamation point.)

However, “Thanks” can, and should, be used in the early stages of an email relationship. It’s safe, it’s no-nonsense, and it rarely lends itself to interpretation. When in doubt, “Thanks,” in all its blandness, simply works.

Best

“Best” is strange. It basically means, “I wish good things for you.” That’s OK, but chances are that tone doesn’t mesh well with what you’re communicating in the body above. However, “Best” is innocuous enough that people don’t really digest it. It’s easily ignored, which leads me to speculate that it’s one of the highest-raking sign-offs that’s pre-loaded into email signatures, simply because it’s both neutral and positive at the same time. (I base this on no data whatsoever.) Ultimately, “Best” says that the sender’s professional-personal ratio is at about 9-to-1: the sender wants to keep things proper, while showing a little personal attention.

Take Care (and Other Ways to Say Goodbye)

Some people think of their sign-off as a goodbye. If you were leaving a meeting, you’d shake hands and say something like, “Take care, Elisa” or “Alright, Avi, I’ll see you tomorrow.” So a short-form goodbye can effectively give the communication a colloquial nature, one that’s conversational and fluid. But be careful. A phrase like “Take it easy” might not be formal enough for a given situation; use your judgment.

So what are “goodbye” sign-offs revealing? I think they show that the sender is striving for more verbal, personal communication. When used in the right situation, this type of closing can work well because it increases the friendliness of the email.

Nothing at All

Sometimes, we drop the closing entirely. We’re seeing this habit with greater frequency as more and more people are emailing from mobile devices; it doesn’t make sense to crank out an extra word on a little keyboard. This lack of closing can reveal a few things. It may imply that you’re on the run, which can be perceived as good or bad: Good because you’re quick to reply no matter where you are; bad because you’re always somewhere doing something else.

Another common approach is to use initials in place of the dropped closing. With this sign-off, perhaps the sender is trying to brand his or her initials. When I sign my emails with “DC,” I’m expecting the respondent to see my initials almost as a stamp of my approval. Maybe I even intend for the recipient to address me as “DC” in his or her reply. The “no closing/initials instead” approach may show that you’re not one to waste time and that you want to set the tone for the entire communication sequence. From my experience, this approach seems particularly prominent amongst tech, entrepreneur and media types.

There’s really no right or wrong way to go about the sign-off, and what it may or may not reveal is open to interpretation. That said, feel free to tell us in the comments section what you think your sign-offs of choice reveal about you, and when and why you use them.

Godspeed,

dave

Dave Clarke is the Communications Strategist at Churnless, a web strategy and production company that helps businesses satisfy, delight, and keep their customers. Follow Dave on Twitter: @thedaveclarke.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Email: The Reports of My Death are Greatly Exaggerated

Photo courtesy Flickr user hyperscholar, licensed under CC 2.0

Here’s a sampling of its advice:

• How quickly must you respond to an email? Real Simple’s experts all agree that you should reply as soon as possible, certainly by the end of the day. You should also be consistent; if you can’t respond as quickly as you normally would, use an out-of-office message to explain.
• Are emoticons appropriate to use in office emails? Yes, although you shouldn’t be the first to use them in an email exchange with someone you don’t know.
• Can you ignore someone who “friends” you? Yes, especially since sharing personal information can be a safety issue.
• Should you always accept a request from a colleague on a professional-networking site? Only if you know them well and the connection would be professionally advantageous.
• You Google someone you’re about to meet for the first time. Is it gauche to bring up what you learned about her? Discussing the kind of recent good news that could have been reported in a newspaper — a new client or a promotion, perhaps — shows that you’ve done your homework. But bringing up a lot of personal information would sound creepy.
  

One thing that is clear from reading this manual is that while in many cases etiquette may seem like common sense, there are not always clear-cut answers; sometimes even the pros don’t agree on the correct course of action. For example, Real Simple’s assembled experts don’t agree on whether it’s OK to omit a salutation when closing an email.

For more advice on appropriate tech manners, check out our previous posts on style and etiquette.

Do you agree with Real Simple’s etiquette advice? What other tech etiquette conundrums do you struggle with?

