#25528
It's ironic that, as professionals dedicated to clear communication, information architects and user interface designers are having such trouble communicating with each other. Information designer George Olsen digs up the roots of communication breakdown and explores the three aspects of web design.
Olsen, George. List Apart, A (2001). Articles>Communication>Professionalism
#19557
Fighting for the Ultimate Desktop
Lately, articles have been appearing in some computer magazines expressing disappointment at the failure of electronic technology to produce a paperless office. What is the problem? Why are offices using more paper than ever before?
Vasdi, Peter. Writer's Block (1995). Articles>Writing>Communication
#20325
Knowledge gaps arise when a small team in an organization creates or compiles a body of knowledge that needs to be deployed to a larger group of people. A gap then exists between the small team that has the knowledge and the larger group of people who need it. In the normal course of doing business, healthy organizations naturally create knowledge gaps, and the healthiest organizations create the most knowledge gaps.
Reid, Clifford A. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Collaboration>Communication>Knowledge Management
#31226
Final Check: Dotting Those i’s and Crossing Those t’s
You’ve worked long and hard on your article, newsletter, press release, promo brochure or report. Now it’s time to move your baby off your screen and into the world. Not so long ago your baby would have gone either onto a printed page or onto the Web. These days, your words will probably head for both. Even materials such as newsletters, white papers, reports and advertorials that are first published on paper are quite likely to be reprinted, archived or otherwise reused on the Web, perhaps even as an audio file or podcast. People may even blog about your content. What does this mean for you as a business communicator?
Canavor, Natalie and Claire Meirowitz. Communication World Bulletin (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Editing>Writing
#27738
Finnish and Italian Communication Strategies for the EU Information 
In the contemporary democracy the information to the citizens about the procedures and acts related to the public policies elaborated and implemented by the different government systems is having more and more importance. Also the European Union has felt this need of transparency and of information, and since 2001 it has started its new framework for co-operation on activities concerning the information and communication policy of the European Union. In this paper I will discuss the main characteristics of EU communication actions and its persuasive methodologies, taking into consideration the role of two Member States, Finland and Italy, as means of EU information diffusion. The strategies of these two countries will be compared in order to see which position these two Member States are taking in relations to EU legislation on communication and information, which communication strategies they are adopting and finally the different effects of EU campaigning on their citizens.
Valentini, Chiara. Chiara Valentini Communication Management (2005). Articles>Communication>International>Europe
#31209
Five Facets of Successful Global Communication
Managing internal communication across a global organization is an exciting and challenging task. How this task is approached will vary widely depending on the culture and structure of the particular organization, as well as the location of its headquarters.
Samuels, Paul. Communication World Bulletin (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Collaboration>International
#25785
Five FAQs About Business Writing
A few style guide tips for novice business writers.
ULiveandLearn.com (2005). Articles>Writing>Style Guides>Business Communication
#31281
Five Steps to Improve Your Communication Audit
Communication audits are like relatives from New Jersey: They never show up at an opportune time—even when you know they are coming. Like that obnoxious uncle leading the Jersey clan, communication audits can occupy all of your time and become an overwhelming task to get rid of, or to complete. Performing an effective audit is the first step in moving yourself from being a communicator who informs about business to being a businessperson who communicates.
Mikorenda, Jerry. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Communication
#31544
Five Tips for Measuring Public Relations and Catching the CEO's Attention
Measuring the effectiveness of PR is critical to moving PR from a tactical function to a strategic component of your company's plan for success. But the old ways of counting clips just aren't good enough to convince today's management executives that their investment in PR and overall communications is paying off. Here are 5 Tips about how to measure PR in ways that will catch the CEO's attention and increase the stature of PR in any organization:
McNamara, Julie. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Public Relations>Assessment
#24165
Flexing Your Marketing Muscles: Tactics for the Reluctant Marketer
I don’t like to market myself. Sometimes I think, 'Heck, I’m good at what I do. I've been doing this for thirty years. Why don’t people come to me?' Then I get over it, consult my marketing plan, and get on with it. (See my previous column, 'Building a Marketing Plan,' in the May 2004 issue of Intercom.) I don't like to market my services, but I like to have marketedmy services. And I keep one thought foremost in the process: 'Marketing is like swimming: If you stop, you sink!'
