Business Development Through Online Networking

Recently, business networking has been perceived negatively due to its widespread use in the network marketing industry and the proliferation of “lead generation clubs” that focus on impersonal lead referrals rather than on building relationships. The surge in popularity of social networking sites on the Internet, however, has sparked a renewed interest in meaningful discussion and research on the value and importance of “networking,” particularly to mainstream businesses.

Teten, David and Scott Allen. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Online

Business Etiquette: New Day, New Time  

Business etiquette including communication, ethics, and teamwork has changed considerably over the years. Core values of companies are evolving. Companies now want to be the "place to work". Issues that were once taboo in the business world are no longer. This can be observed in an employee's appearance for example. The once standard business suit has been replaced with casual dress. The normal peer to peer communication has been replaced with upward and downward communication throughout the business organization.

Ashe, Carolyn and Chynette Nealy. Association for Business Communication (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Collaboration

Business Information Survey    

Survey of business information services in corporate information services, based on in-depth interviews with leading business information managers. Key findings are: Business information budgets have been stable, with at least inflationary increases built in; Business conditions have been turbulent of late but this has had no real impact on the services to date; With more information rolled out to the clients' desktops, the services are all working to add value through a variety of approaches, including training, evaluation and analysis, business and client development, and generally undertaking more complex work; Some pressure on the staffing headcount in the services during the year; Recruiting suitable information professionals is a difficult process; Offshoring information and research work has not expanded significantly but more companies are considering this option; 'Techno-centric' knowledge management remains important in some companies, particularly law firms, but is fading as a practice in others; There is great interest and envisaged potential in social technology and Web 2.0 tools and techniques -- but not much serious deployment yet; Even in mature corporate information environments, marketing business information services is still seen as crucial by 90 per cent of respondents; Fifty-five percent of the services provide some kind of competitor information function, albeit not at a high level; A significant majority (75 per cent) of services support compliance functions such as 'Know your client' and anti-money laundering checks; Existing copyright provisions are seen as a barrier to effective information dissemination within companies by 80 per cent of respondents; LexisNexis takes over at the top of the expenditure league; The demand for information on Asian business markets is growing; Almost all services are committed to training users in the discovery and use of digital business information sources; The organization, management, and sometimes realignment of services is the highest strategic priority.

Foster, Allan. Business Information Review (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Information Design

Business Letters: Accentuating the Positives

Your letters will be more successful if you focus on positive wording rather than negative, simply because most people respond more favorably to positive ideas than negative ones. Words that affect your reader positively are likely to produce the response you desire in letter-writing situations. A positive emphasis will  persuade the reader and create goodwill. In contrast, negative words may generate resistance and other unfavorable reactions. You should therefore be careful to avoid words with negative connotations. These words either deny--for example, NO, DO NOT, REFUSE, and STOP--or convey unhappy or unpleasant associations--for example, UNFORTUNATELY, UNABLE TO, CANNOT, MISTAKE, PROBLEM, ERROR, DAMAGE, LOSS, and FAILURE.

Purdue University (2000). Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence

Buzzwords vs. Benefits

Buzzwords obscure, confuse, or evade. Benefits sell products and ideas. If you use too many buzzwords too often, most educated audiences will conclude you lack the ability to be clear, truthful, or direct. Never assume everyone understands your esoteric language. If you don't know what you're doing, stop doing it. If you do know, state it clearly and simply.

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Communication>Business Communication>Language

Calling All Communication Professionals: Test Your Crisis Plan—Now

We are all well aware of the importance of a crisis communication plan. But many of us don't realize the necessity of conducting actual simulations to test and evaluate these plans. Whether you are on the corporate or agency side, there are countless forms of crisis that could interrupt business continuity for you and your client.

Moed, Ed. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Risk Communication

Can We Learn from Nonprofit Organizations' Disclosure Practices?

Every day, large and small nonprofit organizations around the world engage in diverse activities in the public interest. But in accomplishing this overarching goal of social responsibility, how well do nonprofits communicate their activities and strategies? What do nonprofits' business practices suggest about the issues of transparency and accountability? Can nonprofits serve as models for for-profit organizations in communicating their own social responsibility commitments and activities?

Hill, Frances R. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Policies and Procedures

A Case for Kasky

Nike v. Kasky, now in the U.S. Supreme Court, could determine whether or not public statements made by corporate executives, when acting as company representatives, are subject to the same rules that regulate the advertising business. As Allan Jenkins indicated in his article last month in Communication World, the outcome of the case will have a profound affect on business communications. And it could be positive.

McCall, Ron. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Public Relations

Case in Point: Cisco’s Model For Change Management

A few months ago, a company-wide team at Cisco Systems Inc. was challenged to come up with the best model for change management. Several team members had experience in change management through various disciplines, such as process management, HR consulting, communication, Six Sigma and IT. In the first meeting, the team recognized many factors that would affect how they moved forward: hundreds (maybe thousands) of models already existed, thousands of consultants had their favorite models and were eager to help, and employees were familiar with models from other companies.

Horn, Karen. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Management>Case Studies

A Case Study of Health Risk Communication: What the Public Wants and What it Gets  

The task of informing the public about various health risks is fraught with many problems. It is essential to overcome them if risk communication is to be improved. In 1989, the National Research Council (NRC) released a report that is important for many reasons. In particular, it helped establish a conceptual framework for risk communication and identified a research agenda to improve risk communication practices. One area of need identified by the report was better use of case studies to understand, e.g., 'how people react to different types of messages and channels; [and] what their actual concerns, frustrations, and data needs are' with regard to particular health risks.