Photo by Flickr user Muffet, licensed under CC 2.0

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Enabling the Web Work Revolution

Here are a few tips for meeting organizers to help make sure that they have a great meeting over the phone (with “phone” being loosely defined here to include Skype and other online real-time audio):

1. Give people plenty of notice for the meeting, if possible. Ideally, try to schedule your phone meetings with plenty of advance notice to make sure that people have time to prepare. I know this isn’t always possible, but a little planning ahead of time can really help. Keep in mind that what seems like two days’ notice to you might be considerably less for international participants who won’t see your request until their morning, which could mean they have considerably less time to prepare.
2. Keep time zones in mind. In cases where people are spread out across time zones, taking the time to find out where people are physically located so that you can pick a time that is most convenient will help your attendees be alert and prepared for the meeting. With phone numbers becoming less tied to your location, don’t assume that you know where people are based on a phone number. Take the time to ask where they are and find out if they have a preferred meeting time. For example, I work with one person in Finland who prefers 10pm calls to 5pm calls, so he can have meetings after his kids are in bed.
3. Send a written agenda and materials out via email (or post them online) when you schedule the meeting, or no later than 24-48 hours before the meeting, when possible. This gives people plenty of time to prepare for the meeting, especially for people who primarily speak other languages. Giving people who are less fluent in your language a little extra time to assimilate the information can make a big difference in their level of participation. Don’t forget to include the phone number or other logistics for the meeting with local dial-in numbers in other countries, if they’re available.
4. Send a reminder about an hour before the meeting with any last minute updates. This reminder gives people one last chance to prepare for the meeting and can help forgetful participants, especially those for whom the meeting is at a non-traditional time.
5. As people join the meeting, make sure that they announce themselves so that you know who is attending the call. A quick prompt like, “welcome, who just joined us?” can help people know that they should announce themselves. I do this even for Skype calls where you can see who joined because it gives you time to make audio adjustments for anyone who can’t be heard clearly.
6. Double-check that everyone has all of the materials for the meeting. Start the meeting with some introductions (if needed) and a quick review of the agenda and what you plan to cover. This gives you a final check that people know how the meeting will be conducted, and you can make sure that they have all of their materials before the meeting.
7. Consider using online meeting tools. There are many tools that can be used in real-time to manage the content during the meeting and make sure that people are all looking at the same pages of the materials (GoToMeeting, for example). You should make sure that the solution you pick will work for most people given their bandwidth rates and system configuration. For example, if you have some people running on Macs, don’t pick a tool that only works on Windows. I always consider this an optional step for international meetings, especially if you have people located in countries where maintaining a stable Internet connect can be a challenge for people calling in from home outside of the work day. Using these tools doesn’t replace the need to send materials out in advance, since you want to give people time to assimilate the information and have a copy as a backup in case they can’t get connected during the meeting.

Meetings held over the phone where you can’t see the other people are challenging enough, but add international participants, time zones and language challenges into the mix, and you can end up with a seriously unproductive meeting. Taking the time to prepare and keeping a few of these tips in mind can help your meeting go much more smoothly.

What are your tips for making sure that your international phone meetings are successful and productive?

Photo by Flickr user StephenMitchell used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Anyone remember when email was going to destroy letter writing, and even the art of writing altogether? Well, it did destroy letter writing, but did it really destroy the art of writing, or just change it?

The Impact of “Social Speak” on the Written Word

I’d argue that email, SMS and social media communications tools have made irreversible impacts on the way we write, but that is not to say we should write in that “social” manner. Sure, I’m tempted to use “l8r” and countless other SMS abbreviations to save time and space. Those of us who are well-versed in the “old ways” of communicating will likely switch back and forth, as appropriate. I’m wondering, however, about those who have come of age in the era of SMS and the social web.

The social web has changed the written word in a couple of key ways:

1. Writing is more concise. When we first heard of Twitter and its 140 character limit, most of us wondered how in the world we could convey something meaningful in 25 to 30 words. Now we realize that Twitter pushes us to get to the essence of what we are trying to say. Who says you must have full sentences or paragraphs of text to make an impact or to drive people to action?