Frick, Elizabeth G. 'Bette'. Intercom (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing
#29225
Florence Nightingale's Visual Rhetoric in the Rose Diagrams 
Florence Nightingale is usually pictured as an angelic nurse tending to British soldiers in military hospitals during the Crimean War. Although Nightingale was indeed a tender of soldiers, she was also an administrator, advocate for the common soldier, and proponent of the use of statistics and information design. This article examines Nightingale's rose diagrams, which she designed following her service as the director of nurses at a field hospital in the Crimean War. When the war ended, Nightingale was asked by the queen to write a report on the poor sanitary conditions and make recommendations for reform. When, after six months, the government did not act on the reforms, Nightingale decided to write an annex to the report, in which she would include her invention, the rose diagrams. Nightingale's ultimate success in persuading the government to institute reforms is an illustration of the power of visual rhetoric, as well as an example of Nightingale's own passionate resolve to right what she saw as a grievous wrong.
Brasseur, Lee. Technical Communication Quarterly (2005). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Technical Illustration
#31557
Forget ROI, Let's Show How We're Making Money
Throw a stone in a room full of communication professionals and there's a good chance you'll hit one that will back up this statement: senior management loves to see ROI measurements, but seeing how communication initiatives create sales trumps all other measurements. From a marketing communication perspective, simply receiving feedback from a sales team can help your team answer most senior-level frustrations. From the perspective of a sales force, understanding marketing efforts (and how those efforts actually work) aids in everyone's ultimate objective: securing sales.
Cohen, Ephraim. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Management>Communication>Assessment
#26583
This paper explores the possibility that trained business communication professionals might perceive differentially the quality of the identical entrepreneurial presentations, depending on whether they are in audio or print form. By conducting a comparative analysis of heard and read versions of these speeches, we uncovered evidence which frames the following discourse. Results point to the variables which shape either (1) oral communication with an immediately- present audience, or (2) written transcripts with a distanced or imagined set of readers. This has aided us in identifying the funding for new ventures.
Sokuvitz, Sydel and Stephen Spinelli. Association for Business Communication (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Collaboration>Genre
#25051
An application story is a form of promotional writing that highlights the practical benefits of a new product. The story tells why a client company purchases the product over comparable market offerings to solve a business problem. The story is complete when the writer (1) states the client's problem; (2) gives the solution to the problem; (3) shows how the new product solves the problem; (4) describes the criteria the organization had originally set for a new system; (5) shows the benefits of the new system; and(6) describes future applications of the technology. Using this 6-step formula, promotional writers can produce successful application stories.
Matherne, Beverly M. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing
#31304
Four Steps to Demonstrating Communication Return on Investment
I've never met a senior business leader who didn't want to make more money. Nor have I met one who didn't appreciate that communication breakdowns lead to mistakes, accidents, shoddy service, high costs and low productivity. Business leaders, especially CEOs, are eager to rid themselves of value-draining dips in performance that prevent them from hitting their numbers. As a communicator, if you can do four common-sense things well, you can not only help senior leaders to avoid these breakdowns, but you can also demonstrate how to maximize the power of communication for better business results.
Shaffer, Jim. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Communication>Financial>ROI
#21579
A Framework for Developing Research-Based Curricula in Professional Writing Programs
For our field, these are times of significant change. Undergraduate and graduate professional writing programs are proliferating across the country. At the same time, our students are moving into anincreasingly broad range of workplace settings. To respond to this reality, we need to establish reliable frameworks for developing curricula that are aligned with the discursive, technical, social, and ethicaldemands our students will face in these settings. We are proposing such a framework -- i.e., a set ofguiding principles -- for designing research-based curricula for professional writing programs. More specifically, we will describe how this framework can be used to orient the empirical research that willallow us to 1) identify the knowledge, abilities, critical awareness, and aspects of identity that ourgraduates will need as practicing professionals and 2) develop curricula that respond to these needs.
Smart, Graham and Nicole Brown. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Education>Business Communication
#27829
From a Wasteland of Words to Corporate Language
In recent years, the subject of terminology and its significance to technical documentation has gained importance. Training and education are paying more and more attention to this area, and an increasing number of software companies are offering sophisticated solutions to give companies a technological tool for handling terms efficiently.
