#31844
Learn how to convince your company to grant your purchase request through tips on building an effective business case.
Molisani, Jack and Bonni Graham. Intercom (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Business Case
#31532
How to Communicate with Employees During War
On 19 March a war with global implications began between a U.S.-led coalition and Iraq. Although some organizations will be affected by this war more than others, the articles below will help any communicator address certain immediate internal and external organizational war-related communication issues.
Davis, Alison. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Workplace>History
#24741
How to Create a High-Impact Sales Letter — FAST 
A sales letter must capture the reader's attention immediately or it won't get read. Most people accomplish this by stating their biggest benefit at the top of their letter. I've found something that works even better.
Leduc, Bob. Nine Yards (2002). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Marketing
#31553
How to Set Specific Goals for Your Public Relations Campaign and Calculate Your Precise ROI
In today's world, advertising is just one element of the marketing formula. In fact, there is a shift occurring away from advertising to other marketing that's less costly and more cost-effective and efficient. In all your marketing efforts, your goal is to gain that top-of-mind awareness position with your prospect/customer. PR can do this. Advertising can do this once awareness is attained. PR gets you there; advertising keeps you there. Knowing the return of PR truly justifies it as an integral part of the marketing arsenal.
Lautenslager, Al. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Public Relations>Assessment
#29381
How To Use the Six Laws of Persuasion during a Negotiation 
In order to be successful, you must master the persuasion process, which will enable you to deliberately create the attitude change and subsequent actions necessary for persuading others to your way of thinking. In other words, you have to be able to 'sell' your ideas in order to make changes in your favor and, in a win-win situation, provide the other side with a fair deal.
Greer, Edrie. TechRepublic (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Rhetoric
#21301
How do you write an effective email that your recipient finds clear and easy to understand? There's more to it than just typing a few words and clicking the Send button. These notes give you some guidelines on the following: technical issues, document structure, the importance of knowing your audience, language issues and layout and visual design.
Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2002). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email
#30087
How to Write Successful Direct Marketing Letters 
Direct marketing in the form of direct mail is used by almost every company whether it is the local service station or shoe repair shop or a Fortune 500 company. Unlike documentation that instructs or describes a process, marketing materials must persuade as well as inform. Increasingly, technical communicators’ responsibilities are being expanded to include marketing materials such as advertisements and direct mail. Writing successful direct marketing letters or advertisements can be easier by using a 10-point guide that uses the principles of attracting attention, arousing interest. creating desire and asking for action.
Smith, Gem. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Marketing
#31961
Should you use CSS or (horror of horrors) tables? And what do you do when images are ‘blocked’?
Greiner, David. Vitamin (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email
#28626
If we believe what we see on television, the typical workplace is either dry, rational, and chock full of consensus (like those cheesy, not-so-candid textbook pictures of 'strategic decision making'), dramatic and tense (think Grey's Anatomy or Law and Order) or circus-like (think Scrubs or The Office).
Scott, Clifton W., Karen K. Myers and Sarah J. Tracy. Communication Currents (2006). Articles>Communication>Business Communication
#21073
Email usability can be dramatically increased or decreased by how URLs are designed and placed in messages. An example of one problem is described in detail in this article. Also, a couple of simple tips are provided to help you improve the URLs in your email messages.
Rhodes, John S. WebWord (2002). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Email
#31224
I Have People for That: Outsourcing Corporate Communication
Outsourcing is not new to the corporate communication department. The breadth and complexity of communication technology and the widely varied skills needed to communicate effectively to all audiences make it nearly impossible for a corporate communication department to do it all. Every organization handles communication outsourcing differently. However, there are two basic models of outsourcing currently in use.
Collura, Kathy. Communication World Bulletin (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Outsourcing
#31811
The Impact of EQ Training on Collaborative Professional Writing
Over the course of each semester, students in 300-level business communication courses can expect to produce a number of various types of messages and reports with emphasis on the psychological development of the message. Although education has traditionally demanded an individual approach to most writing tasks in order to assess student performance, most practitioners in the field of business communication recognize the importance of collaborative writing as a necessary skill in preparing students to enter the job market where teams rather than individuals are the primary work unit.
Sigmar, Lucia S., Tab W. Cooper, Geraldine E. Hynes and Kathy L. Hill. Association for Business Communication (2008). Articles>Writing>Education>Business Communication
#30277
Imposing Order On The Chaos Of Marketing Materials Development
A good relationship with internal clients, accompanied by well-defined procedures, makes the creative process of developing marketing materials as smooth as possible.
Kruell, Christopher P. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing
#29823
Improved Student Writing in Business Communication Classes: Strategies For Teaching And Evaluation 
Students in business communication classes are expected to write various types of documents. Research has illustrated that undergraduate student writing skills have not improved even though most states have begun writing proficiency tests at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. By the time students enroll in college, students are expected to be proficient writers. In some cases, this is true. In far too many cases, students continue to need writing development. In business communication classes, these weaknesses cannot be ignored. This article's purpose is to give guidance to instructors to motivate their students to produce better written products. The difficulty is how to do this most effectively. The authors present some ideas on how to improve student writing through some creative teaching and evaluation strategies.