2. Use of different spelling and abbreviations. My husband came to me last night asking for help “translating” a text from his teenage daughter. “What does ‘TTYL’ stand for?” he asked. “Talk To You Later,” I replied. The strange thing was that I didn’t sense my own brain processing the translation. Instead, I immediately knew  the answer in the same way I know that “casa” means “house” without having to do the mental computing to get from a foreign word to familiar one. People who are communicating via SMS or social networks aren’t necessarily spelling things incorrectly. They are effectively speaking a new language entirely — so who is to say if it is “right” or “wrong”?

“Social” Spoken Here

I think that one of the real impacts of social media communications on our general communications is that many of us tend to be much more revealing in business and personal communications than ever before. Somehow, telling the world personal things and then exploring them on our blogs, on Facebook and on Twitter has become socially acceptable in many circles. Not everyone has caught the TMI (too much information) bug, but I’d venture to guess that many of us are much less shocked by someone getting more personally revealing even in a business setting because, well, we read it first on their blog anyway.

“Social” as “Anti-Social”

In social settings or face-to-face interactions, there is a distressing attention deficit problem. Recently, I invited some female bloggers to a small gathering for a wine tasting, and to get to know one another better. In the old days, if you were shy, you might sit to the side of the crowd and smile politely, hoping someone would include you. These days, those with social timidity will bury their noses in their mobile devices. I saw photographs of my gathering after the fact showing that a very prominent social media “guru” spent the entire time texting. Not on the periphery of the group, or in the hallway, but smack dab in the middle of the entire group. Granted, this person could have been tweeting about the event, but the first impression I have is one of being anti-social.

I also have mixed feelings about the impact of social communications in the realm of public speaking. As an attendee at conferences I love tweeting quotes I hear from speakers, to share their wisdoms with my followers. But as a speaker myself, I have yet to experience the dreaded “Tops of Heads Syndrome.” There are a lot of public speakers who have been sent into tailspins trying to adjust to speaking to an audience whose faces are obstructed by their laptops or who are so busy on their phones that the speaker can only see the tops of their heads, instead of their eyes and face. How disconcerting that must be.

There is no single right or wrong way to assimilate “social speak” into our lives and work — it all depends upon your own time and tolerance, your setting, your colleagues, and even the image you want to project. For better or for worse, though, we are all in a new world of communications — and most of us will have to learn the new language.

How do you feel social media is affecting our oral and written communications?

stock.xchng images by harrykeely and tecknare respectively

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How best to approach the issue, though? I’ve found that some people can very easily get their back up when attempts are made to point out their spelling and grammar weaknesses. Maybe it feels too much like being reprimanded in school. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, as the famous flying nanny once said, and the same sentiment applies with grammar, too.

Start Early

If you establish a precedent early on of just accepting the work someone’s handing you, and then making corrections yourself before handing it off to someone else (assuming this isn’t part of your job description, of course), then it will be much, much harder to break this bad habit down the road.

If it isn’t too late, then start sending work back immediately. This can be hard to do when there are significant time constraints on a project, or when there’s pressure from the next link in the chain to get their hands on something, but if you can build in a revision loop early on in the cycle, higher-ups will ultimately be happier, and those before you in the process might actually improve with time, rather than repeating errors to a degree that’s absolutely maddening.

Be Direct

You won’t help anyone by being passive aggressive about spelling and grammar problems. Chances are that the offending party is fully aware that they need help, but they’ve never before encountered anyone willing to address the problem head on, and have managed to coast by accordingly.

After an initial period of discomfort, most people will actually respond positively to constructive criticism about their flaws in this area. Most likely, these problems have plagued them for a long time, and they haven’t ever been told how to go about fixing them, they’ve just been told they’re doing it wrong. Pairing criticism with helpful advice about how to improve is key.

There are also numerous Internet resources you can point people to, which can act as crib sheets. Perhaps most painless among these tools, since they’re also pretty funny, are The Oatmeal‘s comics. Some of the comics deal specifically with common errors in spelling and punctuation, and as an added bonus the rest of the site is pretty hilarious, too, so even though you’ll be chastising someone by sending out a link, you’ll also sort of be rewarding them.

Explain

Being told that something is wrong will make you aware of your error in that instance, but it won’t necessarily do anything to curb future bad behavior and repeated mistakes. If people know why a mistake they are making is wrong, then it becomes much easier to avoid it in the future, since it will make sense not to do it.