Schaefer, Gregor. tekom (2006). Articles>Language>Business Communication
#23567
From Technical Writing To Marketing Communication: Growth From Common Ground
If you think marketing communications are written by an entirely different brand of writer—in a version of the language wholly unlike the one you employ— then think again. Marketing and technical communications do share common ground. And by expanding the horizons of this landscape, you can move into marketing writing. To begin, you must explore what the disciplines share, what attributes are peculiar to marketing communications, and how you can go about developing your skills in this field.
Baker, Dina. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Writing>Marketing>Business Communication
#30275
From Technical Writing To Science Communication: How Do We Make The Leap?
In response to their institution's need to explain its research to the public, a group of technical writers from Los Alamos National Laboratory is investigating methods to help writers make the leap from technical writing to science communication--the art of communicating science to nontechnical audiences. Through individual study and networking, members of the group are collecting resources that illuminate the techniques and complexities of science communication. From this foundation, they are preparing an extensive, annotated bibliography and assembling training materials so that they can become a resource for other writers shifting from technical to science communication.
Agnew, Marion, Anne Garnett, Grace Hollen, Amy Longshore, Judy Machen, Ann Mauzy, Eileen Patterson and Amy Reeves. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Scientific Communication>Documentation
#31493
From Vista to Zune: Why Microsoft Can’t Sell to Consumers
Microsoft’s marketing of Windows Vista and the Zune have failed in large part due to the fact that Microsoft has not learned how to effectively sell consumer products. Consumers buy Windows and Office, but that’s because they have no choice, not because of the company’s marketing savvy. Microsoft only effectively markets its products to businesses, which represents a very different type of sales relationship.
RoughlyDrafted (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Marketing>Case Studies
#31231
Frontline Managers and Human Resources: Partnering for Effective Communication
In my human resources consulting practice, when I ask employees about their major concerns, their primary complaint is how poorly their managers communicate with them about human resources issues, especially compensation and job performance objectives. Ensuring that effective employee communication is embedded in the company’s culture is everyone’s responsibility—from senior executives on down. However, the primary players in effective employee communication are human resources professionals and frontline managers.
Rubino, John A. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Management>Business Communication
#31543
Recent research tells us that 97 percent of all public relations departments are involved in media relations, and 88 percent evaluate their campaigns using media analysis. On one hand, industry leaders urge us to measure the results of our work via business outcomes; yet on the other, communicators are still asked to supply output results as 'proof of performance.' Is there some link between the two that can cover both? Here are some relatively easy ways to make your media results speak with numbers that management will respect and understand.
Jeffrey, Angela. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Public Relations>Assessment
#24103
Games: A Transactional Context
Communication was not a theorized space until after World War II, it was just something we did. Both Claude Shannon’s seminal model of communication and Norbert Wiener’s model of feedback dealt with the technical transmission space for communication. From the beginning of communication theory, attention focused on technical aspects and broadcast models in which the recipient of the communication was presumed to be passive. All that was necessary was to use understandable codes (language, symbols, images) with which the recipient was familiar. Since those early days, a wealth of communication models have been developed that deal with various perspectives on communication including discourse models that seek to establish rapport; gratification models that attempt to sustain interest; innovation models that promote behavior change; and context models that seek to recognize and plan for the specific conditions in which a communication occurs. With these models the varieties of ways in which communication was received and interpreted came to the foreground, but the variables that influence any particular person’s interpretation remain daunting and undiscoverable in their totality.
Poggenpohl, Sharon. University of Alberta (2003). Articles>Communication>Theory>Games
#31808
Gender Differences in Employees’ and Students’ Knowledge of Office Politics
Office politics goes on in most work environments. Learning the rules of office politics helps employees of both genders reap the rewards to which they are entitled. As future employees, students must become knowledgeable about office politics to be successful in the world of work.
Green, Catherine G. and Lillian H. Chaney. Association for Business Communication (2008). Articles>Education>Business Communication>Collaboration
#20619
A General Guide to Science Writing 
There are three fundamental aspects to good science writing - planning the structure, thinking about your reader, and choosing your words.
Garratt, John and Brian Mattinson. Education in Chemistry (1995). Articles>Scientific Communication