Stowers, Robert H. and Randolph T. Barker. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2003). Articles>Education>Business Communication>Writing
#31860
Improving Financial Analysis and Reporting Using XBRL and the Microsoft Office System
The process of financial reporting and analysis can represent a huge cost for many companies. For example, the preparation of quarterly statements for publicly traded companies consumes the majority of a finance department’s resources during the reporting period. Likewise, it is not uncommon for equity analysts to spend up to one-third of their time entering data into spreadsheet models and verifying that data for accuracy.
#26607
This paper describes the progress of an original pilot program that used surveys and reported results from students and faculty concerning student improvement in writing and presentation skills from a convenience sample of courses. Based on the responses to these surveys a pre-test writing instrument and a presentation assessment instrument were designed for and administered to incoming students during their MBA orientation session. Also included in the orientation session were two modules that focused on plagiarism issues and the use of web-based technology for research. This program will be expanded to include post-writing critiques and portfolio communication evaluations.
Alpern, Barbara E., David C. Odett and Richard Pietila. Association for Business Communication (2004). Articles>Education>Business Communication
#20065
All business writing uses some kind of process to create final copy. Many processes, especially in small organizations, are not formalized into regularly used procedures. This casual approach to development methodology makes it particularly difficult to measure and then analyze the efficiency of these processes. Simple surveying techniques can be used to capture process data before Statistical Process Control (SPC) analysis reveals resource consuming process elements.
Miller, John. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Business Communication>Methods
#31552
In Search of (Corporate Communication) Excellence
Buoyed by commercial expansion and the entrepreneurial renaissance of recent years, corporate public relations has come a long way towards becoming an essential tool in the chief executive's armoury. That said, the scope for further advancement of PR consultants at the boardroom table will remain restricted until the profession gives senior management what they want — a measure of return on their investment.
Dempsey, Conor. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Public Relations
#28054
Incompetent Email Marketing = Lost Future Opportunities
Lack of personalization made an email newsletter completely useless to the recipient, damaging long-term customer relationship efforts.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Marketing
#26628
Incompetent Email Marketing = Lost Future Opportunities
Lack of personalization made an email newsletter completely useless to the recipient, damaging long-term customer relationship efforts.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Email>Marketing
#30704
This study examines the processes by which workers in a particular Indian call center located in Kolkata expanded on, negotiated, and chose among an array of possible, especially new, identities and identifications and the ways that these choices affected changing social discourses. Our case study depicted a workplace that was simultaneously casual and urgent, temporal and spatially free and constrained, situated in both Indian and U.S. cultures, and oriented toward business and night-club ambiances. Within this particular workplace, call center employees (re)constructed and negotiated among an array of discourses that bracketed opportunities for particular identities and identifications. Through these negotiation processes, they (a) engaged in strategic identity(ies) invocations and (b) reframed work, career, and family discourses and practices.
Pal, Mahuya and Patrice Buzzanell. JBC (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Workplace>India
#29029
The Influence of the Purpose of a Business Document on Its Syntax and Rhetorical Schemes
This study attempts to show how the purpose of three types of business and technical documents (instructions, annual reports, and sales promotional letters) affects the syntactical and rhetorical choices authors make in writing these documents. While the results of the examination rendered some predictable results, there were some surprises in the absence of many rhetorical schemes in sales promotional letters. Another value of this study is that it provides partial syntactical and rhetorical "fingerprints" of three important documents in business and technical writing to offer students norms they can go by in constructing such documents.
Myers, Marshall. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (1999). Articles>Business Communication>Rhetoric
#31521
Inspiring Change Through Research
Organizational communication is centered on inspiring and managing change, so it makes sense that communication professionals are seeing a more critical role for research in understanding and reaching their most important stakeholder relationships (employees, customers, suppliers, dealers, etc.). When a company is undergoing significant changes (i.e., a merger, acquisition, slumping sales, a product launch), research can pinpoint exactly where the issues and communication needs are. Oftentimes, such information is considered and then only used in limited ways. So how does a company proceed in bringing research results to life? It’s important to review how the research and tactical elements of communication vehicles are matched up.
Powell, Nancy. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Organizational Communication>Research
#22446
Institutionally Mapping Professional Writing
We think it is critically important-especially in a time of declining budgets-for professional writing programs to position themselves in a vital and robust location in the university, and probably outside it as well. What institutional location(s) can best guarantee that professional writing thrive, and also provide it an opportunity to have significant impact?
Grabill, Jeffrey T. and James E. Porter. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Business Communication
#30695
Integrating Business Core Knowledge Through Upper Division Report Composition
The most ambitious project of many undergraduate business communication courses is the formal report. This assignment typically requires the use of many writing skills nurtured throughout the course. Skills such as proper style, tone, organization, flow, and mechanics are enhanced through the writing of memos and various types of letters (persuasive, bad news, etc.). While these skills are all evident in a report, it is a much different kind of document. This synthesis of writing skills can be complemented by the integration of fundamental business subject knowledge. Both skill sets can be concurrently developed through business simulation report assignments, particularly in upper division business communication courses. Such courses are often required in business programs where students have already completed courses in business law, management, basic business statistics, and computer applications. Choosing an appropriate topic and scope for such a report writing assignment can be challenging. As offered in Business Communication Quarterly, many good assignments lend themselves to adoption, each with varying degrees of flexibility, coverage of current topics, and data analysis requirements. The following formal report assignment provides the opportunity to present a wide enough scope to integrate several business disciplines.
Roach, Joy, Daniel Tracy and Kay Durden. Business Communication Quarterly (2007). Articles>Education>Business Communication>Reports