I still have to expand the contraction “it’s” to ensure that I’m using it right. Pointing out that it’s only correct to use it when you can substitute “it is” without changing the meaning of the sentence will go a long way to helping people avoid that specific error. Likewise, explaining the logic behind other common grammar and spelling errors will also prove helpful.

Results Take Time

None of the above are quick fixes, and you’ll have to feel out how far you can take things with specific individuals. The important thing with correcting these kinds of common mistakes is staying consistent, and not letting things slide. Once you begin just accepting that cleaning up flaws will be your job, it will become your job, even if it’s not something you’re being paid to do.

How do you go about getting others to improve their spelling and grammar?

Photo by Flickr user alkruse24, licensed under CC BY 2.0

OK, you get the idea. I like a more pragmatic approach. No one response or solution is going to be right for every situation, every person or every organization, and any “expert” who uses this type of absolutist thinking is probably not be someone you should rely on for advice.

Yes, I provide quite a bit of advice on blogs and for clients, but I try to show how my approach has worked for me or for my clients while giving people the flexibility to come up with a solution that works best for their needs. Many of these tips work for some people, but not for others. For example, my recent inbox zero post prompted this tweet from fellow WebWorkerDaily author, Doriano: “Inbox zero is just like the Loch Ness monster, bigfoot and honest politicians… don’t fall for it folks.” Obviously, he’s not a fan of inbox zero, but he probably has a system for managing and processing email that works just as well for him.

I like to try out a variety of approaches and see what sticks over the long term. When I switched from a PC where I used Outlook for email and tasks to a Mac, I had to find a new task management system. I probably tried a dozen different applications before finally settling on Hiveminder, which is working well for me, but I still continue to make slight tweaks to my system to become even more efficient at managing my to-do list. Plenty of friends made suggestions, and I read many online reviews of various task systems, but ultimately, I had to pick the one that was right for me and for my situation.

This is true in social media, too. No one approach will work for everyone, and people or companies shouldn’t be pressured into joining too many social web sites, especially if they aren’t prepared to spend the time required to maintain their presence. Businesses and people don’t have infinite amounts of time or money, so we need to carefully choose how we allocate our resources. The exact mix will probably be different for your business than for mine.

Don’t let consultants, experts, bloggers or friends bully you into a particular solution. Think about what you want and pick an approach that works for you.

How do you decide what works best for you?

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As we all know, distance can encourage misunderstanding. Many of us are far bolder in writing than we would be if we were to speak face-to-face with the person we’re making our complaint to — or about. Without a proper framework, our complaint email can wind up sounding unprofessional at best,  and positively rabid at worst. This kind of communication can severely undermine our positions with clients as well as colleagues.

Fortunately, I found this hilarious and entertaining complaint letter, which was written to Richard Branson by Oliver Beale, a traveler on a Virgin flight. Sure, it’s an extreme example, and it’s a customer complaint, not a complaint to a superior, colleague or client about a teamwork-related issue, but it reminded me of the essential ingredients of an effective complaint — and put me in a better frame of mind.

What’s an effective complaint? It’s a one that supports your reputation as a dedicated professional, makes the people who need to know (your team leaders, clients, superiors, etc.) aware of hurdles you’re trying to overcome, and, most importantly, gets you a productive outcome.

The following guidelines, exemplified in the Virgin letter, usually help me keep control of any complaint email I’m writing, and give my complaint email the chance to succeed. They work for ordinary consumer complaint communications, but these points are specifically focused on writing emails complaining about work progress, difficulty you’re facing, or other work-related challenges to colleagues and clients.

Identify What You Want

Before you start formulating your email, work out what it is that you want the message to achieve. If you’re angry with a particular individual, that’s fine, but taking them down via email is neither a noble nor professional objective. It may also be unreasonable and unachievable.

Beale’s Virgin email really has one goal: to bring to the CEO’s attention how bad his customer service is. He actually mentions other examples — “which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years.” — but he stays on-topic. Rather than decrying the brand, the service on the whole, or the staff, he sticks to practical points of particular issue. This gives his message far more weight than would an email that vociferously condemned the entire establishment.