Trauth, Jeannette M. Franklin Pierce Law Center (1994). Articles>Risk Communication>Biomedical

La Catastrofe del Trasbordador Espacial

El lamentable accidente del trasbordador Columbia ha propiciado la creación de innumerables gráficos para explicar lo que pasó. Revisamos la importancia de la visualización en este accidente y, especialmente, en el del Challenger en 1986.

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2003). (Spanish) Articles>Risk Communication>Technical Illustration

Caution--Warning Ahead!  

Safety and warning notices form the most important elements of user information wherever safety and [product liability are concerned. A carefully thought out and systematic process is required in developing safety-relevant information, in order to increase the completeness and comprehensibility of product safety. This will also disarm any suspicion of gross negligence in internal documentation in case of missing safety notices and it will ensure traceability.

Schmeling, Roland. tekom (2006). Articles>Documentation>Risk Communication

Review: CEO-Speak: The Language of Corporate Leadership    

The Language of Corporate Leadership is a study of the written discourse of CEOs that is found in annual reports, corporate Web sites, congressional testimonies, and employee newsletters. The book contains 10 case studies of CEOs' writings from past and present megacorporations, including Enron, General Electric, Microsoft, Disney, and AOL. The organizations covered in the book represent both new and old economies and include two Canadian companies and a public-sector company. The authors, Joel Amernic and Russell Craig, are accounting and business professors and appropriately focus on accounting and financial reporting aspects of CEOs' written discourse.

Dave, Anish M. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Reviews>Business Communication>Language

CEOs Are From Mars...

With a creative background and an M.B.A., I’ve been a professional half-breed over the past 20 years. What I’ve learned is that the antagonism, hostility and resentment often felt on both sides of the equation is the outgrowth of a basic failure to understand what makes the other side tick.

Derricks, Alma. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Workplace>Communication

The Challenge of Line Manager Communication

There is a great deal of research around these days that makes the connection between employee engagement and good line manager communication. After all, as the saying goes, people don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad managers. The reality is there are many elements that make a bad manager. As communication professionals, we are not there to solve all the problems of socially challenged managers, but we do need to help them fulfill their role in effectively communicating to their people.

Cropley, Adrian. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Management>Workplace

Challenges for Technical Communicators in Bioinformatics  

Bioinformatics, a specialized field in the area of biotechnology, has been a major growth market for the last decade. Generally, bioinformatics companies serve pharmaceutical and other life science research institutes by providing powerful computational solutions for the analysis, storage, and integration of molecular data. The project-oriented organizational structures, international environment, and interdisciplinary approaches that characterize bioinformatics companies provide a wealth of challenges and opportunities. Technical communicators who want to work in this field must be willing to apply strategies and techniques that enable them to streamline communication channels and write effective documentation.

Weirich, Margaret. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Challenging Your Assumptions: Entrepreneurial Groups Offer Idea Incubators

I recently had a conversation with a colleague about business development. While that's neither revolutionary nor even terribly uncommon, what was different was that we weren't commiserating about business cycles or the fact that when we're busy we often neglect the very activities that bring in new projects. Instead, we were talking about strategies for moving our businesses in new directions. When was the last time you questioned your business strategy or seriously considered adding a new business line or branching out into a new service area?

Steigman, Daria. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Management

Change Agents or Followers: Analyzing Genres in the Business Writing Classroom  

Asking business students to perform a rhetorical analysis of generic conventions may help students gain the confidence to modify those conventions. Research shows that while generic conventions impose constraints, experienced writers also learn they have the agency to modify those conventions to meet the exigency of the rhetorical situation. The article reviews both traditional conceptions of the nature of genre as well as recent research, and describes an assignment which uses genre analysis as a means of teaching students the social nature of generic structures.

Amidon, Stevens R. Association for Business Communication (2004). Articles>Education>Genre>Business Communication

Change Architecture: Bringing Information Architecture to the Business Domain

As information architects, we are not just architecting information; we are using information to architect change. Bob Goodman shows us how we can use business and management techniques to help us be more effective agents of change.

Goodman, Bob. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Information Design>Business Communication

Changing Nature and Uses of Media Literacy

The more that information and communication technologies become central to modern society, the more it is imperative to identify, and to manage the development of, the skills and abilities required to use them. Within both academic and policy discourses, the concept of media literacy is being extended from its traditional focus on print and audiovisual media to encompass the internet and other new media. Hence, even though the concept of literacy has itself long proved contentious, there is widespread speculation regarding supposedly new forms of literacy - variously termed computer literacy, internet literacy, cyber-literacy, and so forth.

Livingstone, Sonia. London School of Economics (2006). Articles>Communication>Theory

Changing Uses of Technology: Crisis Communication Responses in a Faculty Strike    

This case study of a faculty strike examines the crisis response strategies of a university and its faculty union and the changing uses of technology to communicate to key stakeholders. An analysis of the types of crisis response strategies reveals that both the university and the faculty union used defensive and ingratiation strategies to build their cases and protect their reputations. The university also used denial to argue that the strike was not disrupting operations. The university and the union both relied on e-mails, Web sites, and press releases to update their constituencies. The difference was that for the union in particular, technology both expanded the options for sending information and accelerated the flow of information when conditions changed. The case study illustrates that technology has diminished an organization's control of crisis communication by opening numerous communication channels for others to use to explain their positions and build support.

Vielhaber, Mary E. and John L. Waltman. JBC (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Email

A Checklist for Public Relations Practitioners When Considering Measurement or Evaluation Research

Read these 10 useful tips from Walter K. Lindenmann, Ph.D., an independent consultant specializing in public relations research, measurement and evaluation services.

Lindenmann, Walter K. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Public Relations>Assessment