Complaint emails work best if you focus the message on the project or task at hand. If Bernie in Sales hasn’t given you the data you need, your goal is to obtain that data. If your project manager is a ham-fisted hack, your goal is to obtain the project direction you seek. Once you’ve established that goal, you can more easily choose points and language that communicate your objective.

Don’t Write When You’re Emotional

The first thing I noticed about Beale’s email is that it’s not emotional. It conveys a sense of awe, of frustrations past, of amazement. But it’s not aggressive, plaintive, defensive or arrogant.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m emotional, I’m usually at my least professional. If you want to persuade someone — through a complaint or other expression of dissatisfaction — you need to show how reasonable and measured — how professional — you are.

Writing when you’re emotional allows all kinds of inappropriate language to creep into your message. Sarcasm, haughtiness, swear words, and outrage set precisely the wrong tone, and generally arise when you’re emotional; try not to write when you’re in that mindset.

If you want to vent, write your email but don’t send it. Get all that anger out of your system, then come back the next day, once you’ve slept on it, and review your email. You’ll probably find yourself rewording much of it, if not scrapping it altogether.

Respect the Recipient — and Express That

The opening and closing lines of Beale’s email express an honest respect for the recipient: “I love your brand, I really do”, “I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind”, and so on.

This technique establishes that the writer and the recipient are on the same team — that, although a complaint message might seem to put the two parties at odds, in fact, their objective is the same: to improve the business about which the author is complaining. The author is writing out of concern, not anger.

The worst emails I’ve ever written reflected concern for myself, my reputation, and what I could achieve. The best — the most persuasive — expressed that myself and the recipient were on the same team, and we both wanted the same thing.

You don’t need to state, as the author of the Virgin complaint letter did, that you love your client’s brand, or even that you love their project. If, for example, you’ve been waiting months for a crucial input for your project, you might simply express how keen you are to see the project completed, the strategy implemented, the client’s problem solved. And ensure that throughout your message, you use respectful language.

Adopt a Reasonable Tone to Build Empathy

It’s one thing to respect your recipient; it’s another to show that you understand their position. One thing that Beale’s complaint does so well is convey that the writer is reasonable, that he understands what he can reasonably expect from airline food, and that he would expect the same for the recipient of his message: “My only question is: How can you live like this?”

The author isn’t saying that he deserves better. Instead he conveys that any reasonable human being would deserve better. He does this by appealing directly to the recipient as a human being, rather than a person in a given role or position, and by speaking honestly from a position of respect.

His language, including the repeated appeals that the author makes directly to the recipient, makes this clear: “Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.”

The author shows that he knows that the recipient is human, and he respects the fact that we all have our limitations by explaining his thought process as he considered the inflight meal. His descriptions are amusing, but they also build empathy. Between the lines, he’s saying clearly that the service did not meet the reasonable expectations of an ordinary human being, and that if Richard Branson himself had been on the flight, he’d have thought the same things.

Don’t Get Personal

At the beginning of this exercise, we set an objective for your email. In supporting that objective, it’s important not to make either insinuations or specific comment about the personalities or actual people involved.

Yes, Bernie in Sales is holding up the process because he hasn’t given you the data. Your problem isn’t with Bernie (who, you may have noticed, exhibits a range of other unprofessional behaviour that’s irrelevant to your compliant, though you’re tempted to mention it). Your problem is the data.

In our example email, the writer doesn’t blame the chefs, aircraft technicians or staff. He does remark about the method by which the chef might have produced the mashed potatoes, but he doesn’t make personal comment about the chef. In this email, no one is inept, an idiot, underskilled or untalented. Those words shouldn’t be in your email, either.

Illustrate Your Points Clearly

Although Beale went so far as to take photos of the challenges he faced, I’m not necessarily advocating a graphical depiction of your complaint. But in making your point, you’ll need to explain very clearly, and without emotion, what the problems are.

Keep in mind the objective you set for your email — if the issue is getting that sales data, you might list the dates on which you made a request for that data, and how you made those requests (in a meeting, via email, in a phone call, etc.). If you made different requests to different people, or were told to seek that information elsewhere, you might also lists the contacts you’ve used to try to obtain the information, just to show that you’ve left no stone unturned in trying to obtain the data.

You might refer to the agreed project plan, you might include copies of relevant responses you’ve had from your contacts, you might attach meeting minutes — whatever you need to show exactly what the problem is.

Explain the Implications

The author of the example email makes the outcome of the issues he experienced very clear: he says he had a “splitting” headache, and was “the hungriest I’d been in my adult life”.

Explaining the implications isn’t a chance to make veiled threats or to apply histrionics to your situation. It’s time to appeal again to the reasonable side of your client or colleague, keeping in mind that you’re all playing on the same team, and you all want the best, most timely outcome possible.

Perhaps this is an opportunity to make suggestions about alternative ways in which you can obtain the information you need, or proceed without the data. Perhaps it’s an opportunity to invite suggestions and input from the recipient about how they believe you may most effectively proceed. Perhaps, as with the example email, it’s an opportunity to ask your recipient what they’d do, as the author of the example email did.

These points can make a good framework around which to write your own emails of complaint. If you can follow these guidelines, you might find over time that fighting for what you need from a location that’s remote from your team, colleagues or client becomes less daunting and more of a problem-solving experience. I hope you’ll also find that it’s more productive.

What advice can you give from your experience in writing emails of complaint — and getting results — from afar?

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Last week, I discussed how you can be both personal and professional in social media:

You can actually be professional and personal at the same time in social media without too much effort. When we talk about “being personal” on social media web sites, I think that many people confuse “personal” with “private.” The reality is that you get to decide what to share and what not to share, so you can still keep most areas of your private life private.

Now, let’s talk about the private information. Sites like Facebook can change their policies at any time to make information that was once private become public. Ed Gubbins on GigaOM Pro (subscription required) points out that “to satisfy their privacy concerns, users will have to take a more sophisticated and hands-on approach to managing their accounts, and that means Facebooking is going to get more complicated.”

For those of us who work mainly online, this means that we need to be especially careful about what we share and how we share it. In general, I don’t share anything that would be devastating if a client, prospective employer or family member read it. In fact, my mom, my sister, other family members and clients all follow my Twitter feed and/or Facebook status, so they see much of what I say online. I’m not going to say anything that would damage those relationships even in areas that seem to be more “private.”

I consider everything that I share online, even in “private” areas,  to be public information. If I would be embarrassed to have a family member or client see it, I don’t post it. Keep those drunken ramblings, too much information (TMI) moments, and other sensitive data off of the social media sites if you need to also maintain your professionalism online.

How do you balance what information you keep private vs. what you post online?

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Compare this to the reaction to fame that professional athletes, actors, musicians and celebrity CEOs face. Some people completely change (new house, new cars, new friends, new spouse, etc.) while others continue to live in their old neighborhood with existing friends, and remain grounded despite their fame. While social media fame isn’t the same, I see similar reactions.

I was reading a Harvard Business Review blog post by John Baldoni where he was talking about egos in sports and applying the same ideas to business. He mentioned this quote: “It’s okay if other people think you’re God, but you’re in trouble if you start believing it.” This really resonated with what I’ve been seeing in the social media industry.

For some people, it may already be too late. Those enormous egos may have already taken over their bodies like in the episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” where alien entities take over the bodies of Troi, Data and O’Brien and control their every move. Are they too far gone, or can we still save them by exorcising that enormous ego and replacing it with a normal-sized one?

For those you you who can still be saved, here are a few tips for keeping that ego in check (these are Baldoni’s recommendations, modified to apply to social media):

• Remember that your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn friends or fans are not your real friends (take Danah Boyd’s experience on stage at Web 2.0 Expo as an example of when your “friends” can become a mob). Real friends are the people that stick with you during tough times.
• Don’t take yourself too seriously. When people butter you up with praise and tell you how awesome you are, politely thank them, but don’t believe it.
• Everyone has shortcomings — I certainly have my share. Whenever your ego starts to take over, think about something that you need to improve and remember that you are an ordinary human being who makes mistakes and has weaknesses.

What are your thoughts on how social media fame gives people inflated egos?

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1. Get a professional email address. Most clients aren’t likely to take you seriously if you are using an address that contains “hotmama23,” “sexydude12,” “ilovemykittycat,” or anything similar. Your best option is something like yourname@yourdomain.com, or in a pinch, you can use some variation of your full name on Gmail (avoid Hotmail, AOL, and other consumer services that have ever targeted newbie internet users).
2. Have a professional web site. Your web site doesn’t need to be complex or extensive, but you need to have something for potential clients to see, and having a simple, professional site lends credibility to your services. At the minimum, it should have your contact information and an overview of your services presented in a professional manner. If you have a little more time to devote to your web site, a portfolio page with examples of your work and a blog where you can highlight your professional expertise are great additions. Some of the popular blogging platforms are a good choice to act as a content management system for your web site, and most of them can be used with no programming or design work required. I also recommend having your professional web site at the same domain as your email, which should ideally be something like businessname.com or yourfullname.com.
3. Always use clear, concise, professional communications. The most important thing that you can do to have better communications is to carefully proofread every client email. I have a hard time taking someone seriously if their email is littered with mistakes. Your initial communications should be extremely professional with no SMS abbreviations, no smiley faces, no profanity and no other unprofessional language. You can start to relax some of these rules as you get more familiar with your clients. You should also remember that people are busy, so concise and clear communications with clients are important. I always include a descriptive subject line and try to keep my emails as short as possible. Another tip is to put any really critical information in the first couple of lines, along with any requests that you are making of the client. The harsh reality is that if your email is long, most people will start skimming after they get the gist, and any critical information that is buried near the end is more likely to be missed.
4. Dress like a professional. When working from home, pajamas and sweatpants are perfectly acceptable, but when you are meeting with new clients, you need to look like a professional. The definition of professional varies depending on the location and industry; for example, a meeting at a Silicon Valley startup is going to be less formal than a meeting at a financial institution in New York or London. Oregon, where I am based, tends to be much more informal, so I can easily get away with khakis and a nice shirt in most situations. When in doubt, err on the side of being slightly over-dressed rather than appearing under-dressed. Will’s recent post has more tips for surviving client site visits.
5. Use social media wisely. Take a few minutes to look at what your client sees if they search for you on Twitter, forums or other social web sites. Is your client going to see a professional that they can respect? I’m not suggesting that every post be professional. I spend quite a bit of time talking about interesting goings-on in Portland, food and other non-work topics, and I encourage you to show your full range of personality. However, if you are bashing your clients, are often negative or complaining, or are engaging in questionable activities, this can reflect on your professionalism as a freelancer. This is one of those gray areas where you have to balance how you want to behave online with how you want people to see you in your professional career.

These are my top five tips for making a good first impression as a freelancer. What are your tips for making a professional impression, or what are your pet peeves for unprofessional first impressions?

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While many of us love working in our home office or other alternative venue of choice there will often be times when your projects take you to a client site for an extended period of time. I’ve spent time on and off client sites for a majority of my career, and know it can be difficult for some workers who are used to working from home.

This post offers up a refresher on some client site etiquette in case you find yourself rusty on it as you find yourself making the trudge back to a client site for the short or long term.

• Observe your client’s IT security standards at all times. While many of us take extra pains to secure our home office network and computers from viruses, hackers and malware, you aren’t in charge of IT security once you are on site. So make sure that you receive information from your client about IT security standards that are in place. Unfortunately, this may mean your personal laptop needs to stay in its bag while you rely on client issue equipment.
• Dress the part. My home office dress code in the warm months is a T-shirt and cargo shorts. Colder months my home office dress code changes to jeans and fleece. When you take up residence on a client site, don’t forget to dress the part. Ask about any dress code in place before day one.
• Take advantage of face time. While some people may say that face time with a client is overrated, I believe that it can only benefit you, your client, and the project by helping you both forge a more trusting relationship. Not every organization is ready to hire remote web workers, but the first steps toward an off-site engagement often take place during an on-site project where relationship and trust building can take place. This is also a time for you to show yourself off as a self-sufficient worker — just the kind of worker who can function off-site –and deliver on projects without a lot of supervision.
• Plan for other client communications. If you have multiple clients, being on a client site might make you feel isolated from the rest of your business. So be prudent and ensure that you have your communications with other clients prearranged before you step onto a client site for an extended engagement. For example, if you use your mobile phone as your business line, you are already one step ahead. However, I recommend you scope out some “rabbit holes,” where you can make and take calls privately while on site. Another rule of thumb is to never let communicating with your other clients interfere with your on-site work.
  
• Consider the benefits. While spending time in a cubicle might seem like a sentence worse than death for many of us web workers, it can offer all of us valuable insights into our client’s organization, including identifying the politics, power players, and dynamics which may not be apparent via email, IM session, web conference or conference call. So take advantage of your on-site time to learn as much as you can about these organizational dynamics.
  

Have you spent time on a client site since going independent? Share your favorite survival tips below.

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What is Content Strategy?

Kristina Halvorson sums it up nicely in her superb article “The Discipline of Content Strategy” on A List Apart:

“Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.”

If you’re tweeting or updating on Facebook or elsewhere, you’ve got creation and publication of content down. But what about all the other keywords in that definition?

Developing a Content Strategy For Your Social Media Presence

Putting together a content strategy for your social media presence can be a real challenge, especially when you mix business with pleasure; my Facebook friends include relatives, old friends, new pals and purely professional contacts, some of whom I’ve never met personally. You can’t please all the people all the time when you have such a mixed audience, and the privacy settings are too global to adequately address this issue. (My only strategy for Facebook is not to publish things that are too personal. Content strategy is as much about what you shouldn’t publish as it is about what you should.)

But Twitter, for example, is a different story. It’s easy to have separate “personal” and “pro” Twitter accounts. And if you have a pro Twitter account, it’s also easy to apply a content strategy to it. The same is true of professional networks like LinkedIn.

Planning and Governance of Useful, Usable Content

Here are some ideas that might help you get started on a strategy:

• Planning: Define your mission (what you want to achieve with your content). Define your audience. Define what you want your content to do for your audience (inform, persuade, entertain). Define the nature of your content (what it should consist of and the tone of the content). Decide how often to produce it. Decide how you will interact with your audience.
• Governance: In this context, I interpret this to mean managing and monitoring your content and its impact, as well as your own role. Are you meeting your audience’s needs? What’s working and what’s not, and why? Is the quality of your content consistently high? Are you responsive and available?
• Useful and usable: Most of the blogs and Twitter accounts of small businesses I see need a content strategy. They tend to be too inwardly focused, all about their own updates and services (boring), or else they are too much about the owner/founder. These businesses generally need to figure out how to provide some real value to their audiences in order to keep them coming back and turn them into real fans, or even evangelists.

Here’s an example: I discovered a nice app the other day called Memory-Life. It’s a site where you can store media and other files in a virtual “box of memories.” (It’s still only available in French, but hopefully not for long. You can see a demo by clicking “Voir la démo.“)

It has a Twitter account, but it could be doing a lot more. Its audience is interested in preserving memories, so in addition to the occasional updates about upgrades and features, it could share links to articles about repairing old photos, or compressing large video files. It could provide creative suggestions, like “Upload pictures of all your grandmother’s jewelry to your box of memories” or “Create your own art gallery with Memory-Life.” It could suggest alternative uses for the app; designers could use it to create inspiration boards, for example.

If you want to connect with and engage an audience, your content has to provoke thought and action. You know you’re adding value if your content is being retweeted, liked and shared. It takes work, but it’s worth it.

You Too Could Be a Content Strategist!

Content strayegy is a relatively new career field. Large corporations are beginning to have in-house content strategists, but there is no reason why this job shouldn’t be done by consultants, which is where you come in. It could be an ideal occupation for a web worker.

If you’d like to learn ore about content strategy, in April, several chapters of the Society for Technical Communication are putting on “Content Strategy Forum 2010,” a two-day conference on content strategy in Paris. The conference is intended for:

“…anyone who develops, manages, or delivers content within their own organization or for their clients: user experience designers, information architects, business analysts, technical writers, web project managers, documentation managers, translators, web marketers, practicing content strategists, and those looking to break into the field.”

Learn more about the conference program and register here (tickets are very affordable).

Here’s some additional recommended reading on content strategy:

• “Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data,” a great article by Rachel Lovinger
• There are several good articles on A List Apart about content strategy.

Have you implemented a content strategy for your social media presence?

Image by the_franz from sxc.hu

